
An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth - waffle_ss
https://twitter.com/gbrockell/status/1072589687489998848
======
srvo
This seems to happen a lot when one's experience is statistically unlikely, or
when it doesn't neatly mesh with a commercial opportunity.

For instance, I am a transgender woman and I get THE WEIRDEST ads. Makes
sense, since an algorithm meshing together my engagement histories from ten
years of social platforms must see something quite strange.

The only appropriately targeted advertisements I get are from academics
interested in studying me. Like: "are you a trans woman? Take this study and
win a gift card."

When platforms attempt to monetize me, they wind up pushing the brooks
brothers dress shirt deals and so on that I used to gobble up in my prior
life.

I've taken my business local as a result, but the algorithmic rejection of my
reality on these platforms takes a pretty consistent toll. I don't know what
the solution is, but wanted to underscore that this is a broader problem.

~~~
cronix
I am coming to the conclusion that the only way to beat the system is to not
play in the system. Or play as little as possible. I no longer go on FB,
Instagram or Amazon. I do my best to just be anonymous. I don't "need" to hang
out on social media. I lived quite happily before these services even existed,
and will continue without them. We have control. We can resist their shiny
toys. If we are waiting for THEM (or politicians) to fix these problems, we
will die of old age waiting. It's antithetical to their business and self-
interests. The only way to make them less powerful is to not give them your
data. That is the source of their power. Information.

    
    
      Greetings Professor Falken
    
      Hello
    
      A strange game.
      The only winning move
      is not to play.
      (1983 - Wargames)

~~~
paulie_a
While I don't engage much on social media, I've found it better to randomly
click an ad. I'm ruining their profile one click at a time.

The ads I see across platforms and websites are so hilariously dumb and
irrelevant now. You are going to be tracked, might as well ruin the analytics.

~~~
cronix
That might be a fun thing to do. Make google and the others pay out the nose
by actually clicking as many ads as you can instead of avoiding them. Just
have everybody be their own click farm. We could have an international "click
to support business day" (hah) where for 24 hours everybody around the globe
just clicks ads. That's what they want us to do, isn't it? Maybe we should
give it to them.

~~~
Notorious_BLT
If you like screwing with advertisers, I recommend the browser extension
AdNauseam

[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

Basically, it hides and silently clicks on every ad in the background. It even
has an archive where it shows you the ads it has hidden and clicked, so you
can check in to see what advertisers think you are interested in, and it tries
to eyeball the cost of those clicks to advertisers. Lots of fun to load the
worst ad-ridden offenders' websites and get a smug sense of satisfaction that
you wasted advertisers' money

~~~
lenzm
You probably aren't. That's highly suspicious behavior that isn't hard for the
ad networks like Google to detect and they'll just refund any costs as
fraudulent activity.

~~~
cronix
I wasn't meaning to use a plugin, or necessarily specifically target Google.
Everybody manually click on ALL ads they see on ALL platforms. Make it so "the
ad and tracking system" model just doesn't work and becomes to expensive for
them to justify. They claim all of this capturing our data is to "provide
better, more relevant, personalized targeted ads." They charge companies for
those ads. We can basically make them ineffective by overwhelming them. All of
them. I see nothing wrong, legally or morally, with everybody clicking on all
of the links that they are putting before us. That's what they are there for,
so let's utilize them en masse. If everybody did that on ALL platforms, what
would happen? Where would they go? They would quit spending as much on these
platforms, which is basically the entire revenue model of the platforms. The
platforms would be forced to shift their behavior once it becomes literally
ineffective for them to do business the way they have been and profits start
to shrink, wouldn't they?

Another thing we can do: when you do a search, perform another search for the
opposite. Or perform 2 irrelevant, random searches on things you literally
don't care about or have nothing to do with your life. If we give them more
crap than actual data, their algorithms would probably become ineffective.

~~~
tripzilch
Maybe not really click on _all_ the ads though. Some of them can be shady as
hell, or they open a new site with even more ads, and you'll never be done!
Clicking on ads opened by other ads, I find that the "deeper" you, the worse
it gets. By which I mean my personal feeling of: How likely whatever's being
offered is a scam, but also how they are messing with my browser, pop-unders
and other weird behaviour.

And most of the time I have uBlock enabled. I'm not entirely sure if messing
with the tracking system actually weighs up against having to browse without
uBlock.

------
NorthOf33rd
Instagram is not a person. Don't ask it to be decent.

Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they care.

You're not sharing your information with a human. You're sharing it with a
business who is tuned to maximize profit. The ROI on dealing with still births
for advertising is probably negative.

They don't care about you. You've made the decision to let a business deep
into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are
the consequences.

