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Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

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Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#41

Post by Cthulhu_ »

olivierduval wrote: post #30

For me, it looks like the European GDPR - that received a lot of harsh words here, on HN - is a little bit improving the situation for everybody on the net, at least regarding the Big Players. Maybe some regulations is not bad after all (at least for de facto monopolistic business like Google, Amazon & co)...? ;-)

It's super effective and is making all companies pretty damn privacy conscious all of a sudden - except they also still violate it. The problem is that they will find ways to skirt around the edges of the GDPR as much as possible - or straight violate it in the hopes that nobody will find out.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#43

Post by thinkingemote »

DarwinMailApp wrote: post #32
tempguy9999 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't have an alexa, perhaps. But if you believe alexa did that and you still haven't murdered it with fire, I guess you never will. (Edit: as pointed out below, it was an alexa but not his own so my criticism is undeserved)

It's not my Alexa I'm talking about! I have no reason to buy one. I made a list of benefits and it really wasn't strong enough!

> It's not my Alexa I'm talking about!

The information about the ads are probably also not related to your data but to whoever's Alexa it is (and the connections to that user).

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#44

Post by cameronbrown »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #36
DarwinMailApp wrote: post #12

So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locall…

I'm confused. If this technology is so pervasive and supposedly efficient, why do I always get such terrible ads, completely irrelevant to my interests? Usually the only targeted ads I get are ads for products I was searching for to buy, but usually they show up after I bought the product, so, no, I am not going to buy a new fridge within few years anyway.

There's a lot of wasted inventory yeah, but conversion rates are still much higher than they would've been without targeting. It looks terrible from the individual's point of view but from on high it seems to work well enough.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#45

Post by move-on-by »

There is no shortage of good reasons to block ads. Passive ads no longer exist, if they ever did. They are all actively exploiting, tracking, and selling you- even if you never interact with them.

Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? Beyond Twitter, there is no shortage of school systems, police departments, and other small public interests that use their Facebook page as a sole means of announcements. They shouldn't be - but it doesn't change the fact that they are. The Ad industry needs strong and enforceable regulation, and quickly.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#46

Post by cameronbrown »

olivierduval wrote: post #30

For me, it looks like the European GDPR - that received a lot of harsh words here, on HN - is a little bit improving the situation for everybody on the net, at least regarding the Big Players. Maybe some regulations is not bad after all (at least for de facto monopolistic business like Google, Amazon & co)...? ;-)

Maybe it has, but I still believe in the long run it will do us more harm than good. We were starting to see a massive push to shift away from FAANG, but GDPR has just made those incumbents far stronger. They roadblocked the free market.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#47

Post by mruts »

DarwinMailApp wrote: post #12

So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locall…

The difference between targeted ads and untargeted is like the difference between alpha and beta, or index funds and hedge funds. It’s not that a hedge fund doesn’t have better risk adjusted returns than an index (they usually do), it’s that the fees are so high it’s usually worse net of fees.

There was a study posted on hacker news that targeted ads have something like a 5% higher conversion rate than untargeted ones. The problem is that you end up paying 30% more compared to the commodity service. So unless the fees go down or the efficacy goes up, it’s not worth it.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#48

Post by dec0dedab0de »

lonelappde wrote: post #17
DarwinMailApp wrote: post #12

So there are essentially remnants of our browsing history linked to our devices shared among numerous ad companies. They then serve relevant ads for us all over the web depending on where they are being paid to display relevant ads. Twitter is at it. We've experienced the same behavior from Google & God knows Facebook is at it too. I've even had conversations where the only connection we had to the web was our locall…

Amazon's code is not secret internally. If Alexa was targeting ads on your speech, someone from Amazon present or past would have confirmed it by now. Your conversation was probably influenced by the web ads campaign, or it was a coincidence, there are a lot of people seeing a lot of ads every 10 minutes.

Your conversation was probably influenced by the web ads campaign

I think this is likely correct, and a million times more sinister.

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#49

Post by maximente »

tictoc wrote: post #38

Here's an idea. Stop using twitter.

yeah, and what about the other millions of web properties inundating your web browser with JS that tracks, beacons, analyzes, and whatever the hell else?

unless you want to replace your comment with "stop using the web" you'd be way better off getting on the spectrum of defending yourself to an obviously hostile world, with things like uBlock Origin, pihole, $increasing_complexity, and so forth

Re: Twitter confesses to more adtech leaks

#50

Post by jpollock »

move-on-by wrote: post #45

There is no shortage of good reasons to block ads. Passive ads no longer exist, if they ever did. They are all actively exploiting, tracking, and selling you- even if you never interact with them. Some might say, "Stop using twitter", but how is any American supposed to do that when the President of the United States uses it as his platform? Beyond Twitter, there is no shortage of school systems, police departments,…

Blocking ads won't stop your info from being shared during the auction. That's a back end data transfer.
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