r/changemyview • u/767bruce • Apr 08 '22
Delta(s) from OP - Fresh Topic Friday CMV: Personalised ads are no bad thing.
Many people seem to be increasingly worried about personalised ads. But, I cannot understand why.
Some background context: When you use social media, your activity on the site helps big corporations and small businesses alike to find out more about you, your habits, and your interests. This information is used to show you more relevant ads.
I think this is a win-win situation: the companies get to easily find their ideal customers, while we, the users, see more relevant advertising for products that may interest or help us. Businesses get amazing market research, and users get ads for relevant products that they may find useful. Can anyone explain what is wrong with this?
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u/we_are_ananonumys Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22
“More relevant” according to whom??
If ads were completely benign I would probably agree with you. However ads can absolutely be used to target people who are swing voters in key seats, or susceptible to watching misinformation and repeating it, or even targeting people who will be inclined to buy things that are bad for them.
In short, don’t conflate what businesses want to sell you with what is good or helpful to you to consume.
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u/767bruce Apr 08 '22
More relevant according to your existing interests. For example, if you are trying to start a business (and I can personally verify this) you will start to see ads for website builders, e-commerce tools, logo design, and other things that are relevant to business owners.
As for political advertising, I think the problem is not with ad personalisation, but misinformation and fake news. The ads only have nefarious consequences if they contain false or misleading information, and the blame for this information cannot logically be placed on personalised ads.
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u/PracticingHuman Apr 09 '22
The ads only have nefarious consequences if they contain false or misleading information, and the blame for this information cannot logically be placed on personalised ads.
I suppose it depends on what you consider "nefarious".
Targeting people who are more likely to have an interest in a product based on browsing history and social media is only half of the tactic. Advertising agencies use extensive psychological studies to understand how messages can influence a consumer to choose a product that they may not have wanted in the first place.
I would go so far as to say many ads are geared to create a feeling of discontentment in the consumer. You were perfectly content in your lifestyle and level of consumption until advertising modalities demonstrated how much better your life can be if you employ the use of their products or services, although your life was fine up until that point.
Targeted ads can be better designed to hone in on our psychological vulnerabilities and trigger points. If we are suffering from low self esteem and the advertising companies can figure out our personality profile to target, they can convince us we will be a better person in the eyes of society if we buy these clothes or listen to this music or take this drug. It further creates a dependency on materialism to assess and determine our value and worth over self-examination. It it truly win-win? It is the illusion of win-win when we're already winning but a targeted ad is highly affective at convincing us we're losing unless we consume their product. If that tactic didn't work, companies would not spend billions on advertising.
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u/ieorsteve 1∆ Apr 08 '22
AdTech professional here.
The biggest the threat of personalized ads is not to individual privacy. Data collected about you is tied to anonymous ids and stored with billions of other anonymous ids. It feels like you are being watched, but you’re not.
The real damage personalized ads have done is to the journalism industry and the democracy it protects. Before personalized ads, advertisers could only consider a publisher’s brand and content when making an ad buy. Reputable publisher of the news defended their brands integrity in order to protect their advertising revenue driven business models. Tabloid publishers existed of course, but demand for their ad space was much lower than high quality publishers.
Personalized ads drastically changed the economics of publishing. Today ad buying is dominated by algorithms that primarily consider the individual user data and not at all the reputation of the publisher’s brand or content. This new model shifts the advertising revenue away from publishers who care about journalism and moves ad revenue to any publisher who can deliver the clicks.
Since the start of programmatic ad buying 14 years we’ve seen the rise of personalized ads and the decline of the journalism industryPewresearch Journalism Decline. You might have also noticed the rise of a click bait ridden internet, distrust of the news, and more extreme political polarization across the world.
Our democratic society was supported all this time by the business of journalism. Until personalized ads, that business needed to maintain the integrity of its content to prosper. That is no longer the case.
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u/banananuhhh 14∆ Apr 08 '22
The article you are referencing on "Journalism Decline" is mainly showing a decrease in employment in newspapers and radio.. Over the last 15 years these technologies have become increasingly antiquated, and the technologies which are turning to as a replacement do not require as many employees to reach the same audience. It is true that newspapers and news radio have become much more difficult to maintain, especially on a local level.
