Like why do they care how many times I go to porn hub every day or that nothing gets me harder than a free use MILF? Why do they care that I don’t know how to spell consistency so I have to Google it every 3 months.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
Why are tech companies* so interested
They are interested in your data because you are human and you do human things, the more they understand you and your activities the better they can gather knowledge for economical decisions such as Ads, Trends etc.
Most commonly they use this information to manipulate you into using their services or changing your preferences by marketing and Ads. The more they understand you the more effective it is.
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.
We’ve waited all this time to tell you. Unfortunately, we have run out of time. The reason you’re so interesting is
Sonofa
It all comes down to targeted advertising. They’ll cluster you and other people with similar interests in groups, determine statistic likelihoods of buying/using/subscribing to certain products or services, and then blow up every channel with stuff you might like.
Maybe a MILF hunter with mild dyslexia is exactly the right audience for cat food and entry level red wine?
This is the only real answer. Targeted advertising is more effective (actually true), therefore you can ask more money for it.
The important part being that other companies are very willing to spend a lot of money on targeted advertising, enough to make up for all of the costs of the aggregated data plus a tidy amount of profit for the companies that collect the data.
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…
The simple answer: the more they know about you the more money they can make by selling it.
this article has some insights on the value topic.
this Reddit post also has some good information regarding this subject.
Lastly, this scandal
I hope this helps, please feel to correct me if I’ve misunderstood something.
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, and…
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.
$$$
Other companies are willing to pay big money for your data so they can specifically target people who are likely to buy their shit. Also, now the government is buying that data so that they can unconstitutionally keep tabs on every person in the world.
Also political organizations want this data to help them target potential voters more effectively.
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”.
A spooky thing I noticed at one point I could search a rather vague query and Google was returning results in the programming language I was working with when the query was general enough to have been any language.
Yeah, it’s advertising. They want to be able to sell you clothes you’ll probably actually wear, video games you’ll actually play, etc. They probably don’t care about your google spell checks as much as they care about what posts you’re liking on your Instagram reels.
On one hand, it sucks to not really have that privacy. On the other hand, people act like if you don’t use a VPN for every single online service today that in 5 years data brokers will sell your exact address to the Islamic Jihad for ten dollars.
video games you’ll actually play
Goodness, me. I wish. Steam sure is good at selling me games that make me feel like I really want to have that experience though! Once it’s bought, they did their job.
I’ve yet to see any ads for “How to spend time enjoying a thing just for yourself without feeling guilty and anxious that you’re being left socioeconomically behind and the next (un)planned economic downturn will ruin everything for sure this time.”
So… y’know they could be doing a better job. Lol
Also $10 is $10… nobody’s personally selling it, it’s just floating around and it could be bought if the Islamic Jihad wanted it LOL.
I’m more concerned about things like, selling my data like vehicle usage or DNA to insurance companies who would use that data against me.
The Google spell checks are probably pretty big too because it gives them info on what you’re thinking/writing about in that moment.
Well, true for some words. OP checking out how to spell “consistently” and me trying to figure out effect/affect for a specific case…. Probably less so.
Actually, both of those are indicative of educational attainment, social philosophy, probably political leaning….
It is not about having your particular data. Is about the aggregated data of a population. On a shallow level that information can be used to engineer ads to appeal to a greater audience. On a deeper level, population dynamics can be used for nefarious purposes such as driving them to an agreement that wasn’t in their best interest. Brexit and the Trump election are two examples of this being possible thanks to data from Cambridge Analytica. See voting paradoxes and Asimov’s psychohistory that each day is getting farther from fictional.
Oh, so evil shit.
It’s just sureal to me. Since they know I was up till 2:00am on a Wednesday wrenching my hog like there was a million dollars hidden inside Donald Trump was elected president.
okay wrenching my hog is a new one lmao
Yep, I only knew wrestle the chicken yet.
‘You’ve already given up your shit. I’m still a mystery to you.’ - Drexel, True Romance
Absolute poetry.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Not to dispute your general points, but Cambridge Analytica’s actual effectiveness was shown to have been way overblown (as was RussiaGate in general).
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”.
Zhit!
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