~~~
ordu
_> Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they
care._

Why? Why they don't care? Is it technically impossible or what? You know, they
can try to care and try to become a friend, maybe ads would work better in
that case? How do you think?

What you are doing in your comment is just stating facts that are known for
everyone already. For what reason you are doing it? What are you trying to
achieve? Are you showing us how cynical you are, that you've grown enough to
get lost your naivety completely? It is the case, or there are some other
reasons behind your message?

I can say what Gillian is trying to achieve and I believe she is succeding:
she will make system more human centered, more friendly to humans. I can
understand her, but I cannot understand you.

~~~
NorthOf33rd
She will not succeed in making the system more human centered or friendly. She
will succeed in changing the ROI of dealing with advertising to mothers of
stillborn children, as another poster stated, by creating negative PR. Those
are not equivalent.

You are exactly the person I'm trying to influence by reminding you that these
systems care about revenue, not you or your well being.

These facts may be well known, but you are certainly not considering them when
choosing your language. You are letting an amoral entity into your very
personal life for dubious reasons and expecting it do be "friendly to humans,"
when they are designed to be friendly to shareholders wallets. It will be
exactly as "friendly" as it needs to be, no more. And, if shareholders decide
the cost of being friendly is greater than the benefit, then the "friendly"
feature will be turned off.

~~~
trophycase
These systems are sociopathic. Full stop. It is in their nature.

~~~
sgroppino
It'd be depressing if they tried to sell you a funeral service after you let
them know of your misfortune... Just avoiding this would be a big win.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
They did end up showing her an ad for adoption

------
dannykwells
I think it's things like this that will ultimately bring the downfall of the
tech giants - the fact that even with "machine learning", the quality if the
experience is still so low. They built an addictive product in the beginning,
but now all of them are starting to make us feel nauseous, which is one of the
fastest ways to break an addiction.

It's true here for social media (in spades), but it's true with Amazon
(sorting through all the junky products, never knowing if something is
genuine), Netflix (all the junky content, barely curated), and many of the
others as well.

I think ultimately we will (re) learn that constant naive appeals to the
lowest common denominator, while a fast way to make a buck, might not be the
best long-term strategy.

~~~
colmvp
I remain skeptical that it'll make a dent, honestly.

People will still use Twitter, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Amazon, etc. because
they provide enough convenience and positive experiences that outweigh the
perceived negatives.

I mean people know about the negatives of companies that use sweat shops,
child labour, or who employ people in horrific working conditions, and yet
these corporations are still very much the giants in their field.

You have companies who source ingredients from companies that don't have great
living conditions for livestock, and they're still in business.

The tech giants will remain tech giants because as much as people will
complain about it, they won't abstain. They won't stop using their phones,
their websites, their apps, their search engines, their e-mail... because it's
all too hard to give up.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _The tech giants will remain tech giants because as much as people will
> complain about it, they won 't abstain. They won't stop using their phones,
> their websites, their apps, their search engines, their e-mail... because
> it's all too hard to give up._

That's one reason why they like network effects so much. It's one of the ways
to turn an "addiction" into actual necessity, by creating a coordination
problem. You can easily ditch Instagram or Facebook up to the point when it
would suddenly seriously handicap your social life. You could still do it if
all your friends agreed to switch to something else at the same time, but
those friends have friends too, and good luck coordinating all that.

There are other ways to turn a choice into a necessity. In the western world,
if you don't want or can't afford an iPhone, you generally can't ditch your
Android phone, because there's nothing else available. And you can't just stop
using smartphones either, as that makes functioning in the modern society much
more difficult.

------
nyxxie
I felt immense pity for the mother in this scenario, and after reading the
article I agreed that FB aught to have some sort of way to indicate that such
advertisements are offensive and should not be shown to the user. Ideally, I'd
like to see a paid tier that gets rid of advertising altogether.

Then I read some of the comments here and on other sites. To put it bluntly, I
don't understand the tone of entitlement people have when they _demand_
FB/Twitter/etc fix their individual problems. I mean, I obviously understand
it - such services are very popular and play a big part of peoples' social
circles and lives. What I don't understand is why they think they have a right
to demand that a platform they aren't even paying for should cater to them.

If everyone who disagreed with Facebook's revenue model were to leave
Facebook, another platform would inevitably pop up that would cater to that
new market niche. This seems to be the most fair solution to all parties, but
instead it seems like people demand that someone compel FB to change based on
their wants. I disagree with this not onlt because it's immoral and unfair,
but also because it just means that those future FB competitors will have all
sorts of obscure and unique regulatory hoops to jump through.

Am I the only one who thinks this way?

~~~
VikingCoder
I don't think the OP is asking for regulation.

I think the OP is begging for consideration.

As a user, we have every right to state our opinions.

It's not "immoral" or "unfair" to say, "You're making money off of me, I'd
really like you to change your behavior."

I don't know why or how you jumped all the way to "regulatory hoops."

Have you seen people advocating laws in this discussion? I haven't.