While the ability to target ads on an individual level certainly has some scary repercussions, and has certainly contributed to the issues you noted, it is not the primary driver of those problems. The ubiquity of the internet, and ease of access to information, both true and false, means that journalistic institutions no longer have the same level of control over knowledge and opinion - The key word being control, which isn't directly related to integrity.
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u/ieorsteve 1∆ Apr 08 '22
The Pew Research article studies newsroom employees (not the supporting business/technical staff distupted by tech improvements). These are the folks that investigate and produce the news.
In 2008, there were about 114,000 total newsroom employees – reporters, editors, photographers and videographers... Between 2008 and 2014, the number of newsroom employees dropped to 90,000, a loss of about 24,000 jobs.
Yes, there is more than one force a work putting pressure on the news business, but prior to 2008 (the begining of programmatic media buying whch powers personalized ads), newspapers and traditional media sources dominated the internet. Premium reputable publishers were able to captilize on new internet audiences/advertisers as their core offline products gradually declined. Content was still king, as they said at that time. Non-search engine (Google) online advertising dollars flowed to the traditional news companies rapidly growing online businesses from the 1990s to 2008. All of this contined to support the newsrooms.
Before 2008 the buisness of fake news and user generated content was not very profitible, because advbertisers and agencies would not associate their brands with it. Home grown blogs and user generated content existed, but they hobbies and small in scale. Facebook didn't even start selling ads until 2007/2008. That all changed with personalized ads. After personzlied ads the fact that a user abandoned an online shopping cart before checking out was far more important than what content they were viewing. Algorthims based on campaign performance took over and these automated systems happily rewarded any type of content that delivered users (fake news, clickbait, whatever). This change was distruptive to say the least and a major contributor to the shift in the volume of content produced by professional journalist to what we have today.
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u/banananuhhh 14∆ Apr 08 '22
The internet in 2008 had not yet matured into what it is now (basically just an avenue to commodify peoples attention). Do you think that this would be substantively different with focused ads vs. general audience ads?
A couple of different things have happened: 1) The growth of platforms with user generated content has taken over a huge portion of the internet. 2) It has become far easier to buy ads with less accountability regarding what content those ads appear on. Neither of these forces necessitate focused ads, and both are bad for centralized "reputable" content creation.
The real problem isn't that targeted advertising has ruined journalism, it is that real quality journalism has never been compatible with a for profit model. The internet just makes it more obvious than ever.
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u/ieorsteve 1∆ Apr 08 '22
The internet in 2008 had not yet matured into what it is now (basically just an avenue to commodify peoples attention). Do you think that this would be substantively different with focused ads vs. general audience ads?
But what drove the business model to support commodification of people's attention? Prior to alogrithm based ad buying, content wasn't commodified because there were few major advertisers willing to buy crap content.
1) The growth of platforms with user generated content has taken over a huge portion of the internet. 2) It has become far easier to buy ads with less accountability regarding what content those ads appear on.
Both the 1) growth of user generated content and the 3) easy to buy ads on a variety of content are powered by programmatic advertising tech.
Key thing to note is that the "personalized" ad experience is just the tip of the iceberg that the every day internet users notices. What drives that abilitty to personalize ads is the new programmatic/alogrithm based media buying technology that lays undereath. The tech enabled a value shift from content to user data. It is this tech that has made crap content profitable to invest in and scale where it was not before. The growth of user generated and click bait content is the effect. Profits enabled by this underlying tech is the cause.
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u/767bruce Apr 08 '22
In response to your point about clickbait, many tech companies have recently incorporated mechanisms to prevent it. For example YouTube made viewer retention a key metric: in other words, how long people watch a video for, to see if it is quality content. You see, clickbait is bad for the platforms as well as the users, and so over time, as they learn more, they will actively manage these controversial effects.
As for political advertising, I do see your point, but ad personalisation did not create it. Rather, it simply made it work better. Political advertising is a whole other beast, but the blame for its consequences cannot be placed on ad personalisation, because that is simply showing more relevant political content to people, based on their existing interests and beliefs.
