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> ... one can lose sight of the fact that advertisers don’t care who you are Companies were literally using Facebook's ad targeting to discriminate against cer

> ... one can lose sight of the fact that advertisers don’t care who you are Companies were literally using Facebook's ad targeting to discriminate against certain groups of people [1]. There is also the Cambridge Analytica scandal to concern ourselves with too. 1: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707614254/hud-slaps-facebook-with-housing-discrimination-charge https://www.npr.org/2019/03/28/707614254/hud-slaps-facebook-...

squeegmeister 5y ago
I think the point is that advertisers care about groups, not individuals
- jerf 5y ago
  I'd suggest it's not groups instead of individuals, but the other direction; particular attributes (fragments of individuals) instead of individuals. An advertiser, at the point where they want to advertise their baby wipes, don't care whether or not you're into fishing. They only care about whether or not their ad for baby wipes is going to someone who has the attribute "in the market for baby wipes". To the extent they care about groups, it's only because they aren't interested in an advertising campaign that targets one person, but they don't need anything more than "a bunch of people who are in the market for baby wipes". An advertiser may care about more than one of these things at a time ("interested in baby wipes" + "what culture do they identify with" so I can target things culturally, for instance), but even a very highly-targeted ad will be ignoring all sorts of attributes.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    You said "not groups" but then you wrote a bunch of words that describe "groups" so the distinction you're trying to draw doesn't make any sense.
    - teachingassist 5y ago
      I understand that the parent's point is "people who are into fishing and baby wipes" is not a coherent or meaningful group (in the sense of 'stratum' or 'cohort') of the population. Neither fishing nor baby wipe marketeers would typically care about this so-called group. If you are really applying attribute tags to individuals, you are not "grouping" them in the usually-understood meaning of stratifying. In truth, you are still building an individual profile for each person, but describing it in a disingenuous way.
    - jerf 5y ago
      My point is that advertisers aren't interested in groups of people as they are whole people, but just fragments of individuals that happen to match very specific characteristics they are advertising at. Under most circumstances this would be a distinction without a difference, but in this specific case it turns out to be important. If advertisers are interested in "groups" than they may still think of themselves as needing identity, and demographic breakdowns, and wanting addresses for those groups, etc... but if you conceive of all they care about as being "in the market for baby wipes" there is no reason to give advertisers anything more than "here is an advertising opportunity for baby wipes", and no other information. Not an aggregation of "individuals", with all the extraneous baggage that comes with, but aggregations of fine slices of attributes that they have no need to correlate to anything else. (Only residual desire because they're probably still used to thinking about "individuals".)
      - bryan_w 5y ago
        I'm having trouble understanding your point. >there is no reason to give advertisers anything more than "here is an advertising opportunity for baby wipes", and no other information. That's exactly what advertisers are offered. Do you believe otherwise?
- mdoms 5y ago
  Advertisers want to divide the population into smaller and smaller and more and more specific groups. Given the technology they absolutely would target individuals.
wheelie_boy 5y ago
I think what he was saying is that advertisers don't care about you as an individual, only what groups you fall into. That's true for advertisers that are discriminatory as well as ones that just want to advertise what they're selling to people most likely to buy it.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  For now but when the tech gets better why not target better will be heard from thr adtech companies.
adolph 5y ago
In context the point being made is different from that you argue against and probably agrees with you. The context is that of "privacy" and the assertion is that advertisers are not concerned with individual person who a person is; rather the advertisers are interested in relatively non-private broad characteristics of targeted clusters of people. The author paints a relatively rosy picture of advertising based on the interests of an ad's targets instead of the discriminatory interests of the target-er but the concept still stands that on the whole the particulars of an individual are not germane to the business as currently conducted. People say ‘privacy’ so often that one can lose sight of the fact that advertisers don’t care who you are - they just want to show ads to people that might be interested in them, and not to show ads to people who won’t be interested. They don’t want to ‘violate your privacy’ - they want to show diaper ads to parents, car ads to people who want a car and watch ads to rich people.
- csunbird 5y ago
  > They don’t want to ‘violate your privacy’ - they want to show diaper ads to parents, car ads to people who want a car and watch ads to rich people. I find this to be untrue many times, as advertisers also want to convince people to buy stuff that they do not actually need or want as well.
  - ficklepickle 5y ago
    I agree! They are also very concerned about fraud. A great way to ensure a real user saw your ad is to... wait for it... invade your privacy! I have no sympathy for these parasites. Surveillance capitalism needs to die in a fire.
legitster 5y ago
All advertising is already targeted. A billboard is targeted to a geographic area - it's not randomly assigned. A commercial is on a station who's demographics are critically important. The HUD case was a bit unique because there are specific laws about how housing can be advertised. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is the real jarring one because they were given data normal Facebook advertisers couldn't even dream of getting a hold of.
- Angostura 5y ago
  Traditional advertising directly targets the content - where it is, what it is - and indirectly targets the audience through that. Current online adverting targets the individual - irrespective of where they are (what site or app) or what they are looking at.
  - legitster 5y ago
    That's not always true - traditional marketing included things like direct mail, direct calling, door to door sales, etc. Also, unless you manage your own lead database, targeting to the individual level doesn't really happen in modern marketing systems. You build cohorts like "everyone who downloaded this app and put food as an interest". While it's certainly possible to de-anonymize people occasionally with the advertising data you work with, a) ad platforms never want to give it to you and b) there's an unbelievable amount of noise in the system so you just build programs with the assumption that ~50% of the data is going to be flat out wrong.
- mdoms 5y ago
  So what you're saying is there's no need to track users and violate privacy. Great! We can agree. Stick to billboards and television commercials.
- zpeti 5y ago
  Cambridge analytica got data from surveys on Facebook. You know who was “given” data by Facebook that others couldn’t even dream of? The Obama campaign. A fact that is very much forgotten by the NYT and every other Cambridge analytica hater.

