What do they mean by targeted? Like targeted how and with what if they’re talking about using the already targeted advertising data that shows a teen is receiving ads for emotional stuff?
/s Meanwhile, in some Signal group: “Should we suicide her or do you guys figure she might have some ICE-worthy tattoos?”
:punch: :americanflag: :fire:
Facebook used to have a team dedicated to analyzing their apps’ risks to children’s and teenagers’ health. The team concluded that there are indeed many serious health risks for both children and teenagers, especially teenage girls. Shortly after, it got disbanded, and all its recommendations completely ignored.
They took all that data and used it to exploit the kids.
But really, who wouldn’t? They’re not our kids! Well, nearly 100% of them aren’t. Little Johnny will forgive papa for it one day right?
and the ones that are their kids they can prevent from accessing their platform to a better degree than most broke technically illiterate parents could dream of doing.
True!!
OK now they can try climate change (dangit indoor skiing etc. nvm but still that’s not as fun so they take the L)
When the news about that came out, around a decade ago now, I deleted my Facebook profile and tried to tell all my friends/family using FB that … this is pure fucking evil and they should also get off FB.
They all gaslit me, pretended that news wasn’t real, and acted like I was a paranoid delusional maniac.
Nowadays we have basically the same kind of conclusions regarding TikTok and other platforms that focus on short form video content… well, actually even worse conclusions… and they come from actual peer reviewed scientific journals…
But you’ll still get people saying ‘brainrot isn’t real’… when uh, yes thats a clumsy term, but it is basically confirmed at this point that TikTok is as addictive as a drug, ruins your motivation and attention span, fills your with mis and disinformatiin, ruins and warps your self image and self esteem, promotes wildly irresponsible and often illegal financial mindsets/strategies… etc etc…
Not ignored. They weaponized that info internally. And had a road map of potential liabilities and damages that may be involved.
so it served its purpose well
Ignored? Yeah I suppose so, but they sure as shit used the data for their own gain. That team really was the road of good intentions
Don’t all social media and internet companies do that? It’s all a case of machine learning. I can’t open Insta these days without being blasted with reels of boobs, cleavage etc. My wife gets reels of cooking, dancing etc. It doesn’t have to do anything with our searches or viewing. They’re using our personal information to create a model and shoving targeted content based on that down our throats. This has the highest probability of increasing engagement on their platform.
No, it’s not normal. Almost no internet companies around the world try to do anything similar to what Meta did and does. Even if you focus on social media companies, I believe that only a small minority try to do that kind of thing.
For example, here we are on social media. Do you see any targeted advertising? Is it being done by the Lemmy instance? And how many instances are there? Then we could look at Mastodon, or discussion forums, or comment boards, or you name it. Of course you would expect some targeted advertising, like you might find computer advertisements if you’re on a computer tech forum, but that’s different from targeting users who are in a weak state of mind, precisely because it’s targeting their overtly expressed general interests and not their temporary vulnerabilities.
Finally, I think you should go back and read the article. You ranted about companies trying to shove things down your throats, but the article was about how to misuse targeted advertising.
Lemmy is far from normal, it is not profitable as a social media platform and is reliant on donations and generosity.
Google AdSense does similar things to meta, as does amazon. This is far from a misuse, of the technology as that implies that this isn’t accomplishing the intended goal, which, aside from laws trying to differentiate children from adults, it does.
Yeah, sorry, but while still going too far, these companies get dwarved by meta when it comes to these practices. I work with certain advertising platforms and know it inside out (don’t judge me lol). No way can we target based on emotional state or anything even closely resmlembling that.
Neither google (at least for the first decade or so) or Amazon have such detailed data about you as facebook
Meta purposely pits extreme sides of every issue you could think of, gender, race, class, religion, even vegan, against each other. Every hate comment is great news for Meta. Hate comments mean that person is engaging so they will feed them more of that content and further drag them into their hateful beliefs. And why do they do that? To show them shirt and knicknack advertisements while they’re frothing at the mouth.
Fuck Mark Zuckerberg. He’s one of the worst humans on the planet and deserves terrible things to happen to him.
I’m convinced insta knows your a guy and will blast you with reels full of chicks no matter what you do.
Yeah, it’s impossible to escape the thottening. Same with snap
But emotional state?
I can’t speak to “emotional state”, but the thottening is a real thing (I’ve spent weeks trying to stop having all these ass models from cluttering up my feed, it’s impossible)
Worth noting by the way that instagram is owned by Meta - the very company the post is calling out.
Well sure, but it is more than that. Advertising ,broadly, is literally there expressly to manipulate your emotional state. Social media just gives them more info about your state so they are much more effective at it.
I pirated her book (because fuck her, she was a Facebook exec) and learned that she had a gnarly near-death experience as a child when she got attacked by a shark at the beach.