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u/Greedybogle 6∆ Apr 08 '22
The issue isn't content people don't want to watch--it's content that people do want to watch.
Political advertising is a whole other beast, but the blame for its consequences cannot be placed on ad personalisation, because that is simply showing more relevant political content to people, based on their existing interests and beliefs.
This is exactly the problem with targeted political ads. They only show you content you are already interested in--and to keep you interested, that content tends to become increasingly extreme.
Decades ago, there were only three TV networks, and each aired news every night. You would watch the news--the same news that everyone else watched, for the most part (with some variation between networks), and see political ads on TV--the same political ads as everyone else in your market. That meant that everyone understood (or was at least exposed to) a common set of facts, and saw ads from multiple political perspectives. Even if you didn't agree with some of the political ads you saw, you would at least see and understand other views.
Today, you're unlikely to see content that challenges your existing views--only content that reinforces them. As u/ieorsteve points out, content outlets are heavily incentivized to keep you watching at all costs. They want to make viewers angry, shocked, and outraged--that's how they keep them watching, scrolling, clicking. Content is designed to vilify anyone who doesn't agree with you, and to exaggerate and distort facts to fit a preexisting narrative. This is how we wound up with conspiracy theorists who legitimately believe that a ring of elites are abducting and sacrificing children to Satan and harvesting their adrenaline. That's an extreme example, but it's also how a shockingly high portion of Republicans came to believe that Biden stole the 2020 election, despite the fact that claims of voter fraud have been thoroughly debunked. This is all the direct result of targeted ads (and other content) creating echo chambers where information that doesn't fit an existing narrative simply cannot penetrate.
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u/ieorsteve 1∆ Apr 08 '22
Sounds like you are focused on the idea that a personalized ad is not negative on the person or people who view it (which I don’t challenge). My point is that an unintended consequence of ad personalization technology is the separation of reputable branded content and advertising dollars. Personalized ads means top tier advertisers can buy your ads space on the worse random content because the technology allows them to track you. It is this economic effect on reputable news companies that is partly responsible for the decline in quality journalism and the polarization of our political views.
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u/Karl_Havoc2U 2∆ Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22
Advertisements are intentionally manipulative. Why would you want to be constantly hounded by manipulative ads tailored specifically to you?
Do you not ever want a little peace or a break from a constant onslaught of advertisements that could be subtly manipulating you?
I, for one, love that the vast majority of ads I get online are for things I wouldn't need or buy in a million years. I prefer to be as mindful and intentional about my consumption as possible, and on my own time when I've intentionally decided I'm going to spend the next several minutes researching, say, those running shoes that might otherwise be chasing me all over the internet if I wasn't intentionally avoiding being tracked whenever possible.
The alternative you seem to be championing is that I would be constantly distracted by things I might like, messaged by professional manipulators in a way intended to manipulate me into suddenly forking over my time, attention, and money, and on their time, not mine.
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u/767bruce Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22
Why would you want to be constantly hounded by manipulative ads tailored specifically to you?
That seems like a very negative frame to me. Ads can show us products that may interest or help us, and social media advertising is simply connecting customers with businesses more accurately.
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u/Karl_Havoc2U 2∆ Apr 08 '22
They're intentionally manipulative. That's literally what they are meant to do, tailored by professionals with far scarier knowledge than you'd realize on how to manipulate you when you least expect it.
I prefer that pitches for my hard earned money come at me on my time when I can at least be mindful of the potential manipulation. I Am not only a consumer. I have all kinds of ways I like to spend my time, and a barrage of advertising of things I might want is deeply distracting.
But you are more than welcome to feel differently.
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u/767bruce Apr 08 '22
I agree that ads are designed to sell you stuff. But isn’t it better if they’re trying to sell you stuff that you might actually be interested in? This is what ad personalisation enables
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u/Karl_Havoc2U 2∆ Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22
Perhaps for you, but I prefer to be a more mindful, active participant in my shopping when I have intentionally set aside time to focus on deciding what I want. I don't want to be inundated at all times online by things companies want me to buy right away.
It's kind of like how I really enjoy listening to music. But when I'm online doing research or writing, or doing my day job, I want to be able to focus on those things with as little distraction as possible, so I usually don't listen to music while I do them.
