I wish tech companies knew more about me

Posted by freetonik 3 days ago

I wish tech companies knew more about me(rakhim.exotext.com)

564 points | 414 commentspage 7

retromagik 2 days ago|

Paraphrasing comedian Connor O'Malley

> I'm so jealous of my son because he's 5 years old and they've been collecting all this data on him since he was in the womb and by the time he's my age he's going to have a much better customer experience than I'll ever get

Dependance 3 days ago||

Who is advertising for ? Maybe your mistake is supposing it is to benefit you in any way shape or form ?

"I wish the farmer knew more about me, it gives me corn but what I want is sunlight !"

pc86 3 days ago|

Just so I don't get accused of shilling out of self-interest, I don't work (and never have) in advertisements in any way shape or form, nor does my employer make a dime from advertising. This advertising discussion always ends up with two sides: "so what?" and "advertising in any form is evil and everyone involved in it deserves the death penalty" (hyperbole but not by as much as you'd think).

What the former side ignores very often is that there are scam ads to scam websites that are basically malware. The ads with fake sign up buttons, the flashing ads saying you've won money, basically any video ad I've ever seen. They're garbage.

What the latter side ignores is... basic human agency? Nobody has ever had a gun to their head and been forced to buy a salad spinner off of Amazon because they saw a banner ad or read a sponsored article on a recipe blog. I have regretted purchases I've made, and some of those were probably only made because of an advertisement. That's my fault, not the advertiser's. If you don't want to buy something in an ad, don't buy it. A company having more fine-grained detail about your socioeconomic status or third-party purchases does not remove any of your agency.

JohnMakin 3 days ago||

> What the latter side ignores is... basic human agency? Nobody has ever had a gun to their head and been forced to buy a salad spinner off of Amazon because they saw a banner ad or read a sponsored article on a recipe blog. I have regretted purchases I've made, and some of those were probably only made because of an advertisement. That's my fault, not the advertiser's. If you don't want to buy something in an ad, don't buy it. A company having more fine-grained detail about your socioeconomic status or third-party purchases does not remove any of your agency.

My agency is removed when the mechanisms used to serve those ads aggressively invade my privacy and surveil pretty much any and every activity I do in daily life. This happens regardless of whether I click the ad or not. How does one miss this side of the argument? And no, "use an adblocker" or "use ublock origin" does not fix the problem.

pc86 2 days ago||

I'm not even talking about the adtech surveillance aspect of it. The discussion is often about how advertising itself is, at its core or "fRoM fIRsT prInCiPLeS" or whatever, a Bad Thing. If I'm going to see ads I'd rather see ads for a specific product I might actually want to buy than for products I have no interest in or generic "hey did you know Coca-Cola exists?" brand ad nonsense. I'd love it if that happened without invasive surveillance or Samsung-level malware but I think that's besides the point.

But to your point, what agency of yours is removed when you buy a product known to actively spy on you, you take no measures to stop it, and that ends up with you being shown ads based on whatever you were browsing?

JohnMakin 2 days ago||

You seem to lack a fundamental understanding of adtech and the mechanisms surrounding it. I'm not trying to be rude or dismissive, but it goes much deeper than "I bought a product and am being tracked." Everything digital collects information from you, with the primary purpose of selling the data to advertisers that target based on that data. It's not, "I bought a smartfridge, so I get what I deserve." It's "I went to mcdonald's, my friend used the mcdonald's app, now mcdonald's knows a ton of shit about me and I will be served ads based on it." I do not want Mcdonald's to know anything about me. That is the agency I am losing, because I cannot do much about it. You may think that's harmless, but there's been articles written about how McDonald's in particular has so much ability to surveil they basically can see like a state. Or stories like this: https://www.wired.com/story/mcdonalds-built-a-515-page-dossi...

There is no opting out without entirely opting out of every day life. Whatever viewpoint you're coming from always seems completely oblivious to this.

dublin 2 days ago||

I did a search (not on Google) for an unusual sensor the other day. I found a candidate and went to their web site and looked at some data sheets. All of a sudden, I see ads for this company on every page with Google ads (and ther are a LOT of those!)

I feel sorry for the company - obviously, Google hasn't been able to place those ads because its such a niche product and need. So once they "got a live one", they started serving me this company's ads *everywhere* (and I research and browse a *lot*).

I'm pretty sure I was perhaps the only target of their entire ad budget for the month - I was literally served ads for this tiny company *thousands* of times.

Note that only Google gained here - the ads didn't make me any more likely to buy a product I already knew about (and won't need for months in any case), and they did nothing to actually help the company reach more potential buyers. But the ad inventory was placed, and no doubt, each superfluous impression dutifully billed for...

skyberrys 2 days ago||

Let's just follow this wishful line of thinking down the success train. So say we have all your data and are perfectly executing on it. What would that world look like? It probably won't have any ads at all. However, when he walks from his house to catch his flight an English speaking taxi will already be waiting, he will be dropped at just the right terminal and his baggage will vanish only to seamlessly re-appear at his hotel in Germany, while he enjoys a flight to Germany with just the right snacks and beverages of his liking on a plane ride, while listening to vocal free techno music.

Sounds impossible to figure out.

eithed 3 days ago||

What surprises me is that this is state of affairs for Google, a company with unlimited budget - to show you ads for things you expressed just a slightest interest in or have already purchased. And it's a state for a loooooong time.

Like - I just purchased some plants from Dibleys, a plant nursery in UK. I've gotten confirmation email to my gmail account. Now I'm served plant ads for that very same company. I'd expect that The Algorithm would be smart to decide "hey, here is a guy that is interested in plants, let's take a look at other people in his age group and occupation, what are they also interested in, and let's serve him ads for that. Or having failed that ads for other plant nurseries in UK". But no! It's astounding, that it's so utterly mindlessly stupid.

But you know what, actually I prefer that there's no computational effort here. Maybe this means that me being served a shitty ad for a company I like and already know will not attribute to global warming. Maybe this means that Dibleys isn't being charged for a clickthrough, but for impressions that cost a lot less. Maybe this cyclical stupidity is something that we're stuck with as a human race, because why the fuck should an ad serve some kind of purpose.

kaashif 2 days ago||

> When listening to personalized playlists on Spotify and YouTube Music I skip every single electronic track with vocals. I listen to a lot of techno and related genres, and the moment someone starts singing I skip the track. I've been doing it for years. None of these advanced algorithms have ever noticed this simple pattern.

Actually they have and they use it to charge advertisers who want to target you.

Hope this helps and reassures you! Now get back to the trough, piggy! And don't complain about the taste again!

You are the product!

rerdavies 2 days ago||

Above all, avoid googling for really expensive things.

That time where all the ads I got for months were ads for ridiculously expensive servers, after I had (out of curiosity) googled for "what is the most expensive server you can buy on ebay?"

Or the time when all I got was ads for military-grade cables and connectors for months, after having googled (out of curiosity) for something or another about submarines -- most likely something about the dud submarines that the UK had sold to the Canadian government.

mbgerring 2 days ago||

I would gladly fill out a purchasing intent form and consent to having ads shown to me by companies I have never heard of selling the thing I am looking to buy. I would much rather do this than have pervasive, passive data collection, and then have advertisers use that data to guess what I want.

zx8080 2 days ago||

What a naive take. The data collected by them is not there to serve you better with music or news!

You are not their client. And never been. And will never be.

Banks, credit unions, advertisers, insurance companies and the local and federal police. That's some of their clients.

ragall 2 days ago|

If there's anyone working for YouTube here, instead of the "I'm not interested" button I'd like a free text input where I can describe what exactly I don't like about a video.

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