I didn’t finish the book due to a combination of laziness and my general revulsion at anything Zuck adjacent, but if you have the stomach for it there’s a cool shark attack story in it for you at least.
Were you rooting for the shark?
Wake me up when something gets done about it other than a fine that amounts to about half a day’s profit for them.
They need to be jailed and their companied closed
To the business world humans are ultimately just conduits to money. But somehow people think privatizing everything is the best way government can serve the public.
That’s how targeted advertising works yes. Not much of a reveal there?
I guess people need the obvious pointed out, and yeah fair enough.
Before I get dogpiled: I’m not defending them. I’m saying it’s sad people actually think or thought the bar was higher than this. You can tell me Google, Xhitter, whatever did the same and I’d say the same thing. You’re the product. You. Are. The. Product.
I am sure you already know, but the objection here is going after kids. literally profiling and then abusing their vulnerabilities for profit. this isnt your standard cereal box advertising, I think this is something much darker and more disgusting.
edit: added word
I hear you, I’m saying this shouldn’t have been news to anyone.
It’s still important to point out and put on the public record.
Yes! SO many people would never ever believe this kind of evil action without hard proof. It absolutely needs to be said and reported on! Any reaction less than this is dismissive and enabling.
I agree it’s not surprising to know that tech billionare ghouls sell their souls for cash, but they not only target kids, they prey on their worst feelings. One example she mentioned is if a 13 yr old girl posted a selfie then deleted it and they concluded that she is suicidal or insecure about her weight for example, then it’s $$$ time for the Zuck bombarding her IP with diet and makeup products. Which is a lower low than just targeting kids… She said it’s so bad that she has almost never seen any of facebook higher ups let their kids use it because they know how hurtful it is
+cashing in on ethnic cleansing
+cashing in, aiding and selling data to oppressive governments, and even selling them AI tech to help them commit worse oppression and survalliance
Even teenage girls?
You seem to be saying that teenage girls should have known FB was manipulating them and just closed the app.
No, I don’t think they meant the kids should have known better, but rather the adults should have known to keep them away from social media because it’s the ultimate cyber predator.
God knows what a hyper-specific ML model is going to do for them
Idealistically I’d say their millennial parents failed them for having that ignorance to begin with, so yes they should know better.
Realistically, you’re not wrong in your rebuttal.
It’s not just parents. Government and the education systems too.
I didn’t see the testimony, but I did read her book.
When most people think “targeted advertising”, I think they are thinking about something like: this user is a middle-class woman between 18 and 25 who enjoys bicycles, so we’ll show her ad X.
According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook/Meta is doing things like detecting when a user uploads, then immediately removes a photo–detecting that as a moment of emotional vulnerability (that is, the user was feeling self-conscious about their appearance), then bombarding them with ads in that moment for beauty products.
I think the former is ‘obvious’ to most people, but the latter probably isn’t–probably because Meta and other advertising companies have put a lot of effort in to keep this on the down low–which is why Wynn-Williams is speaking about it publically.
(not accusing you of defending them BTW, just my 2¢ that this goes beyond what most people would consider obvious, imo)
Book worth a read? Saw it on sale earlier and looked interesting
I got it from the library, so I won’t comment how much money it’s worth.
Hard to say I enjoyed it, since the conduct described within is nearly without expection horrifying. I expect that most people on Lemmy would probably be unsurprised by it.
I found it to be a pretty quick read, and I’m glad it’s out there. If you’re interested in the topic I’d say to give it a shot.
I was just venting really, I’m not actually surprised this isn’t common knowledge. My bar for humanity already had tunnelled through the Mantel during covid, I think it’s in the outer core by now.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying either.
It is absolutely baffling that people don’t realize that people are the product. I’ve had some folks tell me that they understand and “don’t care” because the service is “free” or whatever, but then they get angry and freaked out when the platform knows exactly what they’re thinking, or at least seems to know.
There’s definitely a deficit in understanding and education on what corporate social media really does.
a) yes
b) what I find really concerning is that they may have already figured out how to change people’s behaviour: what they think is funny, what they think is appropriate to say/do, where they want to travel to (if at all), how they feel about certain celebrities they like or dislike, what is believable or not believable, how they feel about certain politicians, who to vote for. Some people are probably more easy to sway on certain topics than others are. It’s not a stretch to guess that they probably already know various paths to make individuals into something they currently are not.
Yes
I wonder how prevalent adblocking is among the younger generations. Even among my peer group I’d see people browsing the web with no adblock and a bunch of ads on websites when I’d glance at a sea of laptops. It was eye opening that outside of the social media I use that many people are just not tech literate. Is ad acceptance trending upward as people get younger and younger?