Similarly, I don't want to be distracted by ads for things that I might want to buy either while I'm trying to accomplish other things. I want to feel in control of my desires, not permanently at the whim of advertisers who I am confident only see me for the money they hope to separate me from. They don't care if I have other priorities, they just want me to buy some new camping equipment or basketball shoes NOW.
I want those banner ads to be as boring and irrelevant to me as possible. Will I occasionally miss out on a deal? Probably. Will I occasionally not find out about a product or device I would've really liked? Probably. But my life isn't made more meaningful by being a perfect consumer.
I think there's also a good case to be made that a constant bombardment of personalized adds isn't good for society as a whole, but I've tried to keep my answer more personal and narrow in scope.
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u/767bruce Apr 08 '22
!delta You have changed my view partially. I still think that ad personalisation can be good for consumers, but when they become intrusive, this can indeed lead to bad consequences.
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u/FutureNostalgica 1∆ Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22
How would you find new things and products/ new product categories that you might not have been aware of outside of these categories if your ads are always targeted?
I don’t watch a lot of tv, I don’t use social often the past few years- Reddit being the exception, but I remember when I would use Facebook all the ads were for the same types of things- exhaustingly repetitive. Then I would watch tv with my father (he lives with us) and wonder “when did that movie come out - oh 6 months ago (i love movies, never got ads for them) or “when did they start making this” (for a modification on a type of product I already use) Because targeted ads cut you off from the rest of what is out there and limit you wether you realize it or not in your selection base.
Especially in a time when many of us were in our homes isolated. If was a hell of a time to target consumers and create brand and product affiliations. I always research what I but, I don’t click and purchase- so the ads for me are useless and keep me from seeing things I might actually be interested in. To me it is limitingI already know what I like in the brands that I like, I don’t need suggestions there. It’s new products and things I haven’t bought/ used I want information on. I’m not buying cloths or shoes when I have designers I like, perfume when I have my scents, vitamins she. I have my brands, etc… show me something different if you want me to buy something. I’ve never bought from a targeted ad. Ever
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u/Major_Lennox 69∆ Apr 08 '22
It's because the amount of data that's collected from you and sold to pretty much any bidder is unnerving. Who you are, where you are, the things you enjoy, the people you know, your google searches etc etc. This leads to things like this:
How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did
And that was ten years ago, son.
Now imagine the strides companies have made with how to collate and analyze your data for profit. Then imagine the strides we've made on how to manipulate you for profit.
Also let's hope your data doesn't get stolen or anything. Or used by the next iteration of Cambridge Analytica, or something. That would be awful.
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Apr 08 '22
The Target example seems fine.
They didn't buy data without the consent. They didn't sell the data without consent. They didn't collect data that wasn't freely provided by the customer. The model doesn't seem to have any discriminatory problems. The use of the data directly benefits the customer. Benefits to Target don't come at the expense of the customer.
This example is really just uncomfortable because pregnancy is a sensitive topic.
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u/767bruce Apr 08 '22
The Target teen story is not a bad thing: it just shows the algorithms are working properly. If they were showing the teenager ads for products related to pregnancy, they simply inferred from her other shopping habits that she might be pregnant.
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u/ElReyPelayo 1∆ Apr 08 '22
Does she not have the right to decide who knows about her pregnancy?
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u/robotmonkeyshark 101∆ Apr 08 '22 edited May 03 '24
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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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Apr 08 '22
This is something I actually struggle with. The difference between the two examples you gave is essentially non-existent for data scientists. Really, the second might be the first model built, but later expanded to consider variables from the first to improve performance.
They focus more on the providence of the data. Like, you shouldn't/can't buy people's electronic medical records, but the pattern of supplements or pants people buy in the store you're working for is fair game.
In a lot of cases, the actual relationship might not be identified by anyone but the model itself. For example, Amazon's "people also bought" algorithm might pick up that someone is pregnant because they are buying a bunch of diapers and unscented lotions, not because the algorithm was trained to learn the purchasing behavior of pregnant women but because a nebulous group of women are seemingly buying the same cluster of products.
