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Digital Ads Are Starting To Feel Psychic (theoutline.com)
It seems like everyone these days has had a paranoiac moment where a website advertises something to you that you recently purchased or was gifted without a digital trail. According to a new website called New Organs, which collects first-hand accounts of these moments, "the feeling of being listened to is among the most common experiences, along with seeing the same ads on different websites, and being tracked via geo-location," reports The Outline. The website was created by Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne, two Brooklyn-based artists whose work explores the intersections of technology and society. From the report: "We are stuck in this 20th century idea of spying, of wiretapping and hidden microphones," said Brain. "But really there is this whole new sensory apparatus, a complicated entanglement of online trackers and algorithms that are watching over us." It is this new sensory apparatus that Brain and Lavigne metaphorically refer to as "new organs," as if the online surveillance framework used by social media platforms like Facebook has somehow transfigured into a semi-living organism. "These new organs don't actually need to listen to your voice to know that you like Japanese knives," Lavigne told me. "They actually have ways of coming to know things about you that we don't fully understand yet." In other words, these new methods of data collection have become so uncannily accurate in their knowledge of you as to occasionally feel indistinguishable from actual ears listening in on and understanding intimate conversations.
There are a few things that we do already know about these new "organs" of data processing, as defined by Brain and Lavigne. We know, for instance, that they have an insatiable appetite for personal data. They gather this by first tracking online activity, which is enough to tell them what people like, what they search for, what they listen to, what they read, where they're walking for dinner, and also, worryingly, who their friends are and what they like, read, purchase -- data that is gathered without their awareness. But, then, the organs also gather information purchased from commercial data brokers about people's offline lives, like how many credit cards they own, what their income is, and what they purchase when they go grocery shopping. And all of this information is triangulated with friends' data, because if they know what those dear to you are buying -- a Japanese knife, for instance -- there is a good chance that that person will be interested in that very same thing. The new organs process this enormous amount of information to break you down into categories, which are sometimes innocuous like, "Listens to Spotify" or "Trendy Moms," but can also be more sensitive, identifying ethnicity and religious affiliation, or invasively personal, like "Lives away from family." More than this, the new organs are being integrated with increasingly sophisticated algorithms, so they can generate predictive portraits of you, which they then sell to advertisers who can target products that you don't even know you want yet.
There are a few things that we do already know about these new "organs" of data processing, as defined by Brain and Lavigne. We know, for instance, that they have an insatiable appetite for personal data. They gather this by first tracking online activity, which is enough to tell them what people like, what they search for, what they listen to, what they read, where they're walking for dinner, and also, worryingly, who their friends are and what they like, read, purchase -- data that is gathered without their awareness. But, then, the organs also gather information purchased from commercial data brokers about people's offline lives, like how many credit cards they own, what their income is, and what they purchase when they go grocery shopping. And all of this information is triangulated with friends' data, because if they know what those dear to you are buying -- a Japanese knife, for instance -- there is a good chance that that person will be interested in that very same thing. The new organs process this enormous amount of information to break you down into categories, which are sometimes innocuous like, "Listens to Spotify" or "Trendy Moms," but can also be more sensitive, identifying ethnicity and religious affiliation, or invasively personal, like "Lives away from family." More than this, the new organs are being integrated with increasingly sophisticated algorithms, so they can generate predictive portraits of you, which they then sell to advertisers who can target products that you don't even know you want yet.
And don't have this problem.
Advertising stopped working on me about 25 years ago. The internet CURED me of being able to watch advertising. My computers have Every form of ad blocker known to man on them. And any adds that DO get through, go on the "Do not buy" list. because they "Annoyed" me. GOOD LUCK ADVERTISERS ;-P
It seems like everyone these days has had a paranoiac moment where a website advertises something to you that you recently purchased or was gifted without a digital trail
That doesn't feel like someone reading my mind at all. To me it feels more like someone peering in my windows and following constantly.
I'm pretty sure most people find it just as creepy as I do, even non-technical people I know have mentioned this un-prompted and also that they found it creepy.
Companies have to be really careful using techniques like this, because they often fail in horrible ways that paints the company with a brush they would not want if they knew.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I keep hearing Amazon and Google and all of these companies bragging about how incredible their AI are and all of these places telling us how unbelievably accurate their ad tracking and advertising methods are for targeting an individual.
Then I go online (to Amazon or anywhere else) and the ads I get are for the thing I *just* fucking bought yesterday.
Hey, dipshit... how many 65" widescreen HDTVs do you think I'm in the market for this week? The time to try and sell me one was *before* I bought one yesterday. Not after.
Sorry, but AI has yet to be more than a bunch of "if then else" loops. I don't give a fuck. Bots aren't taking over jack shit in this century when they can't even figure out when I'm less likely to buy a $5k tv.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Google Analytics is what makes things look "psychic".
I was wondering why my iPad, which doesn't have any blockers, always shows ads for the last things I shopped for from companies I shopped at.
Common denominator that made the ads look "psychic"?
Google Analytics.
Ghostery and uBlock are pretty good.
These days, 1% is good
In a previous life (Xanaro), we were doing bound-in ads in a print pub, and knew we would have succeeded sy a 3% response rate.
These days, advertisers struggle for 1%, which means they're doing something rather badly
davecb@spamcop.net
I use cash for anything up into the $200-$300 range, maybe higher than that if I plan ahead. That way they don't get any tracking information from me. I recently had to break down and order a dryer door switch on-line after not being able to find it locally. After that I kept getting advertisements for dry door switches. How many of them do they think I need?
Was in Target with the wife and kids. Wife was grabbing a few things off one aisle while I turned down the coffee maker aisle and waited on her. I was killing time and talking to the kids in our cart. Wasn't looking at coffee makers. Had not shopped for them on the web either. We don't talk about coffee makers, because we have one. That night on my Facebook feed: coffee makers! Oodles and oodles of the fucking things!
A few weeks later, a buddy is over visiting and we are in the garage having a beer. I told him my wife wants me to get a shed for the yard equipment. Conversation ends there. Here comes Facebook with tool sheds!
My wife was talking to her cousin about how her brother rented a bounce house for his kid's birthday. Bounce houses in her facebook feed!
I then realized my phone's microphone was enabled for Facebook, so I turned it off. Facebook denies they do this citing the demands of data, but I think their denial highly dubious given they can easily look for keywords to make ads relevant.
I guess Target could uniquely identify me and track my position in the store via wifi and, since I likely it isn't unreasonable I opened the Facebook app in the store, I was waiting to have that data linked to my profile.
On some other spying notes, my company has banned Alexa in all corporate offices since she records and stores everything and that data can be subpoenaed. Also, I recently heard Alexa maybe serving your hotel room! Next time you're in a hotel, just start talking to Alexa and see if she answers. You may get a sneak peak at the new service they're planning on rolling out!
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
It's not about storage space, in this case. It's about searching through 20,000 lines several times each time you load a page. Suppose a page calls resources from five different domains. The system then has to go through those 20,000 lines five times before it can start loading the page.
With that many entries, it's about time to instead run named in a caching configuration (the default for some distributions), except add the blacklisted entries. Alternatively, put the blacklist in a browser extension so it never even asks the system to look up the name, and then try to connect to 127.0.0.2 or whatever you point it at.
It sounds like we have a branding problem and should probably pull together a quick focus group.
Or if we could let the AI know about who we WANT to be, to get pushed in that direction: e.g. healthy food, education opportunities, etc. That would be nice too.
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.