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Could that be confirmation bias as well? I have no idea how old you are, but quick knowledge graph result said "40% of men have noticeable hair loss by age 35,

by iamben 9y ago

Could that be confirmation bias as well? I have no idea how old you are, but quick knowledge graph result said "40% of men have noticeable hair loss by age 35, 65% by age 60, and 80% by age 80." FWIW, if I had a hair transplant product, knowing I could target guys aged ~35 and pique the interest of ~40% of them is a good start. If I cross that with another targeting option (perhaps you're 35 and single, and I assume that maybe getting worried that losing your hair will diminish you chances with women), and run a decent ad, perhaps you'll click. I'd obviously have the pixel code on my page and now you're on my retargeting list for ever more... I could do all that without any photo classification. Edit: Dwelling on this a bit more, of course - it would make total sense to bucket people with receding hairline photos into lookalike audiences for people who'd engaged with transplant ads... Although I suppose that could be equally relevant for targeting like mentioned above. Right age, relationship status, income bracket... Who knows.

ravenstine 9y ago
In a sense it's confirmation bias because it caused me to entertain the idea, but I don't believe they are actually classifying photos for advertising purposes. I don't discount the possibility, though. I'm 28 and, although I have been experiencing gradual hair loss. You're right that you could probably take my age and gender to make some guesses, but I'd imagine that using computer vision would allow ads to not be wasted on 60% of men who aren't losing their hair. Having used Amazon Rekognition, which can classify a person based on if they have a beard or not, I think Facebook could do so with reasonable accuracy. Beyond baldness, I imagine detecting the brands of clothes people wear could tell a lot about what fashion lines to advertise to someone.
- danso 9y ago
  It could also be a result of you looking at pages (not just on FB) related to male-pattern baldness before making the somewhat pivotal decision to just shave it all off, which would fit in the window of time that you perceive that you started to see more hair-related ads. But yes, tagging characteristics of people based on photos seems pretty straightforward given the state of their image processing. I would guess that it'd also be used to target eyeglasses to users who wear glasses in their photos.

by iamben 9y ago

ravenstine 9y ago

In a sense it's confirmation bias because it caused me to entertain the idea, but I don't believe they are actually classifying photos for advertising purposes. I don't discount the possibility, though. I'm 28 and, although I have been experiencing gradual hair loss. You're right that you could probably take my age and gender to make some guesses, but I'd imagine that using computer vision would allow ads to not be wasted on 60% of men who aren't losing their hair. Having used Amazon Rekognition, which can classify a person based on if they have a beard or not, I think Facebook could do so with reasonable accuracy. Beyond baldness, I imagine detecting the brands of clothes people wear could tell a lot about what fashion lines to advertise to someone.

danso 9y ago
It could also be a result of you looking at pages (not just on FB) related to male-pattern baldness before making the somewhat pivotal decision to just shave it all off, which would fit in the window of time that you perceive that you started to see more hair-related ads. But yes, tagging characteristics of people based on photos seems pretty straightforward given the state of their image processing. I would guess that it'd also be used to target eyeglasses to users who wear glasses in their photos.