The parts that had professionals talk about the algorithm were neat, but I didn't care for the author's personal perspective. The "disgust" and "embarrassment" feels fake as fuck and starts to...
The parts that had professionals talk about the algorithm were neat, but I didn't care for the author's personal perspective. The "disgust" and "embarrassment" feels fake as fuck and starts to lean in towards clickbaity. As per the author about getting rid of videos you don't want to see:
Okay, don’t tell me to do more work, but I guess I could do that if I really wanted to hone my feed.
That's. How. It. Works. If you don't want to see content, you get rid of it! You put in your effort of interaction and liking our ignoring/telling the algorithm you don't like specific content. I don't understand why the article has this weird narrative of the author's relationship with the algorithm when they straight up say
I don’t go online to laugh; I go online to scream.
Stop pretending like you're not fine with the algorithm to give the article a half baked, faux rage narrative that gets contradicted throughout. I'm more interested in what experts are talking about than this author talking about the disgusting tiktoks they watch. Not a fan of this article.
TikTok is one of those platforms I'll likely never trust, primarily because it's come out of China and I don't feel comfortable with the CCP having a stake in my online presence. The accuracy of...
TikTok is one of those platforms I'll likely never trust, primarily because it's come out of China and I don't feel comfortable with the CCP having a stake in my online presence. The accuracy of TikTok's recommendation algorithm makes that all the more scary, because it makes me wonder what other data the app could've been collecting on me.
Remember when people suspected Facebook of recording your microphone and then providing you ad and post recommendations based on your conversations? I genuinely worry that TikTok is doing something like that but on a much grander scale.
I also have little reason to get on the platform. I couldn't care less about lip-syncing, dance videos, or prank-filled shorts.
To be clear, neither Facebook nor Google nor Amazon etc is listening to your microphone to serve you ads. a) it would be prohibitively complex and b) they can already serve you better without the...
To be clear, neither Facebook nor Google nor Amazon etc is listening to your microphone to serve you ads. a) it would be prohibitively complex and b) they can already serve you better without the need for that complexity (or bad PR). Not saying that you do or don't believe this, but this claim comes up a lot and talking about the very bad (but not real) things these companies do distracts us from the very bad and real things they do.
To be even more clear, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon were all listening to your microphone when you used their assistants (OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc.), or in Facebooks case, having voice...
To be even more clear, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon were all listening to your microphone when you used their assistants (OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc.), or in Facebooks case, having voice chats with other people (which I will say is a hell of a lot different than asking "Hey assistant, what's the high temperature today"). I'll definitely give Apple the benefit of the doubt and assume they weren't using the data to target ads at me. I'm less willing to give Google or Amazon the benefit of the doubt, but could believe they're not using it for ads. Facebook has repeatedly told bald-faced lies about what they do and don't do with our data, including to Congress. I have every reason to believe that if you've granted Facebook access to your microphone, they might use it for gathering advertising data. We don't need to speculate about these things because they've repeatedly shown how unethical they are.
EDIT: And also, to be clear, I believe most of these companies now offer a way to ensure they do not ever let a human listen to recordings of you, so hopefully this is no longer an issue.
OK. Taking confirmation bias etc. into consideration. How can Insta and Facebook bring me adds of very specific items minutes after I've talked about it for the first time and never search for or...
OK. Taking confirmation bias etc. into consideration. How can Insta and Facebook bring me adds of very specific items minutes after I've talked about it for the first time and never search for or given any indication that this was my interest nor close to other interests I might have searched for prior? Is the algorithm just that good and am I missing hidden behavior?
That isn't something that can be answered universally, but some questions would be: Has someone proximal to you physically searched for it? You're talking with a friend who looks up the topic of...
That isn't something that can be answered universally, but some questions would be:
Has someone proximal to you physically searched for it? You're talking with a friend who looks up the topic of conversation and FB infers you're also interested in it.
Has someone close in your social networks searched for it? A fiancee looks at rings so her partner starts seeing ads.
