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Instagram is not a person. Don't ask it to be decent. Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they care. You're not sharing your i

Instagram is not a person. Don't ask it to be decent. Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they care. You're not sharing your information with a human. You're sharing it with a business who is tuned to maximize profit. The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative. They don't care about you. You've made the decision to let a business deep into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are the consequences.

Riseed 8y ago
> Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they care. > You're not sharing your information with a human. You're sharing it with a business who is tuned to maximize profit. The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative. Considering only the profit aspect (because the ethics, social responsibility, and public opinion aspects have already been addressed elsewhere in this thread and on twitter): Surely it's a better ROI to have a user than to lose a user. Hence, it makes more sense for e.g. "stillborn" be a trigger word that stops/blocks pregnancy-related ads for X time than for the user to be so brokenhearted by the platform itself that they leave. Surely it's a better ROI to show relevant ads than offending ads. Hence, it makes more sense to show e-counseling ads to grieving eyes than to show them tragedy-reminder ads. Honestly, this seems like a no-brainer from any perspective.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > Hence, it makes more sense for e.g. "stillborn" be a trigger word that stops/blocks pregnancy-related ads for X time than for the user to be so brokenhearted by the platform itself that they leave. Only iff you can be confident that the occurrence of this trigger word means that a person indeed experienced stillbirth, and wasn't just researching this, reading up on it because of fear, a non-native speaker looking up the definition of the word, etc. Metrics like this are really only weakly correlated with what (you'd think) they're trying to determine. Even targeted advertising is essentially a shotgun approach, as we don't even know what actually makes a person click on an ad. Also: as long as (probability of losing an user X their expected lifetime value) is lower than (probability of ad hitting a gullible person X money got from the ad), it's more profitable to just display the ad. People all over the thread seem to think that it's only about losing vs. not losing a user. But there's opportunity cost to not losing a user, and frequently it's judged not worth it. (It's good the author is raising a stink over this, it shifts the ROI calculations a little bit towards being more humane.)
  - Riseed 8y ago
    > Only iff you can be confident that the occurrence of this trigger word means that a person indeed experienced stillbirth As the original tweet pointed out, if there are only searches for "stillborn" and "baby not moving", followed by days of silence (especially with no "vacation" trigger), then an algorithm should be able to figure it out. Especially if friends and family are all commenting with crying emoji and the user has said pregnancy adds "aren't relevant to me". But of course, I haven't created a multi-billion dollar social network, while Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg have, so I clearly don't understand how to maximize advertising ROI.
rconti 8y ago
And not only are hashtags stupid, meta-hashtags are vastly more stupid. You're intentionally labeling a thing that no end-user will ever use for its alleged purpose. Nobody has ever wondered what else they will see when they search #justarandomcommentimadeintoahashtagfornorealreason
ordu 8y ago
> Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they care. Why? Why they don't care? Is it technically impossible or what? You know, they can try to care and try to become a friend, maybe ads would work better in that case? How do you think? What you are doing in your comment is just stating facts that are known for everyone already. For what reason you are doing it? What are you trying to achieve? Are you showing us how cynical you are, that you've grown enough to get lost your naivety completely? It is the case, or there are some other reasons behind your message? I can say what Gillian is trying to achieve and I believe she is succeding: she will make system more human centered, more friendly to humans. I can understand her, but I cannot understand you.
- NorthOf33rd 8y ago
  She will not succeed in making the system more human centered or friendly. She will succeed in changing the ROI of dealing with advertising to mothers of stillborn children, as another poster stated, by creating negative PR. Those are not equivalent. You are exactly the person I'm trying to influence by reminding you that these systems care about revenue, not you or your well being. These facts may be well known, but you are certainly not considering them when choosing your language. You are letting an amoral entity into your very personal life for dubious reasons and expecting it do be "friendly to humans," when they are designed to be friendly to shareholders wallets. It will be exactly as "friendly" as it needs to be, no more. And, if shareholders decide the cost of being friendly is greater than the benefit, then the "friendly" feature will be turned off.
  - trophycase 8y ago
    These systems are sociopathic. Full stop. It is in their nature.
    - sgroppino 8y ago
      It'd be depressing if they tried to sell you a funeral service after you let them know of your misfortune... Just avoiding this would be a big win.
samirm 8y ago
This is flawed on so many levels. 1. Just because a thing isn't a person, doesn't mean it can't/shouldn't be decent. 2. That thing was designed by humans which, inferring from your post, you can ask to be decent, ergo you can ask their thing to also be decent. 3. It would make a lot more sense for the business to care in the long term, rather than the short term, that's where maximum profit is. 4. I highly doubt she actively made "the decision to let a business deep into her personal life" since most of these services are opt-in by default. There's really no need to be so narrow-minded and out of touch with reality...
leowoo91 8y ago
For integrity of the darkness, I guess they would advertise some sort of a positive psychology product?
stabbles 8y ago
It's possible to interpret your comment as a direct response addressing the mother who put out the tweet, which seems very inappropriate. The point you're making might be true, but maybe it's better to rephrase it.
- legostormtroopr 8y ago
  If you publish an open letter you invite open responses. Doubly so if you do it on the Internet. Triply so if you work in the media.
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    It'd be real nice if people stopped using the public aspect of discourse (and especially virtual discourse) as some sort of general-purpose excuse for acting like an asshole. While such behavior is often framed as telling hard truths or suchlike, more often than not it turns out to be trite cliche deployed for sadistic effect.
- matty22 8y ago
  I also read it as a direct response to the mother who put out the tweet and it seems pretty appropriate to me? What part of the parent comment is inaccurate?
  - munificent 8y ago
    Whether or not it's accurate matters a lot less than whether or not it's kind.
    - DisruptiveDave 8y ago
      Kind doesn't really make for healthy discussions when your definition of kind includes leaving out pertinent information and points of view.
      - heartbreak 8y ago
save_ferris 8y ago