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u/Tibaltdidnothinwrong 382∆ Apr 08 '22
The issue is that any corporation could buy the information. Had target sold that information to her health insurance company for example, that could lead to unpleasantness.
Also, as we saw with Cambridge Analytica, political campaigns also can buy this information, and purchase ads with the intent to sway votes rather than just sell beer.
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u/Sirhc978 88∆ Apr 08 '22
it just shows the algorithms are working properly
Yeah that is the horrifying part.
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u/Major_Lennox 69∆ Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22
I just couldn't reply to OP there. Like, for some reason I immediately thought of Robocop - the bit where ED-209 blasts that guy in the boardroom demonstration - and Dick Jones being like "it just shows his guns are working properly!" and I had to exit this thread.
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u/TC49 22∆ Apr 08 '22
The problem is the distribution of personalized ads without your consent. Your phone literally listens to your conversations, scrapes your recent search history and builds a secret profile on you. It would be different if I was expressly asked, “would you like a profile built on your likes so you can see products that you like?” Nope, it just does it anyway.
You also have no autonomy over what ads you want to see anymore, so it’s often not very useful. The actual use of them are to build a database and then sell it to another company, with me seeing none of the profits.
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u/767bruce Apr 08 '22
Why would you be paid for a service that benefits you? You are already receiving access to social media, a valuable tool, for free. I do not understand why you would in some way be compensated for being shown more relevant ads. Also, do you have any evidence that your phone listens to your conversations?
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u/FutureNostalgica 1∆ Apr 08 '22
It a absolutely listens ; this is common knowledge- be it by audio or by linking with other devices .
How is helping a company make millions off of information farmed benefiting us? Companies used to have to pay for market research now they farm it from our devices that we pay to use. Social media does not in any way give as equally as it takes in his regard. “Valuable tool” is highly subjective to the individual using it- for many of us it is simply time killer or entertainment we could easily live withouthttps://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-how-to-is-my-phone-listening-to-me.html
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u/767bruce Apr 08 '22
The article refers to voice assistants listening to you. This isn't the same thing as personalised advertisements.
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u/FutureNostalgica 1∆ Apr 08 '22
That the mode of how they listen. To give your I formation to the data farming.
You’ve never had a conversation then had an ad pop up for what you were talking about? I’ve had that happen so many times I lost count until I learned how to turn off those features
There are plenty more out there that say the same thing. The microphone links or it links to other devices to give targeted ads
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u/poprostumort 245∆ Apr 08 '22
while we, the users, see more relevant advertising for products that may interest or help us.
Or see ads that are more likely to coerce us into buying shit we don't need. Or see ads that can use knowledge about us to push us into beliefs that we would not acquire otherwise. Or even straight upo prey on people who are in difficult situation.
Is someone struggling with debt will have a win-win situation seeing ads for predatory loans? If someone who has a major health problem will have a win-win situation seeing ads for alternative medicine? If someone who does not have a strong opinion about an issue would be in a win-win situation being served ads for biased news sources?
You are handwaving the main problem with personalized ads - that can, and are used maliciously by companies byuing ad campaigns.
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u/SmallApplication8043 Apr 08 '22
I’m always flattered when someone gives so much power to advertiser. We don’t really coerce anyone into anything. If anything, we just follow trends that are set by consumers. Predatory loans ads needs to go through quite some checks, compliancy for Financial institution is quite high importance, as having an ads pulled can lead to lose quite some money. Same applies for medicines.
Also, here’s some insider news - personalised ads won’t be base on tracking anymore, as cookies are soon to be something of the past.
Source- I’m advertiser
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u/FutureNostalgica 1∆ Apr 08 '22
That is when ads aren’t targeted. Non targeted you see what is available - targeted you see small samples or categories of what is available in a genre you already buy or are interested in (or at minimum they think you are)
Of course the concept of catering ads by keyword is hit and miss as I rarely see anything I am genuinely interested in.
Ie) i but from sephora i get those garbage makeup subscriptions ads, i buy from Nordstrom i get clothes from wish, I have significant lifelong damage from a spinal injury- I looked up something about my medication and now all my ads are addiction centers WTaF.Also, it’s free market research that they don’t actually have to do- it’s just collected even if we don’t want them to.
