4 ms·

I used to work for an OTT DSP adtech company i.e. a company that bid on TV ad spots in real time. The bidding platform was handling millions of requests per sec

by vrosas 10mo ago

I used to work for an OTT DSP adtech company i.e. a company that bid on TV ad spots in real time. The bidding platform was handling millions of requests per second, and we were one of the smaller fish in the sea. This system is very real. Your tv is watching what you’re watching. I built the attribution pipeline, which is what this is. If you go buy a product from one of these ads, this is how they track (attribute) it. Not to be alarmist butttt you have zero privacy.

Ancalagon 10mo ago
I understand the perils of a capitalist system but whyyy would you agree to build this
- nospice 10mo ago
  It makes its creator the money they can spend buying the products they see in TV ads.
- cephi 10mo ago
  If someone is going to get paid to build it anyway, I might as well be the one getting paid for it.
  - Sharlin 10mo ago
    Yeah, there are reasons why "someone is going to do it anyway" is a classic example of an ethically unsound argument.
    - torstenvl 10mo ago
      It isn't ethically unsound. It's a commons/coordination problem. What is the optimal strategy in infinite-round prisoners dilemma with randomized opponents? The randomization effectively makes it an infinite series of one-round prisoners dilemma. So the best strategy is always to defect. The only way you can change this is very high social trust, and all of society condemning anyone who ever defects.
      - jsrozner 10mo ago
        If morality never factors into your own decisions, you don't get to be upset when it doesn't factor into other peoples'. In other words, society just sucks when everyone thinks this way, even if it true that resolving it is hard.
        nativeit 10mo ago
        This is called a “replacement excuse”. It’s a hallmark of nihilists and utilitarians, but I tend to prefer the more prosaic group noun, “jerks”.
        torstenvl 10mo ago
        This is an intellectually and morally deficient position to take. There is no moral principle in any system anywhere in the history of the universe that requires me to bind myself to a contract that nobody else is bound to. We can all agree, as a society, "hey, no individual person will graze more than ten cows on the commons," and that's fine. And if we all agree and someone breaks their vow, then that is immoral. "Society just sucks when everyone thinks this way" indeed. But if nobody ever agreed to it, and you're out there grazing all you're cattle, and Ezekiel is out there grazing all his cattle, and Josiah is out there grazing all his cattle, there is no reasonable ethical principle you could propose that would prevent me from grazing all my cattle too.
        ReluctantLaser 10mo ago
        > There is no moral principle in any system anywhere in the history of the universe that requires me to bind myself to a contract that nobody else is bound to. Is there not? I don't feel this makes sense to me, as the conclusion seems to be "if everyone (or perhaps a large amount of people) do it, then it's not immoral". My immediate thought goes to moral systems that universalise an action, such that if everyone did it and it makes the world worse, then it's something that you should not do. That would be an example of a system that goes counter to what you say. Since morals are personal, you can still have that conclusion even if other people do not subscribe to the same set of moral beliefs that you have. Something can be immoral to you, and you will refuse to do it even if everyone else does. > But if nobody ever agreed to it [...] there is no reasonable ethical principle you could propose that would prevent me from grazing all my cattle too. Why not? I don't quite understand your conclusion. Why could the conclusion not be "I feel what everyone else is doing is wrong, and I will not do it myself"? Is it because it puts you at a disadvantage, and you believe that is unfair? Perhaps this is the "reasonable" aspect?
    - whacko_quacko 10mo ago
      Care to articulate them?
      - Sharlin 10mo ago
        The fact that it can be used to "justify" almost anything. It obviously doesn't work as a defense in the court, and neither does it work as a justification for doing legal but unethical things.
      - avsteele 10mo ago
        If you want a consequentialist answer: If, for ethical reasons, fewer people were willing to take these jobs, then either salaries would have to rise or the work would be done less effectively. If salaries rise, the business becomes more expensive and harder to scale. If effectiveness drops, the systems are less capable of extracting/using people’s data. Either way, refusing these jobs imposes real friction on the surveillance model. If you want a deontological answer: You have a responsibility not to participate in unethical behavior, even if someone else would.
  - cryptonym 10mo ago
    Where do you draw the line? Ready to do anything for money as long as it seems legal-ish or your ass is covered by hierarchy?
    - abirch 10mo ago
      If something should not be done: make it illegal. Trying to have a gentlemen's agreement not to do something seems like a futile position.
      - cryptonym 10mo ago
        Having you own morale and ethics is far from futile. Each individual should be able to question the law and object taking part in something they don't agree, as long as it doesn't break the law. Killing someone is legal in certain countries for different reasons (I'm not talking about war). Not sure I would like to get involved in that business, for instance if I don't agree on how and why people are sentenced to death in my country. Some people are built with low ethics. Sure, if it's not made illegal, they'll always find someone to do it. Looks like in that case it might be illegal, as TV makers are sued.
  - catoc 10mo ago
    This attitude is the reason “someone is going to get paid”. If you see a unattended laptop in a coffeeshop, do you steal it because “someone will steal it, so it might as well be me”?
    - nertirs3 10mo ago
      Why stop here? We can also blame the people, who implemented such features on the TVs, the people who worked at companies, who used data acquired by these devices for advertisement, the people who worked on the mentioned ads for such devices and the people who bought products from companies, that spend money on such marketing techniques. At this point you might as well blame the average guy for global warming...