I don't disagree with this, but this argument fails to acknowledge the responsibility of social media companies to communicate what information they gather about you and how they choose to use it. On both fronts, they're still entirely too opaque. It might not be a fair comparison, but I feel like this argument is the equivalent to smoking for 40 years without realizing that it causes cancer because the hypothetical tobacco companies didn't have to disclose that information. When you go to the doctor and the doctor blames you for your failing health, is that fair for the doctor to do? You did something that was enjoyable and seemed novel without understanding the cost to your health. Informed consent in social media is still laughable in 2018, and we don't really discuss that aspect of the issue enough IMO.
- NorthOf33rd 8y ago
  Social media companies are incredibly clear about what information they gather and how they will use it: everything and however they want. Is anyone actually unaware of this? The individuals may not consider the consequences, but twitter has no responsibility to tell you that they'll use your pregnancy post to advertise to you, and what the ramifications of that might be. Advertising algorithms are amoral tools put into this world by amoral entities. The woman's situation is a use case with an ROI attached to it. It's a PBI for Twitter. Elsewhere in this thread there's a transgender individual. Their use case is another PBI. The transgender person's use case will be solved first because the transgender community represents more advertising dollars than a grieving mother.
  - save_ferris 8y ago
    Technology professionals are well-aware of what information is gathered and how it's used, but I don't think the broad public understands at all. Terms and conditions are still bogged-down piles of text that nobody reads, and the leaders of the big tech firms still dodge many questions directed at them by members of congress, the media, and the public at large. > Advertising algorithms are amoral tools put into this world by amoral entities. Are you saying that social media companies aren't subject to moral and ethical scrutiny? I'm really confused by this statement.
  - 8y ago
VikingCoder 8y ago
Any person can ask others to change their behavior. And if they get the attention of the company, the company may change its behaviors. Whether out of sympathy or self-interest is kind of immaterial. As users, we'd like the companies to change their behavior. Companies rely on users' good will. Once they depend on users for revenue, they need to act to a certain degree as though they care about those users. Or users may leave. These are the consequences.
- krageon 8y ago
  They don't rely on goodwill at all. Companies rely on you spending money. The odds of any one person having an attention span long enough to hold a grudge that might have an impact on their wallet are so vanishingly small that they really only need to care about milking everyone for all they are worth. I prefer this explanation, because you can see that it meshes very well with what happens in practice.
  - VikingCoder 8y ago
    > They don't rely on goodwill at all. Wow, of course they do. > The odds of any one person having an attention span long enough to hold a grudge So... that's why people draw attention to issues like this. To try to organize users just enough to encourage a company to change its behavior. Or, failing that, to get government to lean on companies to get them to change their behavior. > I prefer this explanation, because you can see that it meshes very well with what happens in practice. Companies have been successfully boycotted before. Advertisers leave when consumers get mad enough. Maybe not all of them. But at some point, the platform does actually make some changes, sometimes.
allemagne 8y ago
This is mostly very true, but I think the author understands this better than you're implying. The point of this tweet is to influence public opinion. This: >The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative. would hopefully not be true anymore due to negative PR, companies would take action out of pure self-interest, and it would stop this situation from happening to future people. There's of course still the broader problem of companies ravenously and irresponsibly gathering as much data on individuals as possible. To me any increase in a company's liability for the information they're hoarding, even in the form of righteous outrage that on its surface seems to anthropomorphize them, is a step in the right direction.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >This is mostly very true, but I think the author understands this better than you're implying. The point of this tweet is to influence public opinion. I suspect your parent understands this, and you're not understanding his/her perspective, which is that the general public needs to have a better understanding of how the Internet and monetization works. And that it is problematic to expect almost anything of value from a company you are not paying money to. They key takeaway in the comment is something everyone needs to understand: >You've made the decision to let a business deep into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are the consequences. Yes, the tweeter may be able to influence the company's decision in some minor way, restricted to still births. And it will solve only one small problem. You'll still get plenty of these problematic ads in bad circumstances.
  - kapad 8y ago
    I don't think the author of this tweet is trying to educate the general public. I simply think she is trying to engage companies so that their ad targeting accounts for her case and someone else in the same situation doesn't face what she faced.
- totallynotcool 8y ago
  > would hopefully not be true anymore due to negative PR, companies would take action out of pure self-interest, and it would stop this situation from happening to future people. Company X spends Y months advertising baby items to you, then at month Z- due to no fault of your own- a still birth occurs. Company X continues to advertise baby items for A time frame until the algo realizes you are not interested. Unless there's a market for people advertising for services/products for still births- they need better adwords- then there's no loss to the company being paid for the advertisement. Although extremely sad and very common- not so much so in a 1st world country- company x has no reason to stop. It's the advertisers who are "at fault" and even then, who are they to care about someone else's feelings? Maybe people using these 'free' services need to utilize better coping skills.
MarkMc 8y ago
This is a pretty insensitive comment
anigbrowl 8y ago
You've made the decision to let a business deep into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are the consequences. Nice victim blaming there, let's hold individuals responsible for the bad experiences they have with the vast data collection and ad targeting infrastructure they're virtually forced to interact with. If only they had been studying the blade instead.
- NorthOf33rd 8y ago
  Victim? She's not a victim. She's upset she saw an advertisement. Aggrieved, offended, dismayed, rightfully very upset about the loss of her pregnancy, but she's not a victim.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  I didn't read that as victim blaming. Maybe it's a little callous but I don't think the commenter is trying to shift the blame or responsibility from the companies to the author; instead I read it as trying to change expectations about the level of empathy and humanity the author will receive. > If only they had been studying the blade instead. Uh, what?
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    It's a meme that pokes fun at callous personas. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-studied-the-blade https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-studied-the-blade