squeegmeister 5y ago

I think the point is that advertisers care about groups, not individuals

jerf 5y ago
I'd suggest it's not groups instead of individuals, but the other direction; particular attributes (fragments of individuals) instead of individuals. An advertiser, at the point where they want to advertise their baby wipes, don't care whether or not you're into fishing. They only care about whether or not their ad for baby wipes is going to someone who has the attribute "in the market for baby wipes". To the extent they care about groups, it's only because they aren't interested in an advertising campaign that targets one person, but they don't need anything more than "a bunch of people who are in the market for baby wipes". An advertiser may care about more than one of these things at a time ("interested in baby wipes" + "what culture do they identify with" so I can target things culturally, for instance), but even a very highly-targeted ad will be ignoring all sorts of attributes.
- jaywalk 5y ago
  You said "not groups" but then you wrote a bunch of words that describe "groups" so the distinction you're trying to draw doesn't make any sense.
  - teachingassist 5y ago
    I understand that the parent's point is "people who are into fishing and baby wipes" is not a coherent or meaningful group (in the sense of 'stratum' or 'cohort') of the population. Neither fishing nor baby wipe marketeers would typically care about this so-called group. If you are really applying attribute tags to individuals, you are not "grouping" them in the usually-understood meaning of stratifying. In truth, you are still building an individual profile for each person, but describing it in a disingenuous way.
  - jerf 5y ago
    My point is that advertisers aren't interested in groups of people as they are whole people, but just fragments of individuals that happen to match very specific characteristics they are advertising at. Under most circumstances this would be a distinction without a difference, but in this specific case it turns out to be important. If advertisers are interested in "groups" than they may still think of themselves as needing identity, and demographic breakdowns, and wanting addresses for those groups, etc... but if you conceive of all they care about as being "in the market for baby wipes" there is no reason to give advertisers anything more than "here is an advertising opportunity for baby wipes", and no other information. Not an aggregation of "individuals", with all the extraneous baggage that comes with, but aggregations of fine slices of attributes that they have no need to correlate to anything else. (Only residual desire because they're probably still used to thinking about "individuals".)
    - bryan_w 5y ago
      I'm having trouble understanding your point. >there is no reason to give advertisers anything more than "here is an advertising opportunity for baby wipes", and no other information. That's exactly what advertisers are offered. Do you believe otherwise?
mdoms 5y ago
Advertisers want to divide the population into smaller and smaller and more and more specific groups. Given the technology they absolutely would target individuals.

wheelie_boy 5y ago

I think what he was saying is that advertisers don't care about you as an individual, only what groups you fall into. That's true for advertisers that are discriminatory as well as ones that just want to advertise what they're selling to people most likely to buy it.

ipaddr 5y ago
For now but when the tech gets better why not target better will be heard from thr adtech companies.

adolph 5y ago

In context the point being made is different from that you argue against and probably agrees with you. The context is that of "privacy" and the assertion is that advertisers are not concerned with individual person who a person is; rather the advertisers are interested in relatively non-private broad characteristics of targeted clusters of people. The author paints a relatively rosy picture of advertising based on the interests of an ad's targets instead of the discriminatory interests of the target-er but the concept still stands that on the whole the particulars of an individual are not germane to the business as currently conducted. People say ‘privacy’ so often that one can lose sight of the fact that advertisers don’t care who you are - they just want to show ads to people that might be interested in them, and not to show ads to people who won’t be interested. They don’t want to ‘violate your privacy’ - they want to show diaper ads to parents, car ads to people who want a car and watch ads to rich people.

csunbird 5y ago
> They don’t want to ‘violate your privacy’ - they want to show diaper ads to parents, car ads to people who want a car and watch ads to rich people. I find this to be untrue many times, as advertisers also want to convince people to buy stuff that they do not actually need or want as well.
- ficklepickle 5y ago
  I agree! They are also very concerned about fraud. A great way to ensure a real user saw your ad is to... wait for it... invade your privacy! I have no sympathy for these parasites. Surveillance capitalism needs to die in a fire.

legitster 5y ago

All advertising is already targeted. A billboard is targeted to a geographic area - it's not randomly assigned. A commercial is on a station who's demographics are critically important. The HUD case was a bit unique because there are specific laws about how housing can be advertised. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is the real jarring one because they were given data normal Facebook advertisers couldn't even dream of getting a hold of.

Angostura 5y ago
Traditional advertising directly targets the content - where it is, what it is - and indirectly targets the audience through that. Current online adverting targets the individual - irrespective of where they are (what site or app) or what they are looking at.
- legitster 5y ago
  That's not always true - traditional marketing included things like direct mail, direct calling, door to door sales, etc. Also, unless you manage your own lead database, targeting to the individual level doesn't really happen in modern marketing systems. You build cohorts like "everyone who downloaded this app and put food as an interest". While it's certainly possible to de-anonymize people occasionally with the advertising data you work with, a) ad platforms never want to give it to you and b) there's an unbelievable amount of noise in the system so you just build programs with the assumption that ~50% of the data is going to be flat out wrong.
mdoms 5y ago
So what you're saying is there's no need to track users and violate privacy. Great! We can agree. Stick to billboards and television commercials.
zpeti 5y ago
Cambridge analytica got data from surveys on Facebook. You know who was “given” data by Facebook that others couldn’t even dream of? The Obama campaign. A fact that is very much forgotten by the NYT and every other Cambridge analytica hater.