5 ms·

I moved to B2B, doing ads for companies targeting employees of other companies. Convincing you to buy a bad database is not harmful compared to convincing you b

I moved to B2B, doing ads for companies targeting employees of other companies. Convincing you to buy a bad database is not harmful compared to convincing you buy unhealthy food or feel anxious about not having the latest in fashion.

chaps 7y ago
Have any of the systems you've designed ever been used for something they weren't originally meant for? Will they ever? Do you have any guarantees of that? You can say that the systems that you're building are not being used in a dystopic fashion, but in doing so you're ignoring the fact that you're still building scaffolding for the rest of the industry.
burkaman 7y ago
I agree that sounds less harmful, but why not do something that's not harmful at all? Or maybe even beneficial? Getting a software job is so easy right now. If you don't feel like you're helping the world at all, why do it?
Nextgrid 7y ago
Does B2B advertising still rely on stalking and collecting personal data? Personally my problem isn't as much as what the ads are about and more about the data they collect, essentially creating an ever growing liability for me up until the entire thing blows up when the data finally leaks.
- DevKoala 7y ago
  We don’t use fingerprinting besides cookies and don’t rely on third party identity graphs; we have over a decade of experience doing B2B and understand what works. Also, anticipating the death of the cookie, we are moving towards contextual technologies over individual identifiers. Understanding a company’s buying intent is a whole different ball game, takes a lot of data that doesn’t belong to any single individual. It is intrusive to individuals because we infer your employer, but we don’t care about anything else; we operate at a macro level and that keeps us ahead.
  - chaps 7y ago
    You infer peoples employer using what methods? I genuinely don't understand why you'd think that's an acceptable thing to do.
    - DevKoala 7y ago
      We don’t collect PII, emails, scrap profiles, etc. We are not in a situation in which someone could perform a few joins and know who was reading what, that’s not how we designed it. If anything, we use a lot of financial and CRM data.
      - Nextgrid 7y ago
        What constitutes financial and CRM data, how is it obtained and how is it tied to a user just browsing and running the JavaScript of one of your ads? (Not looking for any special techniques or trade secrets, just trying to understand where the data comes from and how is it tied to a pseudonymous browser fingerprint so I can make an opinion on whether I think it’s ethical and how can I defend against it.)
        DevKoala 7y ago
        The CRM data comes from the advertising party. I answered above around the financial data, nothing related to individuals.
      - chaps 7y ago
        Er... maybe you're not being clear in what you do, but when I think of "financial data", I think of information that the general public would prefer nobody outside of their bank would have access to. Am I missing something? I swear I'm not trying to be overly confrontational, but... what you're saying makes me think that you're just a bad guy who uses naive mental gymnastics to rationalize their dystopic contributions to the world. Please prove me wrong. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but... you're not making it easy.
        7y ago

chaps 7y ago

Have any of the systems you've designed ever been used for something they weren't originally meant for? Will they ever? Do you have any guarantees of that? You can say that the systems that you're building are not being used in a dystopic fashion, but in doing so you're ignoring the fact that you're still building scaffolding for the rest of the industry.

burkaman 7y ago

I agree that sounds less harmful, but why not do something that's not harmful at all? Or maybe even beneficial? Getting a software job is so easy right now. If you don't feel like you're helping the world at all, why do it?

Nextgrid 7y ago

Does B2B advertising still rely on stalking and collecting personal data? Personally my problem isn't as much as what the ads are about and more about the data they collect, essentially creating an ever growing liability for me up until the entire thing blows up when the data finally leaks.

DevKoala 7y ago
We don’t use fingerprinting besides cookies and don’t rely on third party identity graphs; we have over a decade of experience doing B2B and understand what works. Also, anticipating the death of the cookie, we are moving towards contextual technologies over individual identifiers. Understanding a company’s buying intent is a whole different ball game, takes a lot of data that doesn’t belong to any single individual. It is intrusive to individuals because we infer your employer, but we don’t care about anything else; we operate at a macro level and that keeps us ahead.
- chaps 7y ago
  You infer peoples employer using what methods? I genuinely don't understand why you'd think that's an acceptable thing to do.
  - DevKoala 7y ago
    We don’t collect PII, emails, scrap profiles, etc. We are not in a situation in which someone could perform a few joins and know who was reading what, that’s not how we designed it. If anything, we use a lot of financial and CRM data.
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      What constitutes financial and CRM data, how is it obtained and how is it tied to a user just browsing and running the JavaScript of one of your ads? (Not looking for any special techniques or trade secrets, just trying to understand where the data comes from and how is it tied to a pseudonymous browser fingerprint so I can make an opinion on whether I think it’s ethical and how can I defend against it.)
      - DevKoala 7y ago
        The CRM data comes from the advertising party. I answered above around the financial data, nothing related to individuals.
    - chaps 7y ago
      Er... maybe you're not being clear in what you do, but when I think of "financial data", I think of information that the general public would prefer nobody outside of their bank would have access to. Am I missing something? I swear I'm not trying to be overly confrontational, but... what you're saying makes me think that you're just a bad guy who uses naive mental gymnastics to rationalize their dystopic contributions to the world. Please prove me wrong. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but... you're not making it easy.
      - 7y ago