      - acrump 10mo ago
        The average guy is exactly the person responsible for global warming. The evil of the world is just the meta accumulation of the average person following their mirco incentives.
    - aliceryhl 10mo ago
      Where I'm from, it probably would not be stolen by anyone.
- vrosas 10mo ago
  The perils of the capitalist system man. For what’s its worth, I left adtech many moons ago specifically because it is a horrifyingly depressing industry and very very not fun to talk about at parties.
  - godelski 10mo ago
    I'm glad you got out, but given your vantage point what would you say to those who feel pressured to do these types of jobs? Would you say more "it isn't worth it" or "if you have to... but get out as fast as possible" or something else?
    - notyourwork 10mo ago
      Money pays the bills. It’s probably not deeply rooted.
      - godelski 10mo ago
        Forgive me, but I'd actually like to hear vrosas's response or someone else with a similar background. I appreciate you trying to answer my question and help try to make me informed, but I don't want to hear speculation, especially the rather obvious ones. That's not helping, it just adds more noise to the conversation and discourages a response by them. We all know money pays the bills, no one needs to hear that. But hey, if that's what they say, then you'll be proven right. So let's wait and find out. I really do want to understand their mentality. I hope you do too because how else do we break the cycle?
        freedomben 10mo ago
        I've talked to a lot of engineers building DRM technology, and most of them are just a combination of swept up in the fun of the challenge, and also deeply bought into the idea of protecting intellectual property. I would say probably 90% don't see any philosophical issues with what they're building at all. If you can convince them of that, quite a few of them would probably try to get out, but it's quite an uphill battle. I forget who said the quote and the exact words, but something along the lines of it's very difficult to disabuse somebody of a belief when their livelihood depends on believing it. As someone who was in an industry that I later discovered was doing things I wasn't personally ethically okay with, I would advise them to do similar to me. Start looking for a new gig and just get out as soon as you can. Unfortunately as an individual there just isn't much you can do. There will always be someone willing to do the job that you aren't willing to do. Just get out and find something you can sleep at night doing
kleiba 10mo ago
> you have zero privacy Is this data linked to me personally in some way (e.g. though an account) or is it anonymous data?
- xnx 10mo ago
  Personally identifiable. Most smart TVs force a login to connect to the Internet or even use at all.
- everdrive 10mo ago
  They can definitely work out who you are from your IP address. (or get close enough that the advertisers don't care) Not too many people are putting a VPN on their router and using throwaway accounts for their smart TVs. This might be difficult anyhow if your log into major services such as Amazon, etc, who will know who you are. I'm not saying this is impossible to avoid, but it ends up being a LOT of work when the alternative is just not connecting the TV to the internet and using a laptop / Apple TV / etc. instead.
c16 10mo ago
Would love to know what are the best things we can do to prevent this sort of tracking in general. PiHole? Don't re-use emails? On a scale of 1 to fucked are we cooked?
everdrive 10mo ago
This is really interesting. Can you expand on this? What are OTT and DSP in this context? Do you have a sense for what data is tracked and how it's used? Or if this sort of system is blind in certain cases? (eg: I hook up an N64 to the a/v ports -- will I get retro game ads on the TV?)
- vrosas 10mo ago
  OTT = over the top = ads that aren't shown on cable ("linear") DSP = demand-side platform = real-time bidding on ad space on behalf of advertisers What data is tracked? Don't think we can see what's plugged into the TV if it's not connected to the internet but besides that... all of it... If we have your TV we know where you live. We know what you're watching (hopefully our customers' ads!). We know all the devices that connect to your home network. We know where those devices go when you leave the house. We know you were driving down this stretch of road when you saw that ad on that billboard or on the side of that truck ("out-of-home" advertising). We know if you saw that ad and then bought something ("conversion" + "attribution"). We know what apps you have downloaded. Did you know Candy Crush is spying on you, too? Did you know Grindr sells your IP address? We likely know your age and your race and how much your home cost and where you went to college and how many kids you have ("segmentation"). Privacy laws have gotten in the way a little bit, but not much - it's less "we can't get this data anymore" and more "here's the hoop(s) we now have to jump through but we still get it". I don't want to freak anyone out. In my time in adtech I never felt like anyone was using this data for anything besides "Please buy more coca-cola..." but you never know. Privacy _can_ exist it's just insanely hard because there's so much money hell-bent on tracking you down.
  - salawat 10mo ago
    So, you helped with this... Why?
AJ007 10mo ago
The TV thing isn't a new story, this was public. Everyone should have known about it and no one cared. (I could inset a boilerplate rant about Snowden here) Those datacenters are not being built so that you can talk to ChatGPT all day, they are being built to generate and optimize ads. People who were not previously very suggestible are going to be. People who are suggestible will have their agency sold off to the highest bidder. Avoid owning a TV? Your friends will. Maybe you can not have a FB/IG/WhatsApp account, only use cash, not have a mobile phone, but Meta (or Google, or Apple) can still detect your face in the background of photos/videos and know where you shop, travel and when.
wing-_-nuts 10mo ago
>Not to be alarmist butttt you have zero privacy. Hence why I will never connect my TV to the internet
salawat 10mo ago
Soooo.... Why did you build it for them? You didn't have to further enable it. Despise people who just drop this kind of thing without any hint of repentance or contrition.

