A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
Cool. Now I can subtly influence you to pay for your free use MILF porn. Or use MILF models in your ads to make you more likely to buy shit.
Even if you don't think you can be influenced by that stuff it still likely to change your behaviour just enough, even just 5% more spending which makes it worthwhile to them.
But honestly your data barely matters on its own. But once it's merged with everyone else's....that's when it's valuable.
Weβve waited all this time to tell you. Unfortunately, we have run out of time. The reason youβre so interesting is
Sonofa
It builds pattersns for you and people like you.
Dynamic demographic catagories
You are now, at in part, a "free use MILF guy" in their database, so they can now shaped content for you based on other "free use milf guys" who may have more actionable info like "buys guns" or "clicks ads with light hues".
Or mine, "has only ever clicked an ad by accident and immediately closed it every time, we'll keep trying I guess. Oh fuck, he got uBlock."
Yes, but what you click on through articles, and where you stop strolling for a while in a feed (suggesting you are reading the post), and what videos you watch, and what you buy online, and who you correspond with by email and their preferences, andβ¦
Q: "Why are companies ..."
A: Money.
Every time. Sometimes also some competitive advantage or image or by mistake, but even those are just money with extra steps.
Because the last bastion of zombie capitalism is pushing money around.
Folks buy this information because there are other folks willing to buy this information. And so on... and so on...
I can't find the source to save my life, but I believe it was a Google engineer who once said "with enough data, every problem is a regression problem".
Why are tech company's
They're trying to track the patterns of people who attempt to pluralise words by using apostrophes. It's funded by linguists studying language change.
Better watch out, they also go after people use "s" instead of "z" in "pluralize".
You're not safe either, I heard they're also after people who forget to use the word "who".
Mother fuck!
Mother who fuck?
You mean, mother fuck whom
Zhit!
Do you have money? If so, knowing all your secrets and quirks is a good way to get a dollar off of you for slightly less than a dollar.
Pennies on the dollar, you mean.
No, that would be a massive get-rich-quick style return the way I wrote that. Pennies below a dollar, per annum, in order to get a dollar back as the beneficiary, on average.
It would be tiny fractions of a penny per dollar if you just look at the individual action that causes a purchase, but either it's the accumulated effect of a lot of actions over time, or it's a gamble that doesn't work the vast majority of the time, so you're back to the standard ROI everything has.
It's not just marked ads, by the way. A lot of the stuff that happens with that data is invisible, although I can't say how much exactly.
You know how they use facial recognition to kill people in the middle east? It's the same idea here.
Because your data is used to make models of your behavior and opinions. Once someone knows exactly what you do and don't like it's really easy to frame purchase and political decisions so that they sound like something you want, even if they're really good for someone else.
And yet I keep feeding my opinions into the internet like a fool
Do they know I'm basically a monkey with depression? Can someone tell them that? Might answer some of the questions they are so desperate to find out.
This isn't about you. Your data is key in making other, relevant people stand out. Why relevant? Because they resist. Because they aren't depressed, they are fighting back. And whatever the reason that drives them, they can be manipulated. By compromising their anonymity. By making literally everyone else a "known variable". With your help.
If they do it right, you won't even notice or feel like you have no choice to buy something.
They want to know you better than you know yourself. I doubt they would be interested in any information you would provide because it would be useless compared to what they can get.
Most of the phyc research is done by large companies to crack all our brains open so we open our wallets.
You're probably depressed because that is what they want you to be. So you maximize screen time for adds and purchases.
Depressed? Buy these meds! Or spend your money on these therapies, visit these Facebook pages/YouTube channels where we can show you more ads under the guise of providing advice.
Monkey? Buy this chic barrel! Visit your jungle homeland by booking through this travel site.
They want to know everything about you so they can sell you (and everyone who fits in the same bucket as you) very specific things that you're more likely to buy.
Sure, monkey like meds. Monkey have more meds. Monkey love travel. Monkey buy travel.
Monkey have money for meds and travel?
"Need money quick? Gig work! Sell plasma! Buy sell items on .com! Reverse a mortgage! Get credit today!"
And if those don't work the Gun and Rope ads start coming in!
I think they'd be more interested in whether you're a bonobo or a chimp because those imply very different approaches to relieving stress.
The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood
What the fuck is wrong with people?
Why do people care? Well, why do you close the door to the bathroom? Why dont you send me a picture of yourself right now ("What could I do with it anyway"?)
Some people care more about privacy than others. And most people simply don't know where all their data really goes.
I mean what is wrong with they to think they should know what kind of depravity I'm into. Some messed up jabronys in this world.
Pixar seeing a rise in milf web searches: Ok boys itβs time to release another movie with a mom who has a dump truck ass.
Dump-truck-ass Pixar Moms are my kryptonite.
theyβre interested because they profit from the marketing based on the data
More specifically β by matching all of your purchases with every data point about you, and the people you associate with, they can build out statistical models to determine the data points that most strongly correlate to people like you and what motivates or persuades them to GENERATE MORE PROFIT β direct purchases, attention, clicks, discussion, word of mouth, lead generation, etc, etc...
Or... You know... What motivates/persuades you to support a dictator or vote for a specific political candidate or party, as well as what demotivates/dissuades you from the opposition β including what types of psychological warfare, disinformation, deepfakes, "fake news", and lies are most successful in achieving these goals β all of which benefits the most horrifically immoral and unethical criminals, corporations, and individuals the most (the "good guys" aren't the ones using deception and lies to profit and win).
I mean if my grocery store app could track my purchases and then give me a suggested weekly grocery list based on meals it knows I like or ate before that would be incredible. Hell I'd pay for that lol.
even more specifically to create what is know as W-shaped attribution. That you can zig zag around the internet (as if following the lines on the W) and when you end up at your purchase, one can analyze the paths you took, and millions of others took, and find commonality to reduce to the path of least resistance.
To put it succinctly they aren't. They're interested in aggregate data so that a data engineer can use it to understand consumer trends and better predict marketing reach.
It's not specifically about you, it's more of a what they can claim to know about their consumers.
Fun story: me and my wife kept talking about our nasty neighbour we call "the slug" and she got "Slug removal tips" on her YouTube suggestions.
How much do FANG companies pay for such posts? I'm interested in making a career.