~~~
foobar1962
Consideration from whom?

Some advertisers have bought the right to display their ads to people the
platform has probably identified as “women having babies soon”.

Does the OP want consideration from the platform or the advertisers?

I feel the OP is venting the feeling that they’ve had a huge personal tragedy
yet the world has just kept on going like nothing happened.

~~~
VikingCoder
If an advertiser saw this and were horrified, I'm sure they'd be asking the
platform to try to do something about it.

If the platform saw this and were horrified, I bet advertisers would
appreciate or at least not mind, if they fixed situations like this.

If you and I saw this and were horrified, we might amplify her voice.

~~~
foobar1962
What if the ads for baby products were on advertising outside (or inside) the
hospital. Should there be NO advertising for baby products because 1% of
pregnancies end in stillbirth?

~~~
VikingCoder
I'm pretty sure OP is saying, "Hey, tech companies, if you're going to mine my
data to figure out I'm pregnant, maybe you should give me some way to tell you
that the pregnancy ended in sorrow, and I don't want to see any ads about baby
needs."

It's not calling for a ban on baby product ads.

It's saying that force-feeding ads on baby products to someone who has lost
their child is awful, and it doesn't seem like a big stretch to let a user
say, "I don't have a baby!" in a way that tech companies / advertisers can
use, to be more sensitive.

------
johnny_and1
I feel like this is similar with Facebook "making it rain" whenever you send
money through their messenger. It does not matter why you send the money, they
always celebrate. Very distasteful and not taking into consideration the real
reason. They presented this feature at MobileHCI'17 as part of their "Delight"
mantra. They don't care about 100% accuracy, as long as it works for the
majority, they will not cater to the minority.

------
40acres
I've been really interested in a 'digital agent' model for a while now. Some
profile, and/or grand set of settings that apply to all my interactions
online. I interface with way too many platforms online to keep track of, this
can lead to unwanted and annoying targeting similar to (but obviously on a
much lesser scale) to this mother.

I recently bought a shaving kit for my future brother-in-law for Christmas, I
looked up some reviews on Google and Youtube and now every Youtube video and
ad is regarding this particular shaving product. This product is now following
me on the web, if I were able to simply tell my 'digital agent' "hey, I'm not
interested in shaving products anymore" and have my agent then broadcast this
message to Youtube, Instagram, etc. I think that'd be helpful.

~~~
mc32
You know things are broken when _after_ you buy things you begin to get ads
for the very thing you just bought. Now, you could forgive one ad network not
knowing, but when you get served up ads by the people who know (have a record
of the transaction) you bought something, you know something’s not working the
way it should, optimally.

~~~
wesd
There was a thread about this about a month ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748)

"This one is funny, and has a couple of obvious solutions that have been
prevented due to internal politics. The short answer is that they have a
couple of different recommender systems, all competing against each other
internally for sales lift. One is purely based off of pageviews. When you get
recommendations for something you already bought, many times it is because you
looked at it, but they don't know nor care if you already bought it. In their
words, it works really well and accounting for sales brings in a lot of
needless complexity.

Another is based off of sales. They also don't care if you already bought it
because according to them, it works well. I remember trying to point out to
them that for some types of products (specifically consumable products) this
would work really well, but durables not so much. They claimed otherwise, that
although they couldn't explain it, it was entirely common for people to rebuy
things like vacuum cleaners and TVs and kitchen knives. I did a tiny bit of
research to show them why they thought that, and proved with a small segment
(vacuum cleaners, I believe), that after you filter for returns and
replacements, that the probability of sequentially buying two of the same
vacuum cleaner was effectively zero. They asked me to do it for the rest of
their products, but I didn't have limitless time to spend on helping another
team, especially one with a PM who was a complete dick to me for having the
audacity to make a suggestion that he hadn't thought of.

In all, I believe there are a dozen or so recommender services, each with
their own widget. There are tons of people that think all of the recommenders
have merits in some areas and drawbacks in others, and the customer would be
better off if they merged concepts into a single recommender system. But they
all compete for sales lift, they all think their system is better than the
other systems, and they refuse to merge concepts or incorporate outside ideas
because they all believe they are fundamentally superior to the other
recommenders. Just a small anecdotal glimpse at the hilariously
counterproductive internal politics at Amazon."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>after you filter for returns and replacements, that the probability of
sequentially buying two of the same vacuum cleaner was effectively zero.

But aren't the returns segment significant? "I bought this vacuum cleaner,
returned it because it didn't suck (!); oh and look, this advert said this one
has the best suction."?

Also, it seems common amongst some sectors to rebuy: like parents might buy a
coat, find it's good, rebuy for the other children. Landlords might update
their properties, rebuying items that work well and are robust enough, etc..

?