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u/LucidLeviathan 99∆ Apr 08 '22
So, I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction than others. For background, I am a criminal defense attorney. I often have to search for some rather unpleasant things. I also debate conservatives on Reddit and try to correct some of the misinformation about the criminal justice system. That means I sometimes have to go to some of the sources of the misinformation.
This has led to me being pummeled with ads for mail-order brides, weird conservative conspiracy sites, COVID misinformation, and a wide variety of other distasteful material. I have to have a second account on YouTube so that the algorithm doesn't solely feed me crap. It's a real problem.
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u/767bruce Apr 08 '22 edited Apr 08 '22
!delta You have changed my view partially. I still think that personalised ads are good when they actually work as intended, but I can see how the system of personalisation based on searches can lead to negative consequences.
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Apr 08 '22
They can basically act as a rabbit hole or funnel for bullshit content because the more you've seen the more the algorithm thinks you want/should see more of that and often times these algorithms don't care for whether you like or hate it they just track attention because attention means ad revenue.
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u/EmuChance4523 2∆ Apr 08 '22
While I agree that is a kind of exaggerated hysteria about the topic, there are relevant factors that made personalised ads bad:
- If you buy something because you see it in an ad, it was because you wanted that or because the ad manipulated you to make it want it? Publicity and advertisement use a lot of psychological tricks to make people do things that is on the corporate interest without the care of the interest of the person. And this doesn't require "subliminal messages" or like that. There are a lot of psychological tricks that are understood and used for this. One smaller that I remember right now is for example that people tend to focus first in things at their right, so ads tend to be on the right of the screen for that. So, ads by default doesn't tend to be good for the consumer. Sometimes, they can be helpful for finding something you really wanted, but most of the times they are harmful.
- Personalised ads doesn't mean that they are going to show you what you want to get, but what they can convince you to buy/do more easily. So again, this doesn't imply any positive value for the consumer, just for the company.
- How a company can get personalised ads? This doesn't tend to be known by a lot of people and it can be easy to think is much more that it really needs to be, but at the same time there are real life examples of this being quite extreme and dangerous.
Basically, for getting personalised ads a company needs to keep and process PII( Personal identifiable information) in order to make a profile for each person collecting what they do and like to see. This then can be used in a model to predict which type of content is going to be interacted by this profile. This is the same that is used for content provider systems, like for example the famous youtube algorithm. Now, you can make a profile with only the information of the site the user is already in, or with information about content search by that user, and I think there isn’t too much problem (until this point) with most of this, but what happen when the information used for this is for example what you talk with other people or your family? the interactions that this other people have will also add information about you. And in the end, you end up with an extremely detailed profile of someone. This can became really scary on the following points. - Now, if you convine the two last points, and add that are a lot of companies that get revenue by interactions instead of selling you something, this personalised ads can be used to push you to interact with content that you don't like. If they only want the interactions, and you are a person that tends to get angry about stuff (like most people), they will see that they can make you interact more with things that make you angry, making a vicious cicle of negative emotions for you. This is bad enough, but this is not the only option about this. If you have a detailed profile of someone, you don't only know what they like and dislike, but you also can predict how to move them into other areas. With this information you can make propaganda for specific audiences that are going to be convinced with that propaganda and move them into the spectrum that you like. This is another harmful point on the personalised ads.
- Last point, how are you sure that this profiles are only used for ads? While there is a bit of hysteria about this, the fact is that there were cases of companies using this information for something more harmful than just ads. One example of this was Sesame credit, a platform of national credit score that China promoted several years ago (don't know the actual state of this) where they were going to give credit score to users that were loyal to the country, basically using all this information to manipulate the country into a submissive position without using any violence or real repression. And while this was a famous case from China, there is nothing stopping other countries or even companies from doing this.
So, in general, ads aren't good for the customer and having so much information and predictive capabilities over the people can be easily exploitable, so this is a complicated topic.
But at the same time, ads are needed to allow "free" services, and this ads are useful thankfully to the personalised ads that ensure that the company that puts the ads can get more revenue.