I wonder how prevalent adblocking is among the younger generations
Speaking of advertising being a science like another person commented, it means it’s data driven.
https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users
https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-july-global-statshot
Lots and lots: https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=how+prevalent+is+adblocking+by+generation
But more to the point:
Women in every generation block less ads however, which I found interesting.
My theory is women, while they do look at porn, look at porn less. Men will seek out a particular type of porn or a specific video and will not stop until they find it. They are also less likely to go on websites that abuse popups like sports streaming channels.
Also I think women are also more likely to use social media which usually don’t have ad blockers.
People downvoting you don’t realize how much of a science advertising is.
I think that’s true in general, but not why I was downdooted.
My guess was the downvotes are people assuming I don’t think it’s worse to manipulate children vs adults and that I was somehow okay with it apathetically.
I’m also an asshole occasionally when I see frustrating and disturbing things like this, so my kneejerk response is maybe where I fucked up.
I really need to get into the habit of letting a post stew in preview for a hot second before I let loose my mental vomit lol because I sometimes get my ass kicked for not communicating what I’m actually trying to say effectively.
Edit: Lemmy has been pretty kind to me for my clarifying edits when I do this to myself though, so thanks guys. Like this one :)
wow! self-reflection is something we all need more of (especially me). agree or disagree, converstaions are always better when everyone considers things for a moment. nice comment. :-)
Well, it’s a smaller community. Eventually I’ll recognize a lot of you, and I assume the same of me. So I try to keep it real.
That idiom really dates me, huh.
The difference is this is tracking and targeting minors.
And just because it is the status quo does not mean the general public is aware of it or the actual extent. It needs to be spelled out to them how and why.
Honestly I find it hard to believe any teens are on Facebook now, maybe IG is still cool? Nothing like before. Idk I don’t think teens are on those platforms really
IG is like the most important place for teens right now…
There are no ethics in capitalism
Any structure which has hierarchy in it with control structures away from people suffers from the same issue. People must own things.
Who are the 3 people downvoting? This is very true and I don’t see it ever changing as long as humans are humans. Pretty much all religions say treat each other nicely and don’t kill. But then why are there war profiteering companies around?
There is always 1-3 random downvotes, even on non controvertial things like cat photos. This is always how Lemmy has been. Any downvotes 5 or less can just be ignored (its probably bots)
And how would you fix it?
Stop de-regulating everything. Guardrails were put there for a reason.
I agree. That’s a good start at least.
Planned economy
Elaborate with an example of how exactly that would work for a country of 340 million people.
What difference would population make? Decentralization can exist in a planned economy to adapt to locales
So your solution is to hand everything over to the government and allow them to control the labor, the profit, and the wealth of over 340 million people without first having any understanding whatsoever about how a system such as that would be stressed under the weight of such a population?
I’ll add that there exists no government on the planet that could be trusted to do something like that without exploiting the populace- as none have done so to date.
You clearly haven’t thought this through.
Your condescending tone shows you already know it all and have your mind made up so I don’t really see where this debate can go anymore that is constructive. Take that how you will, I don’t really care
Theirs is no condescension in my tone because there Is no “tone” in written word.
I simply asked you a question you refused to answer, and then I refuted your reasoning for not answering.
And it’s not a debate unless you participate.
Next time, answer a question when asked. Take it as a prompt for you to sell your idea on someone who is looking to you for an answer.
Seems to be working fora country of over a billion, just sayin’
Ah yes having to lick the boot of an autocrat with no freedom to dissent. That sure sounds like its working to me.
So your suggestion is to turn America into Russia/China?
Is that not what is happening right now?
Yeah but they’re only taking the bad parts
Ban optimisation without popular consent!
Sorry, I’m a bit dense. What do you mean?
Organisations aren’t entitled to use automated systems to alter people’s behaviour (i.e. here they’re using an algorithm to maximise the number of ad clicks). It should only be allowed if it’s in the interests of the people affected, and with their (informed) agreement
I am betting it was already in that 40 page agreement you clicked when you singed up 😞
He’ll yeah dude! This should be the global law
where would the line between manipulation and traditional advertisement be? theaters frequently exhaust the buttery scent in areas where theatergoers will be to intice them, casinos avoid 90° angels and clocks to disorientate customers and promote time blindness.
I’m not a native speaker and I legit googled “what are casino 90° angels”, then I realized it was supposed to be “angles” and now I feel dumb lol
On a 777 the angels blind you with divine light so you can’t find your way out of the slot machines.
It’s a common mistake for even native speakers. Dessert 🎂 vs desert 🏜️ is another common one
Yes these are also bad.
Dolla dolla bill
as if they don’t have enough already.
never
… and therein lies the problem
Good thing InstaFlow exists
What’s that weird write out on their webpage? It reads like a super cringy AI generated Instagram ad.