Riseed 8y ago

> Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they care. > You're not sharing your information with a human. You're sharing it with a business who is tuned to maximize profit. The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative. Considering only the profit aspect (because the ethics, social responsibility, and public opinion aspects have already been addressed elsewhere in this thread and on twitter): Surely it's a better ROI to have a user than to lose a user. Hence, it makes more sense for e.g. "stillborn" be a trigger word that stops/blocks pregnancy-related ads for X time than for the user to be so brokenhearted by the platform itself that they leave. Surely it's a better ROI to show relevant ads than offending ads. Hence, it makes more sense to show e-counseling ads to grieving eyes than to show them tragedy-reminder ads. Honestly, this seems like a no-brainer from any perspective.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> Hence, it makes more sense for e.g. "stillborn" be a trigger word that stops/blocks pregnancy-related ads for X time than for the user to be so brokenhearted by the platform itself that they leave. Only iff you can be confident that the occurrence of this trigger word means that a person indeed experienced stillbirth, and wasn't just researching this, reading up on it because of fear, a non-native speaker looking up the definition of the word, etc. Metrics like this are really only weakly correlated with what (you'd think) they're trying to determine. Even targeted advertising is essentially a shotgun approach, as we don't even know what actually makes a person click on an ad. Also: as long as (probability of losing an user X their expected lifetime value) is lower than (probability of ad hitting a gullible person X money got from the ad), it's more profitable to just display the ad. People all over the thread seem to think that it's only about losing vs. not losing a user. But there's opportunity cost to not losing a user, and frequently it's judged not worth it. (It's good the author is raising a stink over this, it shifts the ROI calculations a little bit towards being more humane.)
- Riseed 8y ago
  > Only iff you can be confident that the occurrence of this trigger word means that a person indeed experienced stillbirth As the original tweet pointed out, if there are only searches for "stillborn" and "baby not moving", followed by days of silence (especially with no "vacation" trigger), then an algorithm should be able to figure it out. Especially if friends and family are all commenting with crying emoji and the user has said pregnancy adds "aren't relevant to me". But of course, I haven't created a multi-billion dollar social network, while Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg have, so I clearly don't understand how to maximize advertising ROI.

