Hacker News Reader

Comment by robryan | Hacker News Reader

As that article states it was potentially a useful source for age and gender demographic data. Google Analytics has this as well but I’d assume more people have given more precise data about their age and gender to Facebook than they have to Google.

View on HN

Does the data precision on an individual level matter? As long as it's slightly better than random and the confusion matrix is known, then accurate aