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One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube vid

by 013a 8y ago

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain. Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business model, and fast.

tw1010 8y ago
This seems like a fairly easy thing to test rigorously (in a statistically significant way). Just create a fake account and do a search and see what the effect is on other places on the web. Are there services that does this automatically, so we don't have to rely on anecdotal "I searched for X here and now I see recommendations for that on Y, and I think it was because of X, but maybe it's just coincidence"? A site that rigorously confirms secret data links between e.g. google search or gmail plain text and other places (e.g. youtube or even amazon recommendations). If it doesn't exist, it seems like a cool thing to create, as a sort of service to the world. It'd probably reveal a lot of hidden data links that aren't obvious (or which companies promise doesn't exist).
- Cyphase 8y ago
  That could turn into an arms race of the target companies trying to detect when it's a fake account versus a real one, and the analysis service trying to make the accounts seem more real. Of course, if it became public that the target companies were trying to dodge the analysis, that could be damaging to them. Then again, automated accounts would likely be against the TOS. The analysis service could work by watching the traffic of real people who download a browser extension, but then privacy from _them_ becomes an issue. Perhaps some kind of distributed data-collection system could be created, where an extension will analyze your own traffic, strip out as much personally identifiable information (PII) as possible / as you'd like, and then submit that to a central repository for aggregation or further collective analysis.
  - FloatingVertex 8y ago
    An arms race like that would be a help for privacy, there is no way of filtering out enough bots without a relatively high false positive rate.
    - Cyphase 8y ago
      But "filtering out" would just need to be reducing ad targeting, not suspending the accounts, so some level of false positives might be fine if you can get a low enough false negative rate. The goal of the companies in this hypothetical is to limit systematic statistical detection of ad targeting, not to suspend automated accounts. If a small enough percentage of human users' ads are less/not targeted, no big deal.
jhall1468 8y ago
> Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. A few things: 1. It takes a fairly high throne to look down on people for their employers issues. 2. You assume a great deal about what people are willing to put up with for free services. I think you're probably going to be wrong. Most people will whore themselves out for convenience because they don't care if they get targeted ads in order to get those free services.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  The strongest lesson life has taught me: Never underestimate the power of convenience.
- 013a 8y ago
  I view it as something governments will eventually step in to fix. It's very convenient to dump toxic waste into rivers. If it weren't for regulation companies would probably still do this. That doesn't make it ok, and it doesn't mean that behaviors like that will always be allowed.
  - p2t2p 8y ago
    You clearly didn’t read the article. It’s the government website that sent those searches to two advertising and data collecting systems.
- ErikAugust 8y ago
  Familiar with the “banality of evil”? Give it a good thought before you give employees a free pass for the behavior of their employers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    Yes, because targeted advertising is just like playing along with killing hundreds of millions of people. It's almost like a grey area exists here.
mrfusion 8y ago
I searched for a car model and my bank called me an hour later to talk about car loans! That was my wake up moment.
- eh78ssxv2f 8y ago
  Honestly, that just seems like a coincidence. Do you have thoughts on how that information got transferred?
  - mrfusion 8y ago
    I was logged into search under my gmail address. The bank has that same address on file. They’re probably buying a data feed from the search company. If not, maybe one of the pages I landed on was able to see my info and has a marketing deal with the bank.
JacobJans 8y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with you. However, you are stating that ads for massage techniques could "break society." That just doesn't add up to me. What is not being stated here? How does this connect? (These are not rhetorical questions!)
- codyb 8y ago
  I suppose one relatively easy scenario for me to imagine would be these massive databases of information on billions of individuals being either hacked, leaked, or taken by groups with idealogies which could use such data to discriminate or worse. A slower moving but potentially more insiduous effect on society might be the slow cracking down of any semblance of privacy and the use of all this data to discriminate whether intentional or not. And indeed there have already been studies showing that a lot of these AI programs trained over large data sets are discriminating against minorities and the poor. I doubt it's intentionally built into the system but it appears to be a side effect of some systems.
- 013a 8y ago
  When I say "society could break" I mean that there is a general acceptance, or stability, in society whereby we accept that these practices are alright. And that stability will break. Google, and companies like them, are built on practices which only exist because their users don't fully comprehend the depth of discovery, correlation, and export Google is making on their data. Maybe deeper, users don't fully realize the value of their data. If you build a business on the ignorance of your customers, you will fail. Period. Society always gets smarter. Google has so much amazing technology and legitimate value (G-Suite, Cloud, etc) to fall back on that they'll be alright, but companies like Facebook don't have that same level of breadth.

by 013a 8y ago

tw1010 8y ago

This seems like a fairly easy thing to test rigorously (in a statistically significant way). Just create a fake account and do a search and see what the effect is on other places on the web. Are there services that does this automatically, so we don't have to rely on anecdotal "I searched for X here and now I see recommendations for that on Y, and I think it was because of X, but maybe it's just coincidence"? A site that rigorously confirms secret data links between e.g. google search or gmail plain text and other places (e.g. youtube or even amazon recommendations). If it doesn't exist, it seems like a cool thing to create, as a sort of service to the world. It'd probably reveal a lot of hidden data links that aren't obvious (or which companies promise doesn't exist).

Cyphase 8y ago
That could turn into an arms race of the target companies trying to detect when it's a fake account versus a real one, and the analysis service trying to make the accounts seem more real. Of course, if it became public that the target companies were trying to dodge the analysis, that could be damaging to them. Then again, automated accounts would likely be against the TOS. The analysis service could work by watching the traffic of real people who download a browser extension, but then privacy from _them_ becomes an issue. Perhaps some kind of distributed data-collection system could be created, where an extension will analyze your own traffic, strip out as much personally identifiable information (PII) as possible / as you'd like, and then submit that to a central repository for aggregation or further collective analysis.
- FloatingVertex 8y ago
  An arms race like that would be a help for privacy, there is no way of filtering out enough bots without a relatively high false positive rate.
  - Cyphase 8y ago
    But "filtering out" would just need to be reducing ad targeting, not suspending the accounts, so some level of false positives might be fine if you can get a low enough false negative rate. The goal of the companies in this hypothetical is to limit systematic statistical detection of ad targeting, not to suspend automated accounts. If a small enough percentage of human users' ads are less/not targeted, no big deal.

jhall1468 8y ago

> Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. A few things: 1. It takes a fairly high throne to look down on people for their employers issues. 2. You assume a great deal about what people are willing to put up with for free services. I think you're probably going to be wrong. Most people will whore themselves out for convenience because they don't care if they get targeted ads in order to get those free services.

paulddraper 8y ago
The strongest lesson life has taught me: Never underestimate the power of convenience.
013a 8y ago
I view it as something governments will eventually step in to fix. It's very convenient to dump toxic waste into rivers. If it weren't for regulation companies would probably still do this. That doesn't make it ok, and it doesn't mean that behaviors like that will always be allowed.
- p2t2p 8y ago
  You clearly didn’t read the article. It’s the government website that sent those searches to two advertising and data collecting systems.
ErikAugust 8y ago
Familiar with the “banality of evil”? Give it a good thought before you give employees a free pass for the behavior of their employers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
- jhall1468 8y ago
  Yes, because targeted advertising is just like playing along with killing hundreds of millions of people. It's almost like a grey area exists here.

mrfusion 8y ago

I searched for a car model and my bank called me an hour later to talk about car loans! That was my wake up moment.

eh78ssxv2f 8y ago
Honestly, that just seems like a coincidence. Do you have thoughts on how that information got transferred?
- mrfusion 8y ago
  I was logged into search under my gmail address. The bank has that same address on file. They’re probably buying a data feed from the search company. If not, maybe one of the pages I landed on was able to see my info and has a marketing deal with the bank.

JacobJans 8y ago

I don't necessarily disagree with you. However, you are stating that ads for massage techniques could "break society." That just doesn't add up to me. What is not being stated here? How does this connect? (These are not rhetorical questions!)

codyb 8y ago
I suppose one relatively easy scenario for me to imagine would be these massive databases of information on billions of individuals being either hacked, leaked, or taken by groups with idealogies which could use such data to discriminate or worse. A slower moving but potentially more insiduous effect on society might be the slow cracking down of any semblance of privacy and the use of all this data to discriminate whether intentional or not. And indeed there have already been studies showing that a lot of these AI programs trained over large data sets are discriminating against minorities and the poor. I doubt it's intentionally built into the system but it appears to be a side effect of some systems.
013a 8y ago
When I say "society could break" I mean that there is a general acceptance, or stability, in society whereby we accept that these practices are alright. And that stability will break. Google, and companies like them, are built on practices which only exist because their users don't fully comprehend the depth of discovery, correlation, and export Google is making on their data. Maybe deeper, users don't fully realize the value of their data. If you build a business on the ignorance of your customers, you will fail. Period. Society always gets smarter. Google has so much amazing technology and legitimate value (G-Suite, Cloud, etc) to fall back on that they'll be alright, but companies like Facebook don't have that same level of breadth.