rconti 8y ago

And not only are hashtags stupid, meta-hashtags are vastly more stupid. You're intentionally labeling a thing that no end-user will ever use for its alleged purpose. Nobody has ever wondered what else they will see when they search #justarandomcommentimadeintoahashtagfornorealreason

ordu 8y ago

> Those ads are not your friends. Don't expect them to treat you like they care. Why? Why they don't care? Is it technically impossible or what? You know, they can try to care and try to become a friend, maybe ads would work better in that case? How do you think? What you are doing in your comment is just stating facts that are known for everyone already. For what reason you are doing it? What are you trying to achieve? Are you showing us how cynical you are, that you've grown enough to get lost your naivety completely? It is the case, or there are some other reasons behind your message? I can say what Gillian is trying to achieve and I believe she is succeding: she will make system more human centered, more friendly to humans. I can understand her, but I cannot understand you.

NorthOf33rd 8y ago
She will not succeed in making the system more human centered or friendly. She will succeed in changing the ROI of dealing with advertising to mothers of stillborn children, as another poster stated, by creating negative PR. Those are not equivalent. You are exactly the person I'm trying to influence by reminding you that these systems care about revenue, not you or your well being. These facts may be well known, but you are certainly not considering them when choosing your language. You are letting an amoral entity into your very personal life for dubious reasons and expecting it do be "friendly to humans," when they are designed to be friendly to shareholders wallets. It will be exactly as "friendly" as it needs to be, no more. And, if shareholders decide the cost of being friendly is greater than the benefit, then the "friendly" feature will be turned off.
- trophycase 8y ago
  These systems are sociopathic. Full stop. It is in their nature.
  - sgroppino 8y ago
    It'd be depressing if they tried to sell you a funeral service after you let them know of your misfortune... Just avoiding this would be a big win.

samirm 8y ago

This is flawed on so many levels. 1. Just because a thing isn't a person, doesn't mean it can't/shouldn't be decent. 2. That thing was designed by humans which, inferring from your post, you can ask to be decent, ergo you can ask their thing to also be decent. 3. It would make a lot more sense for the business to care in the long term, rather than the short term, that's where maximum profit is. 4. I highly doubt she actively made "the decision to let a business deep into her personal life" since most of these services are opt-in by default. There's really no need to be so narrow-minded and out of touch with reality...

leowoo91 8y ago

For integrity of the darkness, I guess they would advertise some sort of a positive psychology product?

stabbles 8y ago

It's possible to interpret your comment as a direct response addressing the mother who put out the tweet, which seems very inappropriate. The point you're making might be true, but maybe it's better to rephrase it.

legostormtroopr 8y ago
If you publish an open letter you invite open responses. Doubly so if you do it on the Internet. Triply so if you work in the media.
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  It'd be real nice if people stopped using the public aspect of discourse (and especially virtual discourse) as some sort of general-purpose excuse for acting like an asshole. While such behavior is often framed as telling hard truths or suchlike, more often than not it turns out to be trite cliche deployed for sadistic effect.
matty22 8y ago
I also read it as a direct response to the mother who put out the tweet and it seems pretty appropriate to me? What part of the parent comment is inaccurate?
- munificent 8y ago
  Whether or not it's accurate matters a lot less than whether or not it's kind.
  - DisruptiveDave 8y ago
    Kind doesn't really make for healthy discussions when your definition of kind includes leaving out pertinent information and points of view.
    - heartbreak 8y ago

save_ferris 8y ago

I don't disagree with this, but this argument fails to acknowledge the responsibility of social media companies to communicate what information they gather about you and how they choose to use it. On both fronts, they're still entirely too opaque. It might not be a fair comparison, but I feel like this argument is the equivalent to smoking for 40 years without realizing that it causes cancer because the hypothetical tobacco companies didn't have to disclose that information. When you go to the doctor and the doctor blames you for your failing health, is that fair for the doctor to do? You did something that was enjoyable and seemed novel without understanding the cost to your health. Informed consent in social media is still laughable in 2018, and we don't really discuss that aspect of the issue enough IMO.

