> The advertiser has a tracker that it places on multiple sites and tracks me around. So it doesn't know what I bought, but it does know what I looked at, probably over a long period of time, across many sites. Using this information, its painstakingly trained AI makes conclusions about which other things I might want to look at, based on...
> ...well, based on what? …Probably what it does is infer my gender, age, income level, and marital status. After that, it sells me cars and gadgets if I'm a guy, and fashion if I'm a woman. Not because all guys like cars and gadgets, but because some very uncreative human got into the loop and said "please sell my car mostly to men" and "please sell my fashion items mostly to women."… You know this is how it works, right? It has to be. You can infer it from how bad the ads are. Anyone can, in a few seconds, think of some stuff they really want to buy which The Algorithm has failed to offer them, all while Outbrain makes zillions of dollars sending links about car insurance to non-car-owning Manhattanites. It might as well be a 1990s late-night TV infomercial, where all they knew for sure about my demographic profile is that I was still awake.
> You tracked me everywhere I go, logging it forever, begging for someone to steal your database, desperately fearing that some new EU privacy regulation might destroy your business... for this? [1]
> ...well, based on what? …Probably what it does is infer my gender, age, income level, and marital status. After that, it sells me cars and gadgets if I'm a guy, and fashion if I'm a woman. Not because all guys like cars and gadgets, but because some very uncreative human got into the loop and said "please sell my car mostly to men" and "please sell my fashion items mostly to women."… You know this is how it works, right? It has to be. You can infer it from how bad the ads are. Anyone can, in a few seconds, think of some stuff they really want to buy which The Algorithm has failed to offer them, all while Outbrain makes zillions of dollars sending links about car insurance to non-car-owning Manhattanites. It might as well be a 1990s late-night TV infomercial, where all they knew for sure about my demographic profile is that I was still awake.
> You tracked me everywhere I go, logging it forever, begging for someone to steal your database, desperately fearing that some new EU privacy regulation might destroy your business... for this? [1]
[1] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190201