~~~
mc32
As a different poster than Parent posted, people are not goldfish. In all
those repeat purchase scenarios the buyers know what they bought and can buy
again if they so choose (in the near future). If it's six months down the
road, I can see maybe this would be useful.

------
Perseids
I'm someone saddened that the discussion here focuses only on what the
advertiser (/ tech companies) should have done and leaves out the aspect of
how we have failed to bring the obvious solution to the harmed individual:
Install an adblocker at the first sign of trouble. How come she was so morally
obliged to watch any ads in the first place instead of engaging in basic self
defense?

Or if the answer is technological: How come we accept the tyranny of
advertisers on our most personal devices? Pi-Hole is a nice gimmick for those
who can use it. If we can't bring the choice not to watch advertisements to
the masses, we have essentially failed.

~~~
wilg
You can't put an ad blocker in native phone apps, like Instagram. Sure, you
can do it on the mobile website, but then you have to switch to the mobile
website.

~~~
vortico
Apps that change the /etc/hosts file work great. Nearly all social media apps
pull ads from separate domains, which can be easily curated into a list.
Requires rooting your phone.

------
hangonhn
That reminded me of this speech by Jeff Bezos to Princeton:

[https://www.princeton.edu/news/2010/05/30/2010-baccalaureate...](https://www.princeton.edu/news/2010/05/30/2010-baccalaureate-
remarks)

“Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

It really had an impact on me.

~~~
asadlionpk
Video link of the same:
[https://youtu.be/vBmavNoChZc?t=367](https://youtu.be/vBmavNoChZc?t=367)

------
dkrich
I feel like I’m alone in asking this but does personal responsibility play no
part in this?

She starts by admitting that she voluntarily signaled to these platforms that
she was pregnant. They are ad platforms. She then goes on to admit that she
continued to go back on the platforms after and then blames them for showing
ads she herself engaged with at one point!

I don’t think anyone would ever wish someone grieving to be reminded of the
source of the grief or say “too bad.” But I think a reasonable person could
conclude this is a little unreasonable.

~~~
japhyr
I didn't read that as she "voluntarily signaled to these platforms that she
was pregnant". She made social media posts with many clear signals that she
was pregnant.

She basically said, "I know your algorithms can detect that I was pregnant.
Can't your algorithms detect that my baby is no longer alive?" That seems like
a pretty fair statement.

~~~
dkrich
So now society is frustrated because it’s data isn’t being analyzed and used
to serve ads effectively enough? We’ve officially come full circle.

How about this- if you are uncomfortable with the prospect of ads potentially
shown to you that may upset you based on recent history that’s now changed,
lay off the platform for a while.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
This is precisely the hazardous morality we begin to enter when we become as
passively engaged as social media allows. The platform becomes an antidote to
sadness; social media has reached a place in society where it's casually being
used as a means for self-medication.

People who are on social media appear to be deluding themselves into believing
that social media can offer some sort of support and minimize the pain, but
this is probably the biggest misconception about which we can convince the
public otherwise.

------
res0nat0r
I saw this post the other day, but this just seems like it is going to involve
even more outrage at FB when the algorithm presents something incorrectly.
Getting ads for "You just lost a child, would you like to call a helpline?"
are going to outrage just as many people, which is why I expect they just stay
away from that type of subject matter all together.

~~~
protomyth
Its an Ad platform not a member of this person's inner circle. Just shut the
damn ads off for anything having to do with babies. At the end of the day, you
are creating a mechanism to connect a person with a company so they can buy
products. If something would be inappropriate for a salesperson to say to a
person, then make damn sure your Ad network doesn't say that. It would be
wholly inappropriate for a salesperson to suggest a hotline. Just stop. The Ad
network is business, this just got deeply personal.

~~~
res0nat0r
I think this is the overarching issue with the original post, as they're
looking for Facebooks ad network to comfort them or give them some kind of
advice, and that is totally not what it is designed to do.

~~~
protomyth
No, I don't think the story is looking for comfort from Facebook ads. I am
pretty sure she is looking for Facebook not to add to the pain and just get
out of any conversation she is having with those that support her. That's the
point of the letter.

Frankly, if you are an advertiser and know your ads are being served to
someone who, through tragedy, cannot use your product and instead are now part
of a thousand cuts treatment, you should be pretty offended yourself.

~~~
res0nat0r
> Frankly, if you are an advertiser and know your ads are being served to
> someone who, through tragedy, cannot use your product and instead are now
> part of a thousand cuts treatment, you should be pretty offended yourself.

How, exactly, are they supposed to know that? The bigger issue here is
everyone expecting Facebook to somehow be omnipotent. They're not. They are a
sharing platform that makes money by selling targeted ads. They're not all
knowing.