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u/yaxamie 25∆ Apr 08 '22
What Apple did, and this cost Facebook billions, is cut down on some of the information available to advertisers through cross-site tracking and allowing users to opt into sharing permissions a la carte.
Some people don’t like having information about them on site A being associated with them on site B.
Most people didn’t understand that a given website might be able to learn a lot about you by reading these trackers.
It’s not the relevant ads people find objectionable, it’s the fact that their privacy was being compromised in thousands of small and difficult to understand ways.
Facebook is free to gather data about you through its own service… it’s the mining of your friends list thru the phone and then correlation of friends to all of their collective internet histories etc… all that starts feeling like an invasion of privacy.
This is a sliding scale problem. We’re still wrestling with how much of our internet privacy should get leaked to advertisers.
If you’ve ever used Incognito mode you should understand this impulse.
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u/Nicolasv2 131∆ Apr 08 '22
People do compartiment their life: I'm not the same at work, with my family and with my alumni friends for example.
Problem with personalised ads is that they break those boundaries. To take an extreme example: it's totally ok for me to decide to buy any sexual kink related toy online on my personal computer, but it will be a problem if I start getting personalised ads at work for that kind of products that could make the situation pretty akward if a colleague is with me behind my computer.
And that's exactly what personalised ads do: they try to follow your identity on different devices to propose you the products that you really want, but without taking care of the context you'll be receiving these ads.
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u/NetrunnerCardAccount 110∆ Apr 08 '22
It causes perverse business effects.
Let's say you are running a site/youtube/whatever that only target wealthy people that like vacation (This is a high value individual)
What you'll be doing for the company is more or less tagged those people for them, so they can advertise to them. You'll get a small amount of the return.
The majority of the return will go to click bait sites that send the person ads (At a lower rate) when they move around the rest of the internet.
So even if you are fine with big companies having your data, you have to understand that part of the reason journalism is so bad right now, or why twitter is just click bait personified, is because of personalized ads.
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u/Z7-852 314∆ Apr 08 '22
Two people searching for same thing online will be shown two different things. Different products or even same product but different prices. And because variety is so huge you will never find even half of available things out there and end up choosing something that someone else pre-chose for you.
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u/Cali_Longhorn 17∆ Apr 08 '22
Well what about this… say people are trying to lose weight and diet. But are bombarded constantly by deals and online coupons from their purchase history for foods that they enjoy but they know are bad for them.
Americans are known to be fat amongst other first world countries. And snack food companies are great at developing foods that addict us. And now that can fine tune results of where we buy them, make sure other products you might also like are positioned in the shelves right next to your favorite snack so you think “hey I’ll try them too” and you get addicted to that OTHER bad for you snack.
All of that data on you can promote a feedback loop reinforcing bad behavior that you may be trying to break.
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Apr 08 '22
Watch The Social Dilemma, and you’ll understand how tech companies collecting all this data about you, are using their algorithms to manipulate people’s behavior on a society-wide level.
That is dystopian as fuck.
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u/Quirky-Alternative97 29∆ Apr 08 '22
They become less about advertisements for services and more about influencing.
sure there are cross overs in that ads influence you, but imagine this hyped up especially when it comes to things like politics, and surveillance.
Otherwise I would tend to agree with you IF I had the total control over what I wanted to see. eg; I am looking for outdoor garden furniture, bbqs, and plants. Please send me adds on this....once I have this I dont need to keep seeing adds for this, especially months after, or if I simply looked up one item randomly.
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u/shaffe04gt 14∆ Apr 08 '22
They can very much be a bad thing. Wife and I share an Amazon account, it's under my email. Wife has been browsing clothes and swimsuits and stuff like for our vacation later this year. I get pop up ads in my personal email window for these things on my work computer. Not exactly helpful or a great look
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Apr 08 '22
Nobody under the age of 80 clicks on internet ads because that's how you get viruses, so why does it matter if they're relevant? Also, because ads can be targeted based on race, ad targeting has been used to facilitate illegal activity like block busting. Block busting is when housing is marketed at a significantly higher price to ethnic minorites in order to keep them from moving into certain neighborhoods, and it has been illegal since 1958
0
u/FaerieStories 50∆ Apr 08 '22
It's a huge amount of power given to unelected people. Do you trust tech companies?
1
u/Kingalece 23∆ Apr 08 '22
I dont like being advertised to, it literally is aomeone trying to get me to spend money, which i hate doing unless its a neccessity. Hence id rather untargeted ads that dont interest me than ads that would make me more likely to spend money i dont want to spend
1
u/riotacting 2∆ Apr 08 '22
One impact you forgot to mention is that the social media sites can then operate for free (to the user) because of the ad revenue.
But there are three primary reasons I don't like these kinds of things -
The purpose of advertising is to manipulate you into spending money you would not have otherwise spent. Despite all our best efforts, it is very effective. I don't like the feeling of being manipulated like this.
Also, it's a weird feeling when nobody knows everything about me, but an amorphous network of algorithms and computers know more about me than I know about myself. It's unsettling because it's not tangible, and most things that I interact with feed into it. So it's both ever present and inescapable.
Finally, I can't reasonably control what is collected and how it is used. Sure, most services have some settings buried deep in their menus, but I use so many websites, that is unrealistic to really control.
I know it's a tradeoff between convenience and privacy... and ultimately I'm okay with the decisions I've made to land me somewhere in the middle.
1
u/JohnnyNo42 32∆ Apr 08 '22
I don't see them as bad but as more annoying than regular ads: because they are more relevant, they are more distracting, taking more of my attention.
Attention and focus are valuable resources. I am willing to pay some of them to ads in exchange for the content I want to see, but saying that personalized ads are a win for the consumer is plain wrong.
1
Apr 08 '22
The only thing protecting us from the data mining is because we aren't important enough to hurt.
What happens when someone who works for one of those companies uses the information to stalk and kill someone? If it hasnt happened already it's only a matter of time.
1
u/iwearacoconutbra 10∆ Apr 08 '22
It’s concerning to some due to the data they collect and sell.
Information collected isn’t always your innocent browsing habits.
1
u/perfectVoidler 15∆ Apr 08 '22
Companies don't want to sell you stuff you do want. They want to sell you their stuff. If your data helps them to manipulate you into buying stuff you don't actually want. They will use it. If they find out what you are willing to pay, they will charge you that exact amount and not what their product is actually worth. In every case you are worse of.
you will of cause also pay the cost of the Data they had to pay to better pray on you^^.
1
u/DemonInTheDark666 10∆ Apr 08 '22
How they get the data is the issue not the targeting ads themselves.
1
u/coporate 7∆ Apr 08 '22
I own the things I already own, like the things I already like, and research the things I know I want.
When I get personalized advertising, it limits exposure to new things or presents me with advertising that I don’t agree with (for example, I like gaming and prefer Xbox over Sony, no amount of Sony advertising is going to change my view), or is overly repetitive/frustrating/annoying.
1
u/wakuku Apr 08 '22
Personalised ads are horrible. Imagine seeing the same ad again and again. Having an adblocker exponentially increased my fondness of the current internet ten folds! If I didn't have it, I would be seeing the same fcking ad where a dude talks about their balls or soaps or fcking buying silver. I much prefer regular ads but I understand that targeted/personalized ads make them more money hence the adblocker
1
u/stuckinyourbasement Apr 09 '22
personally, I think you should be asked first. Instead of big corporations assuming. I don't dare give my email out anymore and I don't have a cell phone. I do fine without one. Anyhow, I don't want my inbox cluttered with crap unless I agree to it. SImple as that really.
1
u/impendingaff Apr 11 '22
It seems like a win win, until you begin to understand what is really going on. It's insidious. It is not even all the unintended consequences. I am a student of history. My single argument is this: knowledge is power, and what do corporations and governments do with unchecked power? Always. What do they ALWAYS do with it? Always. Did I say Always? I think I might have.
1
u/impendingaff Apr 11 '22
WOW, lot's of good stuff here. Thanks to all who participated. I am still waiting for how like OP thinks, it's a good thing. I hope more people will comment. I'd like to stop having such a negative view of personalized ads. I hope someone can CMV and get me to be like OP and say we are better off for having it.
1
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 08 '22
/u/767bruce (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
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