Facebook helped advertisers target teens who feel “worthless”
“Facebook's algorithms can determine, and allow advertisers to pinpoint, ‘moments when young people need a confidence boost.’”
Can estimate when teens feel “worthless,” “insecure,” “defeated,” “anxious,” “silly,” “useless,” “stupid,” “overwhelmed,” “stressed,” and “a failure.”
Via twitter.com/@lldzne
@aral Microtargetin exists for years, it's nothing new in this mattery. Unfortunately.
@aral Microtargeting exists for year. It's nothing new in this matter. Unfortunately.
@aral For me the biggest surprise is that they seem to be able to differentiate between feelings with such granularity.
@aral
So should we all start adding a "...is feeling RACIST" to everything we post? Because that would really start screwing with their ability to draw advertisers when they only people they can target are racists.
not to get political about it BUT Show more
@aral Since they have the data, is there a real correlation between depressive severity and amount of meme pages you like? That data needs to be available.
@aral s/advertisers/anyone with money/g
@aral ...because there's no need so desperate that we can't make a quick buck off it. >.<
(Profit is Soylent Green. It's made of people. :-P)
@aral Wasn't there this big story a while ago about some retailer's algorithm being so sophisticated they could predict pregnancy and send mailers out for maternity items before the customer even realized they were pregnant?
@Trystfox Yeah, that was Target and the data/algorithms they have are toys compared to Facebook/Google's trove.
@maiyannah These are just the stories we hear due to the occasional leak or screw up. Imagine what goes on internally that we don't hear about.
@aral Creepy. But expected.
@sebasfc We can try I guess :)
@aral Accurately explained in Cathy O'Neil's 'Weapons of Math Destruction':
"Vulnerability is worth gold. It always has been. Picture an itinerant quack in an old western movie. He pulls into town with his wagon full of jangling jars and bottles. When he sits down with an elderly prospective customer, he seeks out her weaknesses (...) With this knowledge, he knows he’s halfway to a sale before even clearing his throat to speak.
@aral probably not illegal but does not feel right or pass the sniff test. highlights the scope and power of Internet services that hold data for large numbers of people