~~~
davefp
> How, exactly, are they supposed to know that?

Because situations have more than one possible outcome. Lumping everyone into
a single cohort based on a majority rule (e.g. people who buy pregnancy-
related products often buy baby-related products later) is a kind of
insensitivity that would be frowned on if applied in person.

> The bigger issue here is everyone expecting Facebook to somehow be
> omnipotent.

I'd argue that Facebook (or its advertising algorithm in this case) is
operating _as if it is_ omniscient when really there are lots of shortcomings
that can and do cause harm. It should be reigned in instead of forgiven.

------
joe_hills
On an emotional level, this deeply troubles me—but to address the problem
analytically:

It strikes me that an ad algorithm that forces grieving people to opt out of
social media at a time when their friends and family are most interested in
checking in on their well-being may encourage a broader pattern of falling
back on non-ad-supported communication channels in the weeks or months to
come.

It seems like there's a strong case to be made here that some ad-supported
communication channels should consider either an ad-free grief mode when users
are in distress, or at least sell a giftable ability to use the site without
ads, in which case friends of the grieving could chip in to avoid this kind of
distress.

~~~
skystrife
Interesting idea, but I'm bothered by the idea that social media platforms
would be effectively monetizing grief in this solution.

This sort of thing, to me, points at the deficiencies of appealing to purely
statistical patterns without any guard rails placed on top. After all,
statistically, the most likely relevant categories after "pre-natal" are going
to be surrounding children who _were_ born safely. So if you appeal just to
data alone, you won't likely solve this problem because it is relatively rare.

The biggest failure, to me, is the response of the system when the user goes
out of her way to say that the "pre-natal" ads are not relevant. Statistically
it assumes successful birth, but that doesn't reflect her actual intent. A
simple dialog tree would maybe suffice: "not relevant" -> "this specific thing
is irrelevant" vs "suppress this and all related content". One signal says
maybe don't show that particular brand again, and the other says to pivot the
relevance model significantly away from that topical section of the ad space
entirely.

~~~
throwanem
They already monetize joy. Is monetizing grief worse? Why? What about
monetizing neither? What's the signal to pivot the relevance model
significantly away from a world full of robots constantly self-optimizing to
exploit emotions they cannot understand or share?

(Or if we can't manage that, maybe at least we could somewhat curtail the
misbehavior of the ML systems they foist on the rest of us.)

~~~
gbear605
If they monetize grief, they’re incentivized to maximize it

------
crazygringo
I don't mind the ads... I just wish we could manually update our inferred
advertising profiles ourselves!

Like, "I already bought that product on Amazon so you don't need to advertise
it to me anymore." Like, "I already shop at store X so you don't need to keep
showing it." Or the obvious case in this article.

Sure, draw your inferences... but please let us correct them! If I'm gonna see
ads, I _want_ them to be relevant.

~~~
justapassenger
[https://www.facebook.com/help/247395082112892?helpref=relate...](https://www.facebook.com/help/247395082112892?helpref=related)

[https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662856](https://support.google.com/ads/answer/2662856)

~~~
crazygringo
Fascinating! Thanks, I'd never heard of this.

------
strict9
Experienced this with a miscarriage in our family, it's the worst. Months and
months later this stuff still follows me around the web like a taunting ghost.

The worst part of targeted advertising is when it becomes targeted haunting.

~~~
Klathmon
I know it's not ideal, but if you go to the below URLs for Google and Facebook
respectively, you can choose which categories you get ads about, and can even
specifically "turn off" some categories of ads for you (it looks like facebook
even allows disabling some categories for a specific period of time!)

Again, it's obviously not perfect, but at the very least it can help the
situation.

[https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated](https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated)