NorthOf33rd 8y ago
Social media companies are incredibly clear about what information they gather and how they will use it: everything and however they want. Is anyone actually unaware of this? The individuals may not consider the consequences, but twitter has no responsibility to tell you that they'll use your pregnancy post to advertise to you, and what the ramifications of that might be. Advertising algorithms are amoral tools put into this world by amoral entities. The woman's situation is a use case with an ROI attached to it. It's a PBI for Twitter. Elsewhere in this thread there's a transgender individual. Their use case is another PBI. The transgender person's use case will be solved first because the transgender community represents more advertising dollars than a grieving mother.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  Technology professionals are well-aware of what information is gathered and how it's used, but I don't think the broad public understands at all. Terms and conditions are still bogged-down piles of text that nobody reads, and the leaders of the big tech firms still dodge many questions directed at them by members of congress, the media, and the public at large. > Advertising algorithms are amoral tools put into this world by amoral entities. Are you saying that social media companies aren't subject to moral and ethical scrutiny? I'm really confused by this statement.
- 8y ago

VikingCoder 8y ago

Any person can ask others to change their behavior. And if they get the attention of the company, the company may change its behaviors. Whether out of sympathy or self-interest is kind of immaterial. As users, we'd like the companies to change their behavior. Companies rely on users' good will. Once they depend on users for revenue, they need to act to a certain degree as though they care about those users. Or users may leave. These are the consequences.

krageon 8y ago
They don't rely on goodwill at all. Companies rely on you spending money. The odds of any one person having an attention span long enough to hold a grudge that might have an impact on their wallet are so vanishingly small that they really only need to care about milking everyone for all they are worth. I prefer this explanation, because you can see that it meshes very well with what happens in practice.
- VikingCoder 8y ago
  > They don't rely on goodwill at all. Wow, of course they do. > The odds of any one person having an attention span long enough to hold a grudge So... that's why people draw attention to issues like this. To try to organize users just enough to encourage a company to change its behavior. Or, failing that, to get government to lean on companies to get them to change their behavior. > I prefer this explanation, because you can see that it meshes very well with what happens in practice. Companies have been successfully boycotted before. Advertisers leave when consumers get mad enough. Maybe not all of them. But at some point, the platform does actually make some changes, sometimes.

allemagne 8y ago

This is mostly very true, but I think the author understands this better than you're implying. The point of this tweet is to influence public opinion. This: >The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative. would hopefully not be true anymore due to negative PR, companies would take action out of pure self-interest, and it would stop this situation from happening to future people. There's of course still the broader problem of companies ravenously and irresponsibly gathering as much data on individuals as possible. To me any increase in a company's liability for the information they're hoarding, even in the form of righteous outrage that on its surface seems to anthropomorphize them, is a step in the right direction.

BeetleB 8y ago
>This is mostly very true, but I think the author understands this better than you're implying. The point of this tweet is to influence public opinion. I suspect your parent understands this, and you're not understanding his/her perspective, which is that the general public needs to have a better understanding of how the Internet and monetization works. And that it is problematic to expect almost anything of value from a company you are not paying money to. They key takeaway in the comment is something everyone needs to understand: >You've made the decision to let a business deep into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are the consequences. Yes, the tweeter may be able to influence the company's decision in some minor way, restricted to still births. And it will solve only one small problem. You'll still get plenty of these problematic ads in bad circumstances.
- kapad 8y ago
  I don't think the author of this tweet is trying to educate the general public. I simply think she is trying to engage companies so that their ad targeting accounts for her case and someone else in the same situation doesn't face what she faced.
totallynotcool 8y ago
> would hopefully not be true anymore due to negative PR, companies would take action out of pure self-interest, and it would stop this situation from happening to future people. Company X spends Y months advertising baby items to you, then at month Z- due to no fault of your own- a still birth occurs. Company X continues to advertise baby items for A time frame until the algo realizes you are not interested. Unless there's a market for people advertising for services/products for still births- they need better adwords- then there's no loss to the company being paid for the advertisement. Although extremely sad and very common- not so much so in a 1st world country- company x has no reason to stop. It's the advertisers who are "at fault" and even then, who are they to care about someone else's feelings? Maybe people using these 'free' services need to utilize better coping skills.

MarkMc 8y ago

This is a pretty insensitive comment

anigbrowl 8y ago

You've made the decision to let a business deep into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are the consequences. Nice victim blaming there, let's hold individuals responsible for the bad experiences they have with the vast data collection and ad targeting infrastructure they're virtually forced to interact with. If only they had been studying the blade instead.

NorthOf33rd 8y ago
Victim? She's not a victim. She's upset she saw an advertisement. Aggrieved, offended, dismayed, rightfully very upset about the loss of her pregnancy, but she's not a victim.
throwawaymath 8y ago
I didn't read that as victim blaming. Maybe it's a little callous but I don't think the commenter is trying to shift the blame or responsibility from the companies to the author; instead I read it as trying to change expectations about the level of empathy and humanity the author will receive. > If only they had been studying the blade instead. Uh, what?
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  It's a meme that pokes fun at callous personas. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-studied-the-blade https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-studied-the-blade