Was there an external cue that triggered you to talk about that item in the first place? A movie with a famous cheeseburger scene played at 5:05 preempting a spike in conversations-->ads about it.
Have you carefully taken confirmation bias/recency bias/etc. into consideration? If stories from other people influencing your perspective are you factoring in the law of large numbers? If you try testing this out and randomly talking about a specific product how frequently do you get ads, and with what precision?
I can't remember how good it was, but ReplyAll had an episode on the topic that might be interesting to listen to?
Agree with all your suggestions. The other one, which is more and less believable, depending on who you are, is that sometimes it's dumb luck. It might seem crazy, but you make note of the times...
Agree with all your suggestions. The other one, which is more and less believable, depending on who you are, is that sometimes it's dumb luck. It might seem crazy, but you make note of the times there's a huge coincidence—you don't make note of the thousands of times that there isn't a coincidence, or that the ads are only vaguely relevant.
These are some great and somewhat disappointing answers. It seems like we've come to a point where the algorithms are so fine tuned that we have a hard time understanding just how well it works....
These are some great and somewhat disappointing answers. It seems like we've come to a point where the algorithms are so fine tuned that we have a hard time understanding just how well it works. These blurry line are downright scary to me.
This thing happened to me while I was watching some event with friends, us talking about a specific beer and then someone checking instagram seeing an ad for that exact ad, spooky. But then again,...
This thing happened to me while I was watching some event with friends, us talking about a specific beer and then someone checking instagram seeing an ad for that exact ad, spooky.
But then again, we were all the same age, same demographic, same geographic area, all friends together on instagram (and facebook) so our interests could be correlated. If you were thinking of who to target for an ad campaign for this beer, we would be the ones you'd want to target for it, considering some of us already buy and drink it.
And then the most important part is: if the ad didn't come up we wouldn't have said anything. How many times have you seen ads that you scrolled past without a thought because you weren't just talking or thinking about it? The few times that it comes up coincidentally you notice and try to find a pattern, but if the dice didn't fall in the right way it would never have been a story to tell.
Prior to the 2020 election, the politics part of my TikTok feed was consistently 100% left wing content. Since the election, TikTok seems to be trying to shoehorn increasingly more right wing...
Prior to the 2020 election, the politics part of my TikTok feed was consistently 100% left wing content. Since the election, TikTok seems to be trying to shoehorn increasingly more right wing conspiracy content into my politics content. Either the right has gotten very skilled at gaming the algorithm to get more rightoid content served, or TikTok is trying to push more people into conspiratorial thinking (or both).
YouTube's algorithm made a bad recommendation for me today. I regularly watch videos on EVs, solar panels, and mocking sovereign citizens and anti-maskers. But somehow YouTube decided I would like...
YouTube's algorithm made a bad recommendation for me today. I regularly watch videos on EVs, solar panels, and mocking sovereign citizens and anti-maskers. But somehow YouTube decided I would like a Charlie Kirk cancel culture whining video.
It made some demographic assumptions (white, male, Arkansas) and entirely ignored every piece of evidence to the contrary. The algorithms, if nothing else, seem to veer toward the outrageous.
The parts that had professionals talk about the algorithm were neat, but I didn't care for the author's personal perspective. The "disgust" and "embarrassment" feels fake as fuck and starts to lean in towards clickbaity. As per the author about getting rid of videos you don't want to see:
That's. How. It. Works. If you don't want to see content, you get rid of it! You put in your effort of interaction and liking our ignoring/telling the algorithm you don't like specific content. I don't understand why the article has this weird narrative of the author's relationship with the algorithm when they straight up say
Stop pretending like you're not fine with the algorithm to give the article a half baked, faux rage narrative that gets contradicted throughout. I'm more interested in what experts are talking about than this author talking about the disgusting tiktoks they watch. Not a fan of this article.
This article linked within the piece may perhaps be more interesting: https://reallifemag.com/i-write-the-songs/
Ah, I missed that. I'll have to take a look, then! Thanks!
