6 ms·

I've been really interested in a 'digital agent' model for a while now. Some profile, and/or grand set of settings that apply to all my interactions online. I i

I've been really interested in a 'digital agent' model for a while now. Some profile, and/or grand set of settings that apply to all my interactions online. I interface with way too many platforms online to keep track of, this can lead to unwanted and annoying targeting similar to (but obviously on a much lesser scale) to this mother. I recently bought a shaving kit for my future brother-in-law for Christmas, I looked up some reviews on Google and Youtube and now every Youtube video and ad is regarding this particular shaving product. This product is now following me on the web, if I were able to simply tell my 'digital agent' "hey, I'm not interested in shaving products anymore" and have my agent then broadcast this message to Youtube, Instagram, etc. I think that'd be helpful.

walrus01 8y ago
I recently viewed the Amazon page for a 55 gallon drum of personal lubricant and you would not believe the weird ads I get now.
- darkr 8y ago
  Personalised recommendations can be a very slippery problem to solve.
jbob2000 8y ago
Or we could all just start googling and searching for things that are completely irrelevant to us. This would fuck up the advertising models and marketers would be forced to change their practices. So I say to you all: go and google some random shit and do some deep dives into it. Be predictably unpredictable.
- thanatropism 8y ago
  I run a comment reply bot on my reddit account on saturday afternoons/nights when I'm out. It just posts some highly-voted comment from a CSV. My reddit history makes no freaking sense.
- just_one_time_ 8y ago
  Or, instead of wasting your time trying to trick an algorithm, just use an ad blocker.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  There are people working around the clock to determine this information, and there's no indication that they couldn't just peg you as "open-minded" and start selling products associated with that.
  - jbob2000 8y ago
    Right! But I will not click on those ads because I am not part of that demographic. The whole point of doing this is to shift you to a demographic where the ads become irrelevant and you aren't tempted to click them.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      The fact that you aren't clicking the ads is powerful evidence in itself, much stronger evidence than what you Google.
- kmetan 8y ago
  Maybe this is close to your idea: https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/ https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/
  - jbob2000 8y ago
    Yes, but I think that this is too shallow. You have to do deep dives (as if you were actually interested in the product/service) for it to really work. Like the OP said, you have to go to review sites, watch youtube videos, etc.
- Tom4hawk 8y ago
  Because I don't have better things to do than playing whack-a-mole with some stupid advertisement algorithm. I have simpler option: don't use social media, use DDG, uBlock and pay for products you use.
- 40acres 8y ago
  In theory, I don't mind advertising or machine learning based recommendations that is a nice mix of "here's more of the same" and "hey, how about this from left field". I think Spotify for instance has a good mix of this. My biggest issue, aside for privacy concerns, is the efficacy of these systems. If I could get some nice gift ideas before purchase that would be great -- if these systems could realize that I made this purchase as a gift and don't want it added to the model they have on me that would be great, these systems just really seem hit or miss right now.
  - jbob2000 8y ago
    That’s a system that’s impossible to build. You’re describing something that can perfectly predict human behavior. If we built a system like this, it would not be used to sell me Tide Pods.
    - dsr_ 8y ago
      Of course it would be used to sell you Tide Pods. It would sell you cars, too. It would also be used to make you anxious and fearful, but not so depressed that you kill yourself. It would be used to make you vote for certain people, buy particular clothes, and encourage you to maximize your lifetime consumption.
- aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  https://adnauseam.io https://adnauseam.io Here you go! Google actually banned this from the Chrome store so it must be hurting them.
  - monksy 8y ago
    For good reason: It's a fraudulent click.
    - MrZongle2 8y ago
