3 ms·

I've seen the ads my Kindle Paperwhite displays as a screensaver, and... no, I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing better a

by cwyers 10y ago

I've seen the ads my Kindle Paperwhite displays as a screensaver, and... no, I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing better ad targeting.

kbenson 10y ago
No kidding. And my fiance was under the impression for a while that it was the cover of what I was reading at the time... She was probably somewhat concerned.
joeld42 10y ago
That might be more the fault of the advertisers than Amazon. Amazon knows what books you will like with a high degree of certainty, but they don't always have ads available that are a close match, and some advertisers set their targeting very broadly because they don't care (they want a wide reach, e.g. for rank boosting) or don't know better.
- cwyers 10y ago
  You're probably not too far off (although nowhere else in Amazon's ecosystem have I seen very good recommendations, and most of their advertising elsewhere seems to be just showing me stuff I browsed on Amazon earlier and didn't buy), but if the ad inventory isn't there to really incentivize that sort of targeting, that's the same thing, isn't it?
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing better ad targeting." I get that better ad targeting may not seem like much of an issue at first thought, and may even seem like a benefit, but I'd suggest that the perceived benefits may start to unravel if you consider it from a different point of view. Companies that are involved in delivering targeted advertising are basing what ads to show you on the profile they're building up about you and what they perceive as similar people to you. The idea being to give you more of what they think you'll like. What this leads to is a filter bubble. When you're in a filter bubble (and I'd argue most of us are), the culture you're exposed to is increasingly limited by your past likes and dislikes, increasingly tailored based on market demographics, far less likely to broaden your range of experience. We shouldn't welcome the filter bubble, we should act to break out of it, and resisting the mechanisms behind targeted ads is one such way of doing so.

by cwyers 10y ago

I've seen the ads my Kindle Paperwhite displays as a screensaver, and... no, I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing better ad targeting.

kbenson 10y ago

No kidding. And my fiance was under the impression for a while that it was the cover of what I was reading at the time... She was probably somewhat concerned.

joeld42 10y ago

That might be more the fault of the advertisers than Amazon. Amazon knows what books you will like with a high degree of certainty, but they don't always have ads available that are a close match, and some advertisers set their targeting very broadly because they don't care (they want a wide reach, e.g. for rank boosting) or don't know better.

cwyers 10y ago
You're probably not too far off (although nowhere else in Amazon's ecosystem have I seen very good recommendations, and most of their advertising elsewhere seems to be just showing me stuff I browsed on Amazon earlier and didn't buy), but if the ad inventory isn't there to really incentivize that sort of targeting, that's the same thing, isn't it?

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "I'm not worried about Amazon mining my personal information to start doing better ad targeting." I get that better ad targeting may not seem like much of an issue at first thought, and may even seem like a benefit, but I'd suggest that the perceived benefits may start to unravel if you consider it from a different point of view. Companies that are involved in delivering targeted advertising are basing what ads to show you on the profile they're building up about you and what they perceive as similar people to you. The idea being to give you more of what they think you'll like. What this leads to is a filter bubble. When you're in a filter bubble (and I'd argue most of us are), the culture you're exposed to is increasingly limited by your past likes and dislikes, increasingly tailored based on market demographics, far less likely to broaden your range of experience. We shouldn't welcome the filter bubble, we should act to break out of it, and resisting the mechanisms behind targeted ads is one such way of doing so.