TikTok is one of those platforms I'll likely never trust, primarily because it's come out of China and I don't feel comfortable with the CCP having a stake in my online presence. The accuracy of TikTok's recommendation algorithm makes that all the more scary, because it makes me wonder what other data the app could've been collecting on me.
Remember when people suspected Facebook of recording your microphone and then providing you ad and post recommendations based on your conversations? I genuinely worry that TikTok is doing something like that but on a much grander scale.
I also have little reason to get on the platform. I couldn't care less about lip-syncing, dance videos, or prank-filled shorts.
To be clear, neither Facebook nor Google nor Amazon etc is listening to your microphone to serve you ads. a) it would be prohibitively complex and b) they can already serve you better without the need for that complexity (or bad PR). Not saying that you do or don't believe this, but this claim comes up a lot and talking about the very bad (but not real) things these companies do distracts us from the very bad and real things they do.
To be even more clear, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon were all listening to your microphone when you used their assistants (OK Google, Alexa, Siri, etc.), or in Facebooks case, having voice chats with other people (which I will say is a hell of a lot different than asking "Hey assistant, what's the high temperature today"). I'll definitely give Apple the benefit of the doubt and assume they weren't using the data to target ads at me. I'm less willing to give Google or Amazon the benefit of the doubt, but could believe they're not using it for ads. Facebook has repeatedly told bald-faced lies about what they do and don't do with our data, including to Congress. I have every reason to believe that if you've granted Facebook access to your microphone, they might use it for gathering advertising data. We don't need to speculate about these things because they've repeatedly shown how unethical they are.
EDIT: And also, to be clear, I believe most of these companies now offer a way to ensure they do not ever let a human listen to recordings of you, so hopefully this is no longer an issue.
OK. Taking confirmation bias etc. into consideration. How can Insta and Facebook bring me adds of very specific items minutes after I've talked about it for the first time and never search for or given any indication that this was my interest nor close to other interests I might have searched for prior? Is the algorithm just that good and am I missing hidden behavior?
That isn't something that can be answered universally, but some questions would be:
I can't remember how good it was, but ReplyAll had an episode on the topic that might be interesting to listen to?
Agree with all your suggestions. The other one, which is more and less believable, depending on who you are, is that sometimes it's dumb luck. It might seem crazy, but you make note of the times there's a huge coincidence—you don't make note of the thousands of times that there isn't a coincidence, or that the ads are only vaguely relevant.
These are some great and somewhat disappointing answers. It seems like we've come to a point where the algorithms are so fine tuned that we have a hard time understanding just how well it works. These blurry line are downright scary to me.
This thing happened to me while I was watching some event with friends, us talking about a specific beer and then someone checking instagram seeing an ad for that exact ad, spooky.
But then again, we were all the same age, same demographic, same geographic area, all friends together on instagram (and facebook) so our interests could be correlated. If you were thinking of who to target for an ad campaign for this beer, we would be the ones you'd want to target for it, considering some of us already buy and drink it.
And then the most important part is: if the ad didn't come up we wouldn't have said anything. How many times have you seen ads that you scrolled past without a thought because you weren't just talking or thinking about it? The few times that it comes up coincidentally you notice and try to find a pattern, but if the dice didn't fall in the right way it would never have been a story to tell.
Prior to the 2020 election, the politics part of my TikTok feed was consistently 100% left wing content. Since the election, TikTok seems to be trying to shoehorn increasingly more right wing conspiracy content into my politics content. Either the right has gotten very skilled at gaming the algorithm to get more rightoid content served, or TikTok is trying to push more people into conspiratorial thinking (or both).
YouTube's algorithm made a bad recommendation for me today. I regularly watch videos on EVs, solar panels, and mocking sovereign citizens and anti-maskers. But somehow YouTube decided I would like a Charlie Kirk cancel culture whining video.
It made some demographic assumptions (white, male, Arkansas) and entirely ignored every piece of evidence to the contrary. The algorithms, if nothing else, seem to veer toward the outrageous.