by vrosas 10mo ago

Ancalagon 10mo ago

I understand the perils of a capitalist system but whyyy would you agree to build this

nospice 10mo ago
It makes its creator the money they can spend buying the products they see in TV ads.
cephi 10mo ago
If someone is going to get paid to build it anyway, I might as well be the one getting paid for it.
- Sharlin 10mo ago
  Yeah, there are reasons why "someone is going to do it anyway" is a classic example of an ethically unsound argument.
  - torstenvl 10mo ago
    It isn't ethically unsound. It's a commons/coordination problem. What is the optimal strategy in infinite-round prisoners dilemma with randomized opponents? The randomization effectively makes it an infinite series of one-round prisoners dilemma. So the best strategy is always to defect. The only way you can change this is very high social trust, and all of society condemning anyone who ever defects.
    - jsrozner 10mo ago
      If morality never factors into your own decisions, you don't get to be upset when it doesn't factor into other peoples'. In other words, society just sucks when everyone thinks this way, even if it true that resolving it is hard.
      - nativeit 10mo ago
        This is called a “replacement excuse”. It’s a hallmark of nihilists and utilitarians, but I tend to prefer the more prosaic group noun, “jerks”.
      - torstenvl 10mo ago
        This is an intellectually and morally deficient position to take. There is no moral principle in any system anywhere in the history of the universe that requires me to bind myself to a contract that nobody else is bound to. We can all agree, as a society, "hey, no individual person will graze more than ten cows on the commons," and that's fine. And if we all agree and someone breaks their vow, then that is immoral. "Society just sucks when everyone thinks this way" indeed. But if nobody ever agreed to it, and you're out there grazing all you're cattle, and Ezekiel is out there grazing all his cattle, and Josiah is out there grazing all his cattle, there is no reasonable ethical principle you could propose that would prevent me from grazing all my cattle too.
        ReluctantLaser 10mo ago
        > There is no moral principle in any system anywhere in the history of the universe that requires me to bind myself to a contract that nobody else is bound to. Is there not? I don't feel this makes sense to me, as the conclusion seems to be "if everyone (or perhaps a large amount of people) do it, then it's not immoral". My immediate thought goes to moral systems that universalise an action, such that if everyone did it and it makes the world worse, then it's something that you should not do. That would be an example of a system that goes counter to what you say. Since morals are personal, you can still have that conclusion even if other people do not subscribe to the same set of moral beliefs that you have. Something can be immoral to you, and you will refuse to do it even if everyone else does. > But if nobody ever agreed to it [...] there is no reasonable ethical principle you could propose that would prevent me from grazing all my cattle too. Why not? I don't quite understand your conclusion. Why could the conclusion not be "I feel what everyone else is doing is wrong, and I will not do it myself"? Is it because it puts you at a disadvantage, and you believe that is unfair? Perhaps this is the "reasonable" aspect?
  - whacko_quacko 10mo ago
    Care to articulate them?
    - Sharlin 10mo ago
      The fact that it can be used to "justify" almost anything. It obviously doesn't work as a defense in the court, and neither does it work as a justification for doing legal but unethical things.
    - avsteele 10mo ago
      If you want a consequentialist answer: If, for ethical reasons, fewer people were willing to take these jobs, then either salaries would have to rise or the work would be done less effectively. If salaries rise, the business becomes more expensive and harder to scale. If effectiveness drops, the systems are less capable of extracting/using people’s data. Either way, refusing these jobs imposes real friction on the surveillance model. If you want a deontological answer: You have a responsibility not to participate in unethical behavior, even if someone else would.
