4 ms·

The stats in this don't pass the smell test and seem made-up. For example gender targeting at 42%? That means they somehow did 8% worse than random chance. Th

The stats in this don't pass the smell test and seem made-up. For example gender targeting at 42%? That means they somehow did 8% worse than random chance. Their data somehow resulted in a statistically significant anti-correlation. This is a pretty unlikely result from a stats POV.

csande17 4y ago
> For example gender targeting at 42%? That means they somehow did 8% worse than random chance. This is a lot more plausible than you might think. Simply build a machine-learning model that is accurate 58% of the time (maybe because it takes the "gender" field people manually entered on their online profiles and adds noise) and accidentally invert its output.
WorldMaker 4y ago
There's more than two gender options for ad targeting.
- iiiIiiiIiiiiIi 4y ago
  - WorldMaker 4y ago
    You are badly confusing sex and gender (and wrong about sex, too, but that's not my job to educate you past your ignorance). Advertisers do care about the gender differences between "people who menstruate", "people who have facial hair", "people who are post-menopausal", "people who like masculine aesthetic products", "people who like feminine aesthetic products", "people who would prefer not to answer any such questions on a survey" and several more. They overlap more than a lot of people would like (there are "people who menstruate" that are also "people who have facial hair", etc), but that doesn't mean that they aren't "real" genders that real people experience. Advertisers continue to mistake sex for gender themselves, often thinking that sex plus age range equals gender. It is a first approximation and it sort of accounts for the distinctions between "people who like feminine aesthetic products" who are also "people who menstruate" versus the ones that are "people who are post-menopausal", but they are wrong about that too and it is still only a bad first approximation. Those are all real categories (the word gender is just one of several English borrowed from other languages for the word "category", along with genre), whether or not you believe people should be allowed to choose the category they best identify with and that category should be distinct from assigned sex at birth. It's all real, whether you choose to believe in it or not.
    - iiiIiiiIiiiiIi 4y ago

csande17 4y ago

> For example gender targeting at 42%? That means they somehow did 8% worse than random chance. This is a lot more plausible than you might think. Simply build a machine-learning model that is accurate 58% of the time (maybe because it takes the "gender" field people manually entered on their online profiles and adds noise) and accidentally invert its output.

WorldMaker 4y ago

There's more than two gender options for ad targeting.

iiiIiiiIiiiiIi 4y ago
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  You are badly confusing sex and gender (and wrong about sex, too, but that's not my job to educate you past your ignorance). Advertisers do care about the gender differences between "people who menstruate", "people who have facial hair", "people who are post-menopausal", "people who like masculine aesthetic products", "people who like feminine aesthetic products", "people who would prefer not to answer any such questions on a survey" and several more. They overlap more than a lot of people would like (there are "people who menstruate" that are also "people who have facial hair", etc), but that doesn't mean that they aren't "real" genders that real people experience. Advertisers continue to mistake sex for gender themselves, often thinking that sex plus age range equals gender. It is a first approximation and it sort of accounts for the distinctions between "people who like feminine aesthetic products" who are also "people who menstruate" versus the ones that are "people who are post-menopausal", but they are wrong about that too and it is still only a bad first approximation. Those are all real categories (the word gender is just one of several English borrowed from other languages for the word "category", along with genre), whether or not you believe people should be allowed to choose the category they best identify with and that category should be distinct from assigned sex at birth. It's all real, whether you choose to believe in it or not.
  - iiiIiiiIiiiiIi 4y ago