[https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/](https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/)

~~~
strict9
thanks for this. People responding here with "just use an ad blocker" ... I
have uBlock Origin and it's great but it only goes so far.

------
remilouf
My wife and I went through something similar a little less than a year ago
(baby die at 6 months from a heart failure). Every now and then I still get
the occasional diaper ad popping up.

What disturbs me the most are colleagues who said it was my fault since I
hadn’t shared my grief on social media, and algorithms could not learn (I work
in data « science »). As if targeted advertising was a law of Nature and there
was nothing we could do about it. Just deal with it. And blame yourself for
not showcasing your pain in front of hundreds of people.

The issue with algorithms is not that these events are statistically unlikely
(unfortunately). They just have memory, enough memory to be accurate. So the
day happy messages are replaced with the word « death », it hasn’t had the
time to learn baby was not there anymore. There may be ways to improve that,
but I bet you’d be trading accuracy for the remaining 95% people. Guess what
version wins at a business meeting?

I’m not blaming colleagues who write these algorithms. They didn’t know this
could happen, they didn’t think about it before this happened to me. We’re all
math and CS geeks priding ourselves in [insert your metric here] score above
the 90% mark, and that’s all we optimize for. I’ve heard a joke once that the
difference between science majors and humanities major was that scientists
build the atomic bomb, humanities major explain to them why it’s not a good
idea to use it. Targeted advertising is not as bad as the atomic bomb, of
course, but you get the idea.

------
Rudism
An error in the inverse direction, if these sites were to add dead-child-
detecting algorithms, would be far worse in my opinion. Imagine you're a
mother who stops posting for a while because you're staying in the hospital
with your newborn who is unwell but still alive. You decide to post a long-
overdue update to friends and family on Instagram or whatever and are suddenly
served ads for child coffins and funeral services. Definitely the worse of two
evils in this case.

------
creaghpatr
Suprised pregnancy doesn’t fall within the ‘no targeting based on health
conditions’ policy of most ad platforms.

~~~
froindt
Target got in hot water in 2012 when a guy found out his 17 year old daughter
was pregnant because of a customized ad sent to their home.

In the articles at the time, they mentioned your whole life gets turned upside
down when you have a kid. It's an event that changes your routines, and all
retailers would love to become the new convenient store you routinely go to.
Huge value for them.

www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-
girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

~~~
kevin_b_er
It has only gotten worse since. While you say Target got in "hot water", the
advertisers have only expanded since. "adtech" continues to try to find new
ways to invade and analyze your private life without morals or compassion for
the purpose of greed.

------
woolvalley
What she is asking will probably be even more creepy.

Currently these platforms are basically associating words to your user, which
advertisers then select from a pull down.

Past some specialized categories created out of advertiser demand - such as
political leaning, location, age and gender - there isn't much reasoning
behind it.

First her user id got the pregnancy keywords associated, now she also has sad
/ still born words associated. The system isn't smart enough to reason that
the two tags should be mutually exclusive in a culturally sensitive way, just
like it doesn't with millions of other pairs around the world within 100s of
other cultures & languages around the world.

But if it was, then how much worse could it get in other ways?

~~~
danso
The author describes manually removing herself from being targeted, e.g.
clicking "I don't want to see this ad" and "It's not relevant to me". Are we
supposed to be content with platforms that are unable to incorporate such
manual feedback? I mean, we (the average user on HN) get pretty irate when
software ignores or reverts config options we've previously set. I don't see
how this is much different.

------
GuiA
Banksy on advertising, in 2004:

 _People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life,
take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall
buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that
imply you 're not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere
else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access
to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully
you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You,
however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights
and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like
with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no
choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take, re-arrange and
re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like
asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies
nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don't owe them any courtesy. They
owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you.
They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs._

The problem is that you can't graffiti or tear down a digital ad. Activism is
nigh impossible in digital walled gardens.

~~~
jrockway
I don't really see the difference between Banksy having himself plastered all
over the media for shredding his artwork versus Colgate telling me to buy
their toothpaste. Banksy understands and uses advertising better than anyone.

~~~
GuiA
Well, that was 14 years ago. It's hard to remain on your outraged and
righteous path when you start getting fat checks for it (see also Black Mirror
s1e2, "Fifteen Million Merits").

~~~
PavlovsCat
The ending of the Black Mirror episode doesn't take away from the "speech"
that comes before that, though:

> _You pull a face, and poke it towards the stage, and we lah-di-dah, we sing
> and dance and tumble around. And all you see up here, it 's not people, you
> don't see people up here, it's all fodder. And the faker the fodder, the
> more you love it, because fake fodder's the only thing that works any more.
> It's all that we can stomach. [..] Fuck you all for thinking the one thing I
> came close to never meant anything. For oozing around it and crushing it
> into a bone, into a joke. One more ugly joke in a kingdom of millions._

In my mind, the last person to blame is the one who at least made an attempt
to be more, who made no "mistake" other than being one human -- facing
millions who just _watch_ \-- and being oozed around and crushed eventually.
Selling out will never suck as much as people, who never even _had_ what
another person sold out, being smug about someone selling out. It's like they
think it vindicates them for not even having tried.

(not that I read your comment as what I'm complaining about, it's a general
observation. Freebird!)

------
SergeAx
I've never been in such a terrible situation, and I hope I never will, but.
Modern online ads are so annoying I can't help but making serious effort to
eliminate it from my online life. Adblockers, filtering proxies and so on. I
believe that's the only way to deal with this monstrosity in a short
perspective.

------
jakobegger
Does anybody ever see relevant ads?

I guess retargeting kinda works, if I look for info about mortages I see lots
of ads from banks, but for anything else?

We're all human, we're amazingly complex, everyone of us is unique, and nobody
likes to be put in a drawer.

But then you have the smartest programmers in the world, working for the
richest companies in the world, and all they come up with is "if someone
googles for baby show them ads for nappies"?

It's remarkable how stupid these "smart" algorithms are, and I think the
problem is a based on a simple fallacy: Everyone thinks of themselves as
sophisticated, but believes others are simpletons.

I'm not sure where to go from here.