- cryptonym 10mo ago
  Where do you draw the line? Ready to do anything for money as long as it seems legal-ish or your ass is covered by hierarchy?
  - abirch 10mo ago
    If something should not be done: make it illegal. Trying to have a gentlemen's agreement not to do something seems like a futile position.
    - cryptonym 10mo ago
      Having you own morale and ethics is far from futile. Each individual should be able to question the law and object taking part in something they don't agree, as long as it doesn't break the law. Killing someone is legal in certain countries for different reasons (I'm not talking about war). Not sure I would like to get involved in that business, for instance if I don't agree on how and why people are sentenced to death in my country. Some people are built with low ethics. Sure, if it's not made illegal, they'll always find someone to do it. Looks like in that case it might be illegal, as TV makers are sued.
- catoc 10mo ago
  This attitude is the reason “someone is going to get paid”. If you see a unattended laptop in a coffeeshop, do you steal it because “someone will steal it, so it might as well be me”?
  - nertirs3 10mo ago
    Why stop here? We can also blame the people, who implemented such features on the TVs, the people who worked at companies, who used data acquired by these devices for advertisement, the people who worked on the mentioned ads for such devices and the people who bought products from companies, that spend money on such marketing techniques. At this point you might as well blame the average guy for global warming...
    - acrump 10mo ago
      The average guy is exactly the person responsible for global warming. The evil of the world is just the meta accumulation of the average person following their mirco incentives.
  - aliceryhl 10mo ago
    Where I'm from, it probably would not be stolen by anyone.
vrosas 10mo ago
The perils of the capitalist system man. For what’s its worth, I left adtech many moons ago specifically because it is a horrifyingly depressing industry and very very not fun to talk about at parties.
- godelski 10mo ago
  I'm glad you got out, but given your vantage point what would you say to those who feel pressured to do these types of jobs? Would you say more "it isn't worth it" or "if you have to... but get out as fast as possible" or something else?
  - notyourwork 10mo ago
    Money pays the bills. It’s probably not deeply rooted.
    - godelski 10mo ago
      Forgive me, but I'd actually like to hear vrosas's response or someone else with a similar background. I appreciate you trying to answer my question and help try to make me informed, but I don't want to hear speculation, especially the rather obvious ones. That's not helping, it just adds more noise to the conversation and discourages a response by them. We all know money pays the bills, no one needs to hear that. But hey, if that's what they say, then you'll be proven right. So let's wait and find out. I really do want to understand their mentality. I hope you do too because how else do we break the cycle?
      - freedomben 10mo ago
        I've talked to a lot of engineers building DRM technology, and most of them are just a combination of swept up in the fun of the challenge, and also deeply bought into the idea of protecting intellectual property. I would say probably 90% don't see any philosophical issues with what they're building at all. If you can convince them of that, quite a few of them would probably try to get out, but it's quite an uphill battle. I forget who said the quote and the exact words, but something along the lines of it's very difficult to disabuse somebody of a belief when their livelihood depends on believing it. As someone who was in an industry that I later discovered was doing things I wasn't personally ethically okay with, I would advise them to do similar to me. Start looking for a new gig and just get out as soon as you can. Unfortunately as an individual there just isn't much you can do. There will always be someone willing to do the job that you aren't willing to do. Just get out and find something you can sleep at night doing

