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> I think that Google using data to personalize ads and recommend videos is ethically ok. You really should educate yourself on the harm these types of targete

• mgraczyk 5y ago
  None of these links have anything to do with personalized ads. These are examples of ads that were very widely viewed, and the ad itself is what is claimed to be harmful. Why would targeting matter for ads seen by nearly every viewer, as is the case for your examples? Your second link isn't even talking about bad ads or personalization. It's talking about bad content with good ads not wanting to be associated with the bad content.
  • bryan0 5y ago
    Let me repeat what you said again because you seem to have forgotten: > I think that Google using data to personalize ads and recommend videos is ethically ok. Emphasis mine. The videos and ads are hyper targeted to misinform people on some of the most important and dangerous topics of the day.
    • mgraczyk 5y ago
      Ah ok, yeah I was debating the ads stuff, but you're right that I did also claim to be ethically ok with video recommendations. I think the latter is less contentious so I wasn't directly defending it. That one is easier for me to defend actually. I've worked on video recommendation and misinformation integrity (tangentially) at Facebook. I promise as a disinterested ex employee that you are just factually wrong. Facebook and Google both spend 10s to 100s of millions per year specifically to reduce the spread of misinformation. It's a very difficult technical problem because of avoiding false positives (taking down acceptable content) and because there are state actors spending huge amounts of money trying to do the opposite. There's no conspiracy here. You'd be right to say that Facebook has not done a perfect job, and that they didn't magically predict state actor election interference before 2016. But you'd be factually wrong to say that Facebook intentionally targets people with misinformation. Any site as big as Facebook, Instagram, or Youtube would have the same problem.
      • bryan0 5y ago
        What am I factually wrong about? I agree with your reply. Yes it’s a difficult problem and google and FB have demonstrated that they’re hopeless to solve it. That doesn’t make their behavior ethical. In fact even though they can’t solve this problem, their entire business model is still built on the fact that anyone can target ads to a specific group to influence their behavior. And if they’re not showing ads then they are showing personalized content based on engagement and virality, which is not a measure of quality or truth, but one of shock and outrage. So no your employers’ behaviors are not ethical and I think you’d have to be delusional to think so.
        • mgraczyk 5y ago
          You were factually wrong to say "The videos and ads are hyper targeted to misinform people". That statement implies that "videos" are specifically shown to be with the intent to misinform people. In reality Facebook and Google do not do this intentionally, but by accident. > their entire business model is still built on the fact that anyone can target ads to a specific group to influence their behavior Not really, unless by "influence behavior" you mean "click on the ad". Ads just aren't that good, and neither Facebook nor Google want to make money off of misinformation. > not a measure of quality or truth, but one of shock and outrage No not really. Firstly Facebook shouldn't be the decider of quality and truth, so we can discard that as a goal. Content moderation is complicated, you can't just hide stuff that makes people emotional, or you'd have censored everything that happened in 2020. Secondly, I don't think there's anything unethical about showing people the content that they want to see, even if it outrages them. There are many things going on that people should be outraged about. Either way, I still don't consider it an ethical issue, and I don't think I'm delusional. I just know too much about how Facebook actually works to consider them evil.
          • bryan0 5y ago
            > That statement implies that "videos" are specifically shown to be with the intent to misinform people. In reality Facebook and Google do not do this intentionally, but by accident. Let me be clear, the content producers are the ones with intent to misinform. Google and FB just profit off of it. > Either way, I still don't consider it an ethical issue Yet you defended this behavior as “ethical” half a dozen times in this thread.