~~~
soundwave106
Based on a comment wesd linked to above
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748)),
and applying that comment to all the large corporations behind ad-tech
(because IMHO large corporate political problems are fairly similar no matter
where you go)...

It seems like for these systems, there are often multiple teams developing the
algorithms, with multiple algorithms in play behind the recommendation. Each
algorithm has their own style of metrics system. Some of them are probably
relatively simple with not very sophisticated AI/ML (or even no AI/ML at all)
behind it. And, there is a lot of internal political conflict preventing
better analysis of said algorithms to refine them.

In other words, you're absolutely right.

------
sixstringtheory
Sounds a lot like “A friend of mine died and I didn’t know because of
algorithms”
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956811)

------
camillomiller
Two years ago my relationship of 11 years came to an end. While I was going
through a very painful breakup, Facebook would constantly inundate me with
“memories” full of fake algorithmically tuned enthusiasm. My ex was constantly
part of that. Understandably, so. I just wonder what it would be for someone
that has actually lost a child or a dear one. Yes, I know I can deactivate the
relationship status and choose not to see that person anymore, but that won’t
work with memories that don’t have that person tagged in, but will still
depict something that you’ve still done together in the past, like the picture
from a trip, a piece of furniture you built together, or a pic of her amazing
cat (who also tragically died years ago).

------
smsm42
I am surprised how many comments here complain about things that would not be
a problem if one used adblocker. I mean, I have no problem with people wanting
to see ads, but I don't really understand - why? I can count on my fingers how
many times I saw an ad that was genuinely useful for me - and I probably could
keep typing while I'm counting. But if I use a device without an adblocker,
they start to annoy me in minutes, and sometimes just make browsing completely
useless. Of course, it's hard to get rid of 100% of ads, but it's not
complicated to get rid of about 90%.

------
d--b
Tough story...

What’s interesting in the post is that the author is not mad at ads in the
first place, she’s angry at the failure of the algorithm to adapt to her
situation.

So this is something that companies could fix. Like when they infer something
about your state, they could ask you about it, and have a setting “on and off”
ads.

Like: “hi, our algo tells us you may be pregnant, are interested in seeing ads
for these kinds of stuff or not”? And that could be a setting you could
remove.

Maybe it’ll spook some users off...

In any case there should be a button “stop trying to infer shit about me”.

Perhaps it’d be a good way to introduce pay $5 a month for total privacy
Facebook.

------
benj111
It always amazes me how stupid these company's algos are sometimes.

Amazon tells me I've had an account with them for over a decade. It knows I've
bought 2 kettles from them. When does it start serving ads for kettles? Just
after I've bought one.

On the other hand I'm not sure most people would want facebook wt al 'knowing'
they've just lost their child, so other than getting rid of targetted ads, I'm
not sure what other solution is best.

~~~
ryanlol
>It always amazes me how stupid these company's algos are sometimes.

If they're so stupid, why are they making so much money? Is an algo with a
positive RoI really stupid?

~~~
benj111
They are making money despite their algos.

Amazon just suggests things I've looked at regardless of whether I've bought
it. I hopefully won't be buying a new kettle for a few years, so its just
wasted. Why don't they try upselling me related things instead of spamming me?

Their algo has been suggesting things for over 10 years, based on over 10
years of buying data. I've clicked on zero of their ads or emails.

------
syrrim
"Ads were my best friends - until they weren't"

I used to love ads. Every time I saw a new ad show up, I'd get a little bit
excited, knowing that it would be my friend for the next few month or years.
When I saw an old familiar ad, I made sure to greet it, so that it doesn't get
lonely. I took it as part of my social responsibility - the same as picking up
after my dog - to buy products when I'd seen enough ads for them.

That's not to say all ads were good - sometimes, I would see an ad for
something that I didn't like. But this was always a cause for reflection - had
I forgotten to tell the machine about some private detail of my life, the
knowledge of which it could have targeted me better? On those occasions, I
would make a promise to feed it more data, to make sure it was more able to
help me. Then, I would dutifully mark the ad "I don't want to see this ad", to
inform it of it's mistake. The machine would always learn quickly, and go back
to showing me happy, friendly ads. I would be extra careful to buy those
products, to make sure the mahcine knew it was doing a good job.

But. There came a time when the machine started making mistakes, and wouldn't
stop. I had realized that only two people - me and my husband - simply
couldn't buy that many things, and we needed more mouths as tributes to the
machine. I had entered a new stage in my life, and was already buying more
products than I ever had before. And the machine was cooperative, helpful,
bringing me new friends every day. And that would have continued being the
case, as my child grew the machine would have helped it select its' college.
But it never grew up. Because it was never born. Because it was stillborn. And
the machine didn't learn. And when I told it I wanted ads for antidepressants
and cabbage, it didn't listen. It kept on showing me ads for products for a
baby that I would never have. And I could follow, as the years passed, each
stage of my unborn babies life, as the machine desperately tried to target ads
at it.

What once were my friends have become my worst nightmare. What once was my
partner in better supporting my consumerism, became my tormentor. What once
was a happy member of society became a broken shell. It could happen to you
too.

Also:

>there are 26000 stillbirths in the US every year

>when we millions of broken-hearted

thought that would slip by me if you broke it over two pictures, did you?

------
jerrac
This might have already been said, but whatever happened to ads based on the
content of the page you are on? If I'm reading an article about manufactured
homes, an ad linking to a manufactured home seller could be actually useful.

Granted, I haven't turned of my ad blocker in a very long time, so maybe they
still exist?

------
leavjenn
And now she starts getting adoption ads:
[https://twitter.com/gbrockell/status/1072992972701138945](https://twitter.com/gbrockell/status/1072992972701138945)
.

"We're sorry your baby passed away, how about get a new one from here?"

That's sick.

------
sigi45
I really really think it is unethical to generate a video from my stream to
show me my last year or whatsoever.

Why? Fuck you why.do you really think I wanna feel good thanks to a standard
algorithm which some software team wrote to engage me more?

No.

And yes it's fucking obvious to me how it works but it's not obvious to enough
other people.

------
vasco
Not as dramatic and much simpler to fix, yet still broken: Search for one-time
things (say a new phone) on amazon. Purchase said things. Continue getting ads
for new phones for weeks.

Surely they must realize that after you purchase a phone re-targetting will
only be effective at least a year+ later.

------
politician
I'm coming around to the idea that personalized ads should be classified along
with biological weapons. The latter attacks your biology while the former
attacks your mind.

Consider the story about Russia hacking the 2016 elections through the use of
a massive campaign of personalized ads on Facebook and Google to polarize
communities through misinformation sites tailored to their personal biases.

Whether you believe the Russia story or not, this set of actions would as
surely constitute an attack on a civilian population as a deployment of a
bioweapon tailored to cause mental confusion and delirium.

Yet due to a blind spot and the daily delivery of these weapons on behalf of
the major personalized ad aggregators, we do not recognize the severity of
what's going on. Long-term elevated levels of stress hormones do real physical
damage.

Can you imagine if the survivors of Nagasaki were to react to the nuclear
destruction of their city with the same careless indifference that we have
towards the continuous attempts to reprogram our very minds?

------
gwbas1c
I never shared anything about our pregnancies on Facebook until the babies
came.

Anyway, it's stories like this that make me want to share even less personal
information. It also shows that we've gotten far too carried away with
marketing.

------
alexchamberlain
This is why we need Ethics Boards in software engineering.

------
michaeleisel
Interesting story, not sure if it's very actionable.

------
nvr219
Another great reason to install ublock origin, privacy badger, and to put
facebook and the gang in different browser instance / container

------
IronWolve
Early days on Facebook kept trying to get me to add my ex as a friend, they
didnt understand "block" very well.

------
shpx
She could install an ad blocker.

------
bearcobra
I'm genuinely curious what the reaction would be with non-programatic ads that
presented similar content. Would it be just as painful if you were watching TV
and got an ad for Huggies, or is it because we know the ads are personalized?

------
viburnum
Let's just ban ad tech.

------
sabujp
adblock, ublock, zap every fucking ad

------
paulddraper
Twitter confuses me.

There is a character limit on text, so its users post images of text?

I know this is off-topic; it just seems an absolutely byzantine method of
communication.

Reminds me of sending a YouTube video with Word.
[https://xkcd.com/763/](https://xkcd.com/763/)

------
gammateam
This is the black mirror episode

------
nappy-doo
Protip: No, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram didn't see you Googling anything.

~~~
pmlnr
Riiiiight. Because none of these companies sell/buy data from eachother.

~~~
ryanlol
Google certainly does not sell your search queries to twifacegram, that'd just
be silly.

If you have _any_ evidence to the contrary, I would absolutely love to see it.