kleiba 10mo ago

> you have zero privacy Is this data linked to me personally in some way (e.g. though an account) or is it anonymous data?

xnx 10mo ago
Personally identifiable. Most smart TVs force a login to connect to the Internet or even use at all.
everdrive 10mo ago
They can definitely work out who you are from your IP address. (or get close enough that the advertisers don't care) Not too many people are putting a VPN on their router and using throwaway accounts for their smart TVs. This might be difficult anyhow if your log into major services such as Amazon, etc, who will know who you are. I'm not saying this is impossible to avoid, but it ends up being a LOT of work when the alternative is just not connecting the TV to the internet and using a laptop / Apple TV / etc. instead.

c16 10mo ago

Would love to know what are the best things we can do to prevent this sort of tracking in general. PiHole? Don't re-use emails? On a scale of 1 to fucked are we cooked?

everdrive 10mo ago

This is really interesting. Can you expand on this? What are OTT and DSP in this context? Do you have a sense for what data is tracked and how it's used? Or if this sort of system is blind in certain cases? (eg: I hook up an N64 to the a/v ports -- will I get retro game ads on the TV?)

vrosas 10mo ago
OTT = over the top = ads that aren't shown on cable ("linear") DSP = demand-side platform = real-time bidding on ad space on behalf of advertisers What data is tracked? Don't think we can see what's plugged into the TV if it's not connected to the internet but besides that... all of it... If we have your TV we know where you live. We know what you're watching (hopefully our customers' ads!). We know all the devices that connect to your home network. We know where those devices go when you leave the house. We know you were driving down this stretch of road when you saw that ad on that billboard or on the side of that truck ("out-of-home" advertising). We know if you saw that ad and then bought something ("conversion" + "attribution"). We know what apps you have downloaded. Did you know Candy Crush is spying on you, too? Did you know Grindr sells your IP address? We likely know your age and your race and how much your home cost and where you went to college and how many kids you have ("segmentation"). Privacy laws have gotten in the way a little bit, but not much - it's less "we can't get this data anymore" and more "here's the hoop(s) we now have to jump through but we still get it". I don't want to freak anyone out. In my time in adtech I never felt like anyone was using this data for anything besides "Please buy more coca-cola..." but you never know. Privacy _can_ exist it's just insanely hard because there's so much money hell-bent on tracking you down.
- salawat 10mo ago
  So, you helped with this... Why?

AJ007 10mo ago

The TV thing isn't a new story, this was public. Everyone should have known about it and no one cared. (I could inset a boilerplate rant about Snowden here) Those datacenters are not being built so that you can talk to ChatGPT all day, they are being built to generate and optimize ads. People who were not previously very suggestible are going to be. People who are suggestible will have their agency sold off to the highest bidder. Avoid owning a TV? Your friends will. Maybe you can not have a FB/IG/WhatsApp account, only use cash, not have a mobile phone, but Meta (or Google, or Apple) can still detect your face in the background of photos/videos and know where you shop, travel and when.

wing-_-nuts 10mo ago

>Not to be alarmist butttt you have zero privacy. Hence why I will never connect my TV to the internet

salawat 10mo ago

Soooo.... Why did you build it for them? You didn't have to further enable it. Despise people who just drop this kind of thing without any hint of repentance or contrition.