Targeted advertising will never feel good, and it's not due to lack of information. Consider the following:
- People who know you very well (friends, family, spouse) often buy you bad gifts you need to pretend to be happy to receive.
- Ultimately, advertisers aren't _merely_ trying to find things you want. They're trying to get you to buy _their_ things. So someone selling (let's say) hamburgers might be savvy enough to avoid vegetarians, but after that how would they possibly narrow it down? Not everyone wants to try out a new burger place, or even cares about advertising when it comes to restaurant suggestions.
ie, they're trying to coerce you into wanting their products, and no amount of targeting can really fix that problem. Also, targeting is difficult.
earthdeity 4 minutes ago [-]
That's true for the advertising companies, but Google or whatever advertiser have a big stake in showing you the ad from the millions they serve that you're most likely to click/buy/complete. So there's no fault on McDonald's part, but if you're a vegetarian, arguably Google is doing McDonalds a disservice as their advertiser by showing you the ad (and won't be doing the user any useful service either).
That said, these algorithms are simple presumably because they work "well enough". Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, there isn't really a lot of meaningful competition in the ad space driving superior targeting. It's more about having the killer network, the list of effective channels (search, youtube, instagram whatever) that is the big players advantage rather than their targeting skills.
BigTTYGothGF 22 minutes ago [-]
A very odd stance. Personally if I'm going to be tracked and advertised to I want it to be things I have absolutely no interest in, even better if it's in a language I don't speak.
ImPostingOnHN 13 minutes ago [-]
Okay, updated the functional spec: occasionally include some ads orthogonal to user interests to prevent backlash to widespread deep surveillance
ano-ther 8 minutes ago [-]
Not even tracking, but when I land on a page from a Google search, some sites try to be helpful by steering me to a local site, but the local link does not exist so I end up on the homepage, not the specific help I was looking for.
Adobe and Lenovo are really good at this.
dongecko 6 minutes ago [-]
Loved that little rant.
You had me at "I skip every single electronic track with vocals".
Frieren 5 minutes ago [-]
> I live in Helsinki
So, you are protected by the GDPR. There are some types of tracking that are just forbidden or very difficult to implement inside the law.
If you want to stop thinking and let companies decide what is the best for you, your problem is not lack of tracking. Trusting that big corporations will have your best interested in mind seems an odd believe to have in this day and age.
The thing about the language in websites is different. Most websites are created to be used locally. So, they conflagrate language, residence, currencies, etc. It has nothing to do with tracking.
williamdclt 7 minutes ago [-]
I've been making this point for at least 10y, and I think it's gotten 0% better. It's already infuriating how much data is collected about me against my will and any sense of ethics, but it makes me LIVID that all this invasion of privacy has completely shit results. Pretty sure I'd be more sensitive to advertising if it was fully random, at least I'd see stuff I was curious about or didn't expect I'd be interested in, instead of myriads of variations of things I already bought or that are adjacent to something I bought (and therefore I already have too).
gedy 6 minutes ago [-]
Targeted advertising just has not worked on me or many people -
If I'm interested enough to buy something, my digital trail is of that moment and in the process of buying and already sifted through the noise.
Ads a week later for some random thing are pointless.
Other daily metrics like from Instagram, etc are not very monetizable as, like great, you know I sometimes doom scroll through Korean pole dancer accounts, etc. What exactly does that help with?
watwut 12 minutes ago [-]
> My user account, system locale, browser locale, and keyboard settings are all set to English. I am logged into Chrome and all Google services. I travel to Germany every few months, and lots of services that I've been using for years suddenly decide I speak German.
This does not require more tracking. This requires LESS tracking - just show the language explicitly requested by the user.
> Netflix on Apple TV asks me to select a user every time I launch it. I've had this account for 15+ years, and never had more than one user on it. I always select the only option there is to select. There is no setting to disable this screen.
This does not require more tracking. Just dont show the screen if there is only one user.
41353aab 20 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Kenji 25 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 15:00:32 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
- People who know you very well (friends, family, spouse) often buy you bad gifts you need to pretend to be happy to receive.
- Ultimately, advertisers aren't _merely_ trying to find things you want. They're trying to get you to buy _their_ things. So someone selling (let's say) hamburgers might be savvy enough to avoid vegetarians, but after that how would they possibly narrow it down? Not everyone wants to try out a new burger place, or even cares about advertising when it comes to restaurant suggestions.
ie, they're trying to coerce you into wanting their products, and no amount of targeting can really fix that problem. Also, targeting is difficult.
That said, these algorithms are simple presumably because they work "well enough". Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, there isn't really a lot of meaningful competition in the ad space driving superior targeting. It's more about having the killer network, the list of effective channels (search, youtube, instagram whatever) that is the big players advantage rather than their targeting skills.
Adobe and Lenovo are really good at this.
So, you are protected by the GDPR. There are some types of tracking that are just forbidden or very difficult to implement inside the law.
If you want to stop thinking and let companies decide what is the best for you, your problem is not lack of tracking. Trusting that big corporations will have your best interested in mind seems an odd believe to have in this day and age.
The thing about the language in websites is different. Most websites are created to be used locally. So, they conflagrate language, residence, currencies, etc. It has nothing to do with tracking.
Other daily metrics like from Instagram, etc are not very monetizable as, like great, you know I sometimes doom scroll through Korean pole dancer accounts, etc. What exactly does that help with?
This does not require more tracking. This requires LESS tracking - just show the language explicitly requested by the user.
> Netflix on Apple TV asks me to select a user every time I launch it. I've had this account for 15+ years, and never had more than one user on it. I always select the only option there is to select. There is no setting to disable this screen.
This does not require more tracking. Just dont show the screen if there is only one user.