I changed the title from “Spying” to “Eavesdropping” because the article actually directly supports that it is “spying” on you, just not listening.
I changed the title from “Spying” to “Eavesdropping” because the article actually directly supports that it is “spying” on you, just not listening.
See, people say that ad companies can use all this information they gather to better serve targeted advertising, but that’s just not my anecdotal experience.
I get served ads all the time in languages I don’t speak, for VERY specific job related audiences that I’m not even close to related to, state politics that I’ve never lived in, services that I’m already actively subscribed to, just the worst targeting ever.
If I have to get advertised to, I’d so much rather get an ad that could actually be at all relevant to my life, or even some generic ad over the total misses.
Like, if you’re going through the trouble to do all this shady shit to get my data at least be good at it using it…
If targeted advertising worked the way they say it does then why is Amazon with my entire purchase history at their disposal, still unable to stop themselves from trying to sell me a second washing machine just after I bought one from them? Or Audible with hundreds of books in my account, most of them English, is still trying to sell me German versions of books with original English language versions? The whole notion that advertising has all that data to do better advertising assumes a competence level that just isn’t there.
Because Amazon just have a shit algorithm. They don’t distinguish single purchase items but their algorithm is skewed to try and get you to come back to get the things you got in the past.
Oooo close. It’s a shit algorithm that favours the company that paid the most for the spot. So people rely on paying for a good spot to get promoted on the most minor fucking chance of someone buying their shitty item. I heard someone say the average best item you search for is found 17th place.
They’re scamming the buyer and the seller and profiting off of being terrible for everyone.