5 ms·

Do some online mattress shopping. Load different mattresses into your cart and abandon. Etc, etc. The internet might not forget that you care about hair loss,

Do some online mattress shopping. Load different mattresses into your cart and abandon. Etc, etc. The internet might not forget that you care about hair loss, but the mattress stores will outbid the hair-loss companies.

patcon 9y ago
Oh god. I appreciate your comment, but something about this advice gets me. Is this sort of thing what _literacy_ is now...
- cinquemb 9y ago
  Yeah, I share the same sentiment. Learned a bit more about online ad bidding dynamics, but will continue to browse the internet with JS/cookies disabled by default as well as spoofing info on every request from user agents related to what api's are available with my custom build on a fork from firefox nightly.
  - manicdee 9y ago
    So you are attempting to evade tracking by being uniquely identifiable?
    - cinquemb 9y ago
      The information is "real" in that it is information that has been collected from a sampling of browsers of users from over the internet, or particular subset from local users connected to a nearby public network(s). As long as I'm not logging into something that would personally identify me, for all intents or purposes, I might as well be any number of the people around me connected to a network that I sampled. So even if I enabled javascript/cookies/etc, at worst I would be delivered a sampling of the ads the people around me (or the data that I sampled) were being sent. I'm also, not on facebook/instagram/twitter etc, so I avoid the downsides of the social media bubble all together. If I "need" to use such services, I'd just create a dummy account, and discard it after. It's not so much to evade tracking (although it can be effective in some instances), but to dirty the waters/avoid the feedback loop from tracking via ads delivered or the parasitic choices (or lack their of mostly) of others who just do nothing and jump head first into the next available skinner box. Not like it would be impossible for a nation state actor to move against me.
jsjohnst 9y ago
The thing that drives me nuts is I see ads for a long time after of products I just bought. I already bought the product, why would I want to see tons more ads for it (especially when I saw zero ads before I bought it).
- newscracker 9y ago
  That may be done (even offline), to prevent buyer's remorse and to reinforce your choice of having bought that product — so you don't return it or give it away with a negative view of it. It's all mental manipulation.
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    Likely not, with the incentives involved in pay-per-click advertising. Your pre-purchase online activity put you in a particular cohort, so Facebook sells "impressions by people in this cohort" to advertisers, who then talk about the cohorts they targeted in impressive-looking reports that convince mid-level executives that their advertising is effective and they should continue to pay the marketing department salaries. The actual ground reality of "bought a one-off product and doesn't care about future purchasing of said products" doesn't matter. I saw ads pretty constantly for the coding bootcamp I had just graduated from. All that matters in these transactions is checking off the targeting boxes, which everyone involved is pretty eager to do because it makes their numbers look better.
- shostack 9y ago
  This often occurs if proper exclusion lists are not setup for past purchasers at the SKU level (somewhat of a headache at scale). Instead, often these campaigns might use a duration-based list option. So for example, you might target an audience of people who viewed a product detail page for 7 days. If you purchased on day 3 and there was no SKU level exclusion list, the targeting has no way to know you already bought it. In this case you might see the ad for a few more days.
  - manicdee 9y ago
technion 9y ago
I went through a series of jokes with mates about buying those several thousand dollar audiophile network cables[0]. Facebook has been showing me ads for these things fairly consistently since about March. [0] I would put an Amazon link here.. but I don't want to do it to you.
- andybak 9y ago
  I'm going to do the same and I'm going to click on every single one that comes up. I bet the CPC for those things is obscene.

patcon 9y ago

Oh god. I appreciate your comment, but something about this advice gets me. Is this sort of thing what _literacy_ is now...

cinquemb 9y ago
Yeah, I share the same sentiment. Learned a bit more about online ad bidding dynamics, but will continue to browse the internet with JS/cookies disabled by default as well as spoofing info on every request from user agents related to what api's are available with my custom build on a fork from firefox nightly.
- manicdee 9y ago
  So you are attempting to evade tracking by being uniquely identifiable?
  - cinquemb 9y ago
    The information is "real" in that it is information that has been collected from a sampling of browsers of users from over the internet, or particular subset from local users connected to a nearby public network(s). As long as I'm not logging into something that would personally identify me, for all intents or purposes, I might as well be any number of the people around me connected to a network that I sampled. So even if I enabled javascript/cookies/etc, at worst I would be delivered a sampling of the ads the people around me (or the data that I sampled) were being sent. I'm also, not on facebook/instagram/twitter etc, so I avoid the downsides of the social media bubble all together. If I "need" to use such services, I'd just create a dummy account, and discard it after. It's not so much to evade tracking (although it can be effective in some instances), but to dirty the waters/avoid the feedback loop from tracking via ads delivered or the parasitic choices (or lack their of mostly) of others who just do nothing and jump head first into the next available skinner box. Not like it would be impossible for a nation state actor to move against me.

jsjohnst 9y ago

The thing that drives me nuts is I see ads for a long time after of products I just bought. I already bought the product, why would I want to see tons more ads for it (especially when I saw zero ads before I bought it).

newscracker 9y ago
That may be done (even offline), to prevent buyer's remorse and to reinforce your choice of having bought that product — so you don't return it or give it away with a negative view of it. It's all mental manipulation.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  Likely not, with the incentives involved in pay-per-click advertising. Your pre-purchase online activity put you in a particular cohort, so Facebook sells "impressions by people in this cohort" to advertisers, who then talk about the cohorts they targeted in impressive-looking reports that convince mid-level executives that their advertising is effective and they should continue to pay the marketing department salaries. The actual ground reality of "bought a one-off product and doesn't care about future purchasing of said products" doesn't matter. I saw ads pretty constantly for the coding bootcamp I had just graduated from. All that matters in these transactions is checking off the targeting boxes, which everyone involved is pretty eager to do because it makes their numbers look better.
shostack 9y ago
This often occurs if proper exclusion lists are not setup for past purchasers at the SKU level (somewhat of a headache at scale). Instead, often these campaigns might use a duration-based list option. So for example, you might target an audience of people who viewed a product detail page for 7 days. If you purchased on day 3 and there was no SKU level exclusion list, the targeting has no way to know you already bought it. In this case you might see the ad for a few more days.
- manicdee 9y ago

technion 9y ago

I went through a series of jokes with mates about buying those several thousand dollar audiophile network cables[0]. Facebook has been showing me ads for these things fairly consistently since about March. [0] I would put an Amazon link here.. but I don't want to do it to you.

andybak 9y ago
I'm going to do the same and I'm going to click on every single one that comes up. I bet the CPC for those things is obscene.