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> Google stores this forever and they'll say "Ah, we know this guy was talking about marriage 10 years ago; traditionally, marriages fail after 5 years, we've d

by luhn 9y ago

> Google stores this forever and they'll say "Ah, we know this guy was talking about marriage 10 years ago; traditionally, marriages fail after 5 years, we've detected a tense tone in his mails to his wife, BEEP BOP BOOP, DIVORCE LAWYER AD IS RELEVANT". Have you actually seen anything like this? In my experience the ad targeting seems like extremely shallow keyword analysis.

ksk 9y ago
This gets to the heart of how divisions inside a company justify their budget and where human self-preservation kicks in. For e.g. A lawyer inside the company HAS to be on the lookout for supposed infringements of IP or situations where their "expertise" is required. The idea is that once you have any apparatus in place, and funds allocated to the maintenance/operation there of, you will find that people come up with creative ways to use that apparatus to either cement their position in the company or to improve career prospects. This applies to lots of domains, the obvious one being the government. Once you have a drone program, you'll find that someone somewhere WILL find a way to justify its usefulness. My main problem with data collection is the permanent nature of it, where someone somewhere at some point in time, possibly when the computational costs become feasible, will come up with a seemingly innocuous use of the data that will spiral out of control. Also, is Google hack-proof? Judging by the lawsuits around the self-driving division, apparently its trivial to steal data if you're on the inside.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Of course its trivial to steal data if you're on the inside. Snowden could copy classified docs onto a USB stick and smuggle them out of a fucking NSA office. If I were to plug in a USB drive at work, no one would bat an eye. They'd probably think it's for Time Machine.
  - briandear 9y ago
    It really depends on where you work. I know of a little company in the Cupertino area where such data theft would be nearly impossible and yet other companies, engineers have full access to production databases.
cookiecaper 9y ago
That's a hypothetical example, and it would of course be impossible to know what specific piece of data led Google to present a specific ad, and whether they're involving an analysis of how historical interests relate to current interests. Whether Google actively engages in such analysis now or not, they easily could. I personally use AdBlock so I don't see Google ads very often, but I have been creeped out by ads in the past, and I have had Google infer interests in changes to relationship status based on mail content (e.g., offering engagement rings). I believe they have manual filters to try to stop inferences that are too offensive from being made (e.g. suggesting a divorce), but those, of course, can never be perfect, and it doesn't mean they aren't making the inference or maintaining the data necessary to do so; it just means that they are blocking it from showing up. I'm not really saying this is either good or bad. The question was why people care less about reading emails to filter for spam than they care about people reading emails to develop a consumer's ad profile. These are some reasons why.
sqeaky 9y ago
I cannot recall where, but I remember reading about this. Based on associated products women buy occasionally they will sometimes get coupons for things like diapers and baby formula while they are pregnant before they know. My guess is that anytime a woman changes her shopping habits the marketers send some stuff her way because even a miss ratio of 90% could still be profitable. It isn't always accurate, I know a girl that is very not pregnant but gets these things anyway. She babysits occasionally and I suspect that combined with her Baker's card and Walgreen's card give the mass marketing gurus all the information they need to know that she sometimes cares for kids.
- base698 9y ago
  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhil... They were doing this in early 2000s, can't imagine how sophisticated the same type of system is now.

by luhn 9y ago

ksk 9y ago

This gets to the heart of how divisions inside a company justify their budget and where human self-preservation kicks in. For e.g. A lawyer inside the company HAS to be on the lookout for supposed infringements of IP or situations where their "expertise" is required. The idea is that once you have any apparatus in place, and funds allocated to the maintenance/operation there of, you will find that people come up with creative ways to use that apparatus to either cement their position in the company or to improve career prospects. This applies to lots of domains, the obvious one being the government. Once you have a drone program, you'll find that someone somewhere WILL find a way to justify its usefulness. My main problem with data collection is the permanent nature of it, where someone somewhere at some point in time, possibly when the computational costs become feasible, will come up with a seemingly innocuous use of the data that will spiral out of control. Also, is Google hack-proof? Judging by the lawsuits around the self-driving division, apparently its trivial to steal data if you're on the inside.

majewsky 9y ago
Of course its trivial to steal data if you're on the inside. Snowden could copy classified docs onto a USB stick and smuggle them out of a fucking NSA office. If I were to plug in a USB drive at work, no one would bat an eye. They'd probably think it's for Time Machine.
- briandear 9y ago
  It really depends on where you work. I know of a little company in the Cupertino area where such data theft would be nearly impossible and yet other companies, engineers have full access to production databases.

cookiecaper 9y ago

That's a hypothetical example, and it would of course be impossible to know what specific piece of data led Google to present a specific ad, and whether they're involving an analysis of how historical interests relate to current interests. Whether Google actively engages in such analysis now or not, they easily could. I personally use AdBlock so I don't see Google ads very often, but I have been creeped out by ads in the past, and I have had Google infer interests in changes to relationship status based on mail content (e.g., offering engagement rings). I believe they have manual filters to try to stop inferences that are too offensive from being made (e.g. suggesting a divorce), but those, of course, can never be perfect, and it doesn't mean they aren't making the inference or maintaining the data necessary to do so; it just means that they are blocking it from showing up. I'm not really saying this is either good or bad. The question was why people care less about reading emails to filter for spam than they care about people reading emails to develop a consumer's ad profile. These are some reasons why.

sqeaky 9y ago

I cannot recall where, but I remember reading about this. Based on associated products women buy occasionally they will sometimes get coupons for things like diapers and baby formula while they are pregnant before they know. My guess is that anytime a woman changes her shopping habits the marketers send some stuff her way because even a miss ratio of 90% could still be profitable. It isn't always accurate, I know a girl that is very not pregnant but gets these things anyway. She babysits occasionally and I suspect that combined with her Baker's card and Walgreen's card give the mass marketing gurus all the information they need to know that she sometimes cares for kids.

base698 9y ago
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhil... They were doing this in early 2000s, can't imagine how sophisticated the same type of system is now.