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It is incredibly easy to see where your anecdote could go wrong. What if you had bought something much more personal or embarrassing? Condoms? Plan B? Dildos?

It is incredibly easy to see where your anecdote could go wrong. What if you had bought something much more personal or embarrassing? Condoms? Plan B? Dildos? Lube? Imagine having to explain to a family member sitting next to you why those items are showing up in your Amazon recommendations. I recall an example a few years ago about a store's marketing system telling a father that his teen daughter was pregnant before she ever told him. Because the store's system had correctly inferred from her previous purchases that she was pregnant and started giving recommendations for stuff like diapers. Suppose a homosexual in the closet was buying sexually explicit things or an atheist in a religiously strict home or country was buying blasphemous materials. Ironically, your anecdote presents much worse scenarios than the parent comment's anecdote.

bduerst 11y ago
Slipping down the slope of embarrassing adult toys shows a lack of understanding of how these networks work. Again, this isn't a problem with retargeting. What if I just bought sex toys directly on Amazon and they made product recommendations for it while I was browsing at work? Or what if Facebook and Google showed me adult ads while reading Forbes.com? That's on Amazon et al for displaying adult sex toy recommendations. Same as your nightmare scenario of where I'm a persecuted homosexual in Saudi Arabia, and Amazon makes homosexual product recommendations to me while the religious police man is looking over my shoulder.
- pyre 11y ago
  "That's on Amazon" but you're bearing the consequences. What consequences would there be in the nightmare scenario for Amazon? None. They get the power and not the responsibility.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    They have your problem now and already address it. It isn't unique to retargeting. They lose customers. Ad networks lose websites. Walled gardens lose users. That's why you don't see promoted dildos on Amazon, Forbes, and Facebook even now - and why your nightmare scenario is just a bad daydream about rubber cocks.

bduerst 11y ago

Slipping down the slope of embarrassing adult toys shows a lack of understanding of how these networks work. Again, this isn't a problem with retargeting. What if I just bought sex toys directly on Amazon and they made product recommendations for it while I was browsing at work? Or what if Facebook and Google showed me adult ads while reading Forbes.com? That's on Amazon et al for displaying adult sex toy recommendations. Same as your nightmare scenario of where I'm a persecuted homosexual in Saudi Arabia, and Amazon makes homosexual product recommendations to me while the religious police man is looking over my shoulder.

pyre 11y ago
"That's on Amazon" but you're bearing the consequences. What consequences would there be in the nightmare scenario for Amazon? None. They get the power and not the responsibility.
- bduerst 11y ago
  They have your problem now and already address it. It isn't unique to retargeting. They lose customers. Ad networks lose websites. Walled gardens lose users. That's why you don't see promoted dildos on Amazon, Forbes, and Facebook even now - and why your nightmare scenario is just a bad daydream about rubber cocks.