I’ve worked at both Facebook and Google, and I’d second this sentiment. It is pretty disgusting that anyone with a passable knowledge of how to hide their tracks can basically get all of the information (messages, posts, photos, private information) they want about you. Sure, they might get fired if they’re caught, and maaaaaaaybe (read: probably not) face legal action, but they can do a lot of damage beforehand. And if they’re good enough, they won’t get caught.
I trust the people that I worked with there, but these are big organizations, and a lot more people than I would be comfortable with have essentially administrator access to private data.
IMO it’s less about insiders stealing info. I’ve seen leads lists stolen and sold on the open market, etc. What we should really be concerned about is the above board, legal and absolutely promoted evil of advertising. I’ve worked in social Media and gaming(gambling) and let men tell you: the legal things these advertisers do are diabolical. The whiteboard conversations about how to structure a user journey are exploitation and immoral, unethical and downright evil and they are so by design. You’re doing a poor job if you’re not devising ways to skirt the law and use loopholes to manipulate people.
Can you say more about those whiteboard conversations? What exactly are they doing that’s unethical? I can speculate about dark patterns related to engagement and spend escalation, but I’m curious to hear your more informed perspective.
Youre pretty accurate wrt dark patterns but there’s other stuff like user journeys that map out for instance how much and when to deliver a casino coupon to a user based on research into addictive behavioural patterns.
Hypothetically: how does the glycemic index of typical lunch foods impact mood and when in that cycle is an addict most likely to succumb?
Put it like this: if it can be done, it is being done.
I had a promising career in Datascience very early on (2005 - this was before the CUDA framework was released) and I quickly realised that there was very little good that could come of that work under capitalism. I have friends who had aspirations in aerospace who realised that all they would end up building is weapons. Similar deal. I left it behind and I have a comfortable life in good old fashioned data management now. It isn’t sexy but I can sleep at night.
Doesn’t most people also manupulate each other as well? Like gaslighting and etc.
Sure. Do they do that with the might of Googles advertising platform behind them? Do they do it to millions of people m at a time using automated processes supported but machine learning?
Every thief knows everybody else is also a thief.
Irrelevant, manupulation requires lots of skill. I won’t be able to even if I tried.
I’m glad I’m chronically uninteresting. If I had literally any information of value I’d be much more careful but now I’m just one of many in a massive crowd of more interesting people.
I’m still blocking advertisements though. Fuck that shit.
I mean you consume goods and utilize services, so in the context of advertising, yes you are interesting and valuable.
(Also in the context of being a fellow human being, just so you know ❤️, but that’s a separate topic)
Sure, I meant more in a nefarious sort of way. Also it was more or less a joke…
yay! you worked at facebook and google well knowing they exploit people’s emotions and tech illiteracy. Do you want a cookie?
I hope you’re working at Tiktok now. I can’t wait to praise you about how you tell everyone they’re exploiting teenagers and spying on them that we totally don’t know. 🕵️ 🕵️ 🕵️
It was 12 years ago man, calm down.
This phrasing may have a chilling effect on discussions on our platform. I believe your opinion could still come through a statement which doesn’t attack the commenter as much - discouraging those who may have future job offers while not scaring commenters off in the future.
I work in an advertising-adjacent field (we won’t do any skeevy data-harvesting stuff, but still, ads) and I barely use any of the main social media sites, have an adblocker enabled on my router, use uBlock, GrapheneOS for my phone, Linux with a bunch of hardening, a VPN that’s always on etc.
My work computer doesn’t have any of that 'cause I need to be able to see ads on it, but sometimes if I forget and just browse around on my work computer with no ad protection… holy fuck it always surprises me how awful the internet is.
I don’t understand why companies don’t have network-wide adblockers on their employee systems and intranets. Used to be in the Air Force, ads everywhere. Now work for a contractor, still ads everywhere.
Don’t they know that blocking ads can speed up their networks? That ads track activity and may be revealing sensitive information about employees?
I don’t get it.
I block ads on my work network. Perimeter and endpoints.
I feel like internet advertising is way overdue for a crash, its like the matrix I dont even see them anymore.
I just don’t understand how advertising still makes so much money. Who’s watching ads and clicking on them these days? Who sees an ad that isn’t annoying, pandering, or downright infuriating to them? The ad business is so profitable, it’s Google’s main revenue source and Netflix is getting rid of a paid tier just to focus on their ad-supported one.
How is the ad business so profitable?
We try to avoid ads, but there is vast majority who just watches ads and get influenced.
Who’s watching ads and clicking on them…
My wife works in advertising. Online ads are about building brand recognition. It’s affecting it’s primary goal by having you see the advertisement. Clicking on the ad is another metric, but it’s not necessarily the goal, more of icing on the cake.
ad business so profitable?
The companies/govt agencies have huge budgets to get people to see their message. The big reason the house brand of whatever at the store is 10% cheaper is that brand doesn’t advertise. You the consumer are paying for advertising by buying products that are advertised.
The big reason the house brand of whatever at the store is 10% cheaper is that brand doesn’t advertise
That’s what someone in advertising would say. Co-branded (store brands) are cheaper because they are not as good as the brand name. The co-brand manufacturing company intentionally makes them with less quality, even if they are literally made in the same factory as brand names. If they didn’t, the brand name company would complain and pull their business.
Then there are brands like Nabisco that do everything in house. Oreos are way better than most copies because they have better ingredients and quality control.
No I don’t want to hear anyone’s spiel about how they think co-branded food is better than brand names. That’s your opinion. The facts are that co-manufacturing factories literally adjust their quality based on what the brands pay them.
A mid sized company I work with did some in-house analytics on their advertising spending and concluded that 75% was just money wasted
Several million dollars cut from future ad budgets with no negative revenue impact
I click on product ads when I’m looking for generic product categories and don’t have a brand and model in mind.
There’s millions of apps with ads, billions of websites with ads, trillions of hours of videos with ads. Advertising is terrible, but if you can’t see how they make money, your blind.
My point question was not how the companies serving the ads are making money. My question is why companies spend so much to make and serve ads and how they’re getting enough return to continue doing it in such a capacity that it pays for the free Internet services we use.
It’s about 15% of an engaged audience on every successful campaign where advertising really shifts behavior.
Over a few years I realized that it was likely the same subset of an unusually suggestive audience that the advertising was really for.
The industry likes to lie to itself that it’s effective in aggregate, but really it’s just people with poor suggestibility filters that are getting swayed through advertising channels.
Marketing channels are the much more interesting and worthwhile endeavor.
I built software around 2010-2014 around harvesting visitor data.
Shit was scary back then with how much we could predict. We were already laser targeting customers and people. I can only imagine what they’re doing now.
This was before the whole “big data” push when companies were cross-referencing data sources from other harvesters.
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oh rly? then why, after i’ve used facebook daily for 15 years, does it thin my interests include “foot” and and actors ive never heard of? why does google, after about that same amount of usage plus me owning many androids and having an even deeper entanglement with it than with facebook, think i’m the opposite sex (!) and imagine countless interest for me that i don’t have, just like facebook?
iv yet to see any of these companies being very accurate about me.
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ah, i am sharing the router and network. i hadn’t considered that, and i’ve wondered and wondered how such inaccurate info commanded so much money and uproar. thanks!
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Have you considered maybe you aren’t worth anything of value?
if not, a lot of business folks sure are delusional 🤣
they arent super obvious about it.
why is this so normalized? every time some guy who knowingly does evil things and comes up and say that their work was evil like and now everyone should praise them… removed STFU, you aren’t revealing anything that’s not public knowledge.
“I spied on billions of people, I would avoid my ex company”
“I previously worked at amazon and made millions, now you should avoid it”
“I got rich by exploiting you, now that i’m out and doing other things, avoid my last company”
“I worked at <social media company> and oversaw pushing violent narratives in developing countries, I wouldn’t touch it with a 10 feet pole”
No Shit Sherlock!!
I worked in a non-decision making ITS adjacent capacity between banks and lawyers during the 2008 downturn. I knew full well our company was contracting with awful banks but I got the job while unemployed for several months when there wasn’t any jobs. People don’t always have a realistic choice in the matter, I was poor and it was entry level $35k cubicle gruntwork. Nothing I did couldn’t be replaced by any idiot with basic MS office skills in a 10 minute interview. Me taking the high road would have just fucked up my life for no reason. I left as soon as the job market recovered.
Anyway, I pulled all of my money out of Wells Fargo and tell anyone who will listen to do the same, out of the 30 big banks we worked with they were leaps and bounds more willfully incompetent then all of the others combined. I don’t claim to be a good person, I just do what I do like anyone else, I think you’re looking at this situation far to ideologically. In corrupt systems we are all complicit on all ends, there is no moral high ground other than starving to death and refusing the system entirely which is nonsense. Nearly all corporations are actively doing evil and a large portion of non-profits are only marginally better.
Just a friendly reminder to everyone that Wells Fargo is a criminal enterprise masquerading as a bank. You have been warned.
Things like this just screams “I’m one of the good guys now” and probably “check my new book/course/patreon/podcast/tweets to read more about shitty things I did.”
money in, money out
“I used to work for the cartel, now I make covers for Lipps inc., avoid the cartel btw.”
And people on here have called me excessive for running NoScript + Ublock and actively researching all of the script sources that I enable. If it even has the letters ‘ad’ in it it is permanently forbidden. Along with everything google unless I need to sign in and tag manager is used, then I do it in an isolated environment.
Cant we figure out our tracking id and just feed it complete garage? Like is there an app for that?
Adnauseam
Image Transcription: Mastodon Post
Brendan, @lactol@kind.social
Hey folks, I’ve seen a lot of talk going around about adblockers lately. I worked in the advertising technology and security industry for five years and the one core piece of advice I have is:
Holy fuck never give an advertiser your data. You cannot believe how bad it is. Don’t. I run three layers of ad block protection and I’d run more if it was feasible. If you want to support creators give them money.
… give them money.
This point though. Do you pay for the content you consume? If not, you contribute to creators gravitating towards advertisement to pay rent with their work.
I hope you understand that services you also pay for are also selling your data.
There are services out there that sell my data, even if I pay for them, such as Netflix or Spotify. There are also content creators out there that I can pay that respect my privacy. Most newspapers work that way, and some podcasts, too.
Use patreon, liberapay, and open collective to pay the creator directly, then aggressively block ads. Thats what I do.
The point is to give creators money, not advertisers
This is the way - avoid ads as much as possible, and support environments/services/creators that respect your privacy directly with money.