      Where's the fraud? I'm not making money off of it, nor does anyone I know or have a business relationship with stand to benefit from it. I'm merely authorizing an application to use my local system to access unsolicited hyperlinks provided to me by a third party while viewing another party's Web site.
    - aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
      A what? Fraudulent click? Lol. There’s no such thing.
- monksy 8y ago
  Google really hates this. They've got some heavy anti-spidering watchers going on to prevent this. There was a Github project that was designed to randomize the search queries under your account. I'm not sure if that got shut down by google, or what happened. Suffice to say, not so good things happened.
mc32 8y ago
You know things are broken when after you buy things you begin to get ads for the very thing you just bought. Now, you could forgive one ad network not knowing, but when you get served up ads by the people who know (have a record of the transaction) you bought something, you know something’s not working the way it should, optimally.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  But every ad network ive ever worked with already allows you to define categories of people you specifically don't want to show your ads to. It's on the shopders of the ad creator to set that up though. I did read a comment one time that said the companies might be doing it on purpose, to "reaffirm" you made the right choice going with their product. Not sure how true that is, but it might factor in.
  - mc32 8y ago
    Honestly, it’s a turn off for me; or rather a small annoyance. But if true, it must work for most people if true, though I’m having a hard time imagining people not slightly annoyed at this ad behavior.
    - Klathmon 8y ago
      Unfortunately being annoying and working aren't mutually exclusive. And if that is really the case, then I'd argue it's on ad networks like Google and Facebook to find a way to realign incentives here so that what works best or makes the most money isn't annoying to the user (similar to how they are attempting to ban overly obnoxious ads).
- dingaling 8y ago
  I once heard that that is at least partially intentional in order to reassure the customer that it was a wise purchase. To prevent post-purchase regret and cancellation.
- wesd 8y ago
  There was a thread about this about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748 "This one is funny, and has a couple of obvious solutions that have been prevented due to internal politics. The short answer is that they have a couple of different recommender systems, all competing against each other internally for sales lift. One is purely based off of pageviews. When you get recommendations for something you already bought, many times it is because you looked at it, but they don't know nor care if you already bought it. In their words, it works really well and accounting for sales brings in a lot of needless complexity. Another is based off of sales. They also don't care if you already bought it because according to them, it works well. I remember trying to point out to them that for some types of products (specifically consumable products) this would work really well, but durables not so much. They claimed otherwise, that although they couldn't explain it, it was entirely common for people to rebuy things like vacuum cleaners and TVs and kitchen knives. I did a tiny bit of research to show them why they thought that, and proved with a small segment (vacuum cleaners, I believe), that after you filter for returns and replacements, that the probability of sequentially buying two of the same vacuum cleaner was effectively zero. They asked me to do it for the rest of their products, but I didn't have limitless time to spend on helping another team, especially one with a PM who was a complete dick to me for having the audacity to make a suggestion that he hadn't thought of. In all, I believe there are a dozen or so recommender services, each with their own widget. There are tons of people that think all of the recommenders have merits in some areas and drawbacks in others, and the customer would be better off if they merged concepts into a single recommender system. But they all compete for sales lift, they all think their system is better than the other systems, and they refuse to merge concepts or incorporate outside ideas because they all believe they are fundamentally superior to the other recommenders. Just a small anecdotal glimpse at the hilariously counterproductive internal politics at Amazon."

walrus01 8y ago

I recently viewed the Amazon page for a 55 gallon drum of personal lubricant and you would not believe the weird ads I get now.

darkr 8y ago
Personalised recommendations can be a very slippery problem to solve.

jbob2000 8y ago

Or we could all just start googling and searching for things that are completely irrelevant to us. This would fuck up the advertising models and marketers would be forced to change their practices. So I say to you all: go and google some random shit and do some deep dives into it. Be predictably unpredictable.

thanatropism 8y ago
I run a comment reply bot on my reddit account on saturday afternoons/nights when I'm out. It just posts some highly-voted comment from a CSV. My reddit history makes no freaking sense.
just_one_time_ 8y ago
Or, instead of wasting your time trying to trick an algorithm, just use an ad blocker.
whatshisface 8y ago
There are people working around the clock to determine this information, and there's no indication that they couldn't just peg you as "open-minded" and start selling products associated with that.
- jbob2000 8y ago
  Right! But I will not click on those ads because I am not part of that demographic. The whole point of doing this is to shift you to a demographic where the ads become irrelevant and you aren't tempted to click them.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    The fact that you aren't clicking the ads is powerful evidence in itself, much stronger evidence than what you Google.
kmetan 8y ago
Maybe this is close to your idea: https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/ https://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/
- jbob2000 8y ago
  Yes, but I think that this is too shallow. You have to do deep dives (as if you were actually interested in the product/service) for it to really work. Like the OP said, you have to go to review sites, watch youtube videos, etc.
Tom4hawk 8y ago
Because I don't have better things to do than playing whack-a-mole with some stupid advertisement algorithm. I have simpler option: don't use social media, use DDG, uBlock and pay for products you use.
40acres 8y ago
In theory, I don't mind advertising or machine learning based recommendations that is a nice mix of "here's more of the same" and "hey, how about this from left field". I think Spotify for instance has a good mix of this. My biggest issue, aside for privacy concerns, is the efficacy of these systems. If I could get some nice gift ideas before purchase that would be great -- if these systems could realize that I made this purchase as a gift and don't want it added to the model they have on me that would be great, these systems just really seem hit or miss right now.
- jbob2000 8y ago
  That’s a system that’s impossible to build. You’re describing something that can perfectly predict human behavior. If we built a system like this, it would not be used to sell me Tide Pods.
  - dsr_ 8y ago
    Of course it would be used to sell you Tide Pods. It would sell you cars, too. It would also be used to make you anxious and fearful, but not so depressed that you kill yourself. It would be used to make you vote for certain people, buy particular clothes, and encourage you to maximize your lifetime consumption.
aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
https://adnauseam.io https://adnauseam.io Here you go! Google actually banned this from the Chrome store so it must be hurting them.
- monksy 8y ago
  For good reason: It's a fraudulent click.
  - MrZongle2 8y ago
    Where's the fraud? I'm not making money off of it, nor does anyone I know or have a business relationship with stand to benefit from it. I'm merely authorizing an application to use my local system to access unsolicited hyperlinks provided to me by a third party while viewing another party's Web site.
  - aaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
    A what? Fraudulent click? Lol. There’s no such thing.
monksy 8y ago
Google really hates this. They've got some heavy anti-spidering watchers going on to prevent this. There was a Github project that was designed to randomize the search queries under your account. I'm not sure if that got shut down by google, or what happened. Suffice to say, not so good things happened.

mc32 8y ago

You know things are broken when after you buy things you begin to get ads for the very thing you just bought. Now, you could forgive one ad network not knowing, but when you get served up ads by the people who know (have a record of the transaction) you bought something, you know something’s not working the way it should, optimally.

Klathmon 8y ago
But every ad network ive ever worked with already allows you to define categories of people you specifically don't want to show your ads to. It's on the shopders of the ad creator to set that up though. I did read a comment one time that said the companies might be doing it on purpose, to "reaffirm" you made the right choice going with their product. Not sure how true that is, but it might factor in.
- mc32 8y ago
  Honestly, it’s a turn off for me; or rather a small annoyance. But if true, it must work for most people if true, though I’m having a hard time imagining people not slightly annoyed at this ad behavior.
  - Klathmon 8y ago
    Unfortunately being annoying and working aren't mutually exclusive. And if that is really the case, then I'd argue it's on ad networks like Google and Facebook to find a way to realign incentives here so that what works best or makes the most money isn't annoying to the user (similar to how they are attempting to ban overly obnoxious ads).
dingaling 8y ago
I once heard that that is at least partially intentional in order to reassure the customer that it was a wise purchase. To prevent post-purchase regret and cancellation.
wesd 8y ago
There was a thread about this about a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535748 "This one is funny, and has a couple of obvious solutions that have been prevented due to internal politics. The short answer is that they have a couple of different recommender systems, all competing against each other internally for sales lift. One is purely based off of pageviews. When you get recommendations for something you already bought, many times it is because you looked at it, but they don't know nor care if you already bought it. In their words, it works really well and accounting for sales brings in a lot of needless complexity. Another is based off of sales. They also don't care if you already bought it because according to them, it works well. I remember trying to point out to them that for some types of products (specifically consumable products) this would work really well, but durables not so much. They claimed otherwise, that although they couldn't explain it, it was entirely common for people to rebuy things like vacuum cleaners and TVs and kitchen knives. I did a tiny bit of research to show them why they thought that, and proved with a small segment (vacuum cleaners, I believe), that after you filter for returns and replacements, that the probability of sequentially buying two of the same vacuum cleaner was effectively zero. They asked me to do it for the rest of their products, but I didn't have limitless time to spend on helping another team, especially one with a PM who was a complete dick to me for having the audacity to make a suggestion that he hadn't thought of. In all, I believe there are a dozen or so recommender services, each with their own widget. There are tons of people that think all of the recommenders have merits in some areas and drawbacks in others, and the customer would be better off if they merged concepts into a single recommender system. But they all compete for sales lift, they all think their system is better than the other systems, and they refuse to merge concepts or incorporate outside ideas because they all believe they are fundamentally superior to the other recommenders. Just a small anecdotal glimpse at the hilariously counterproductive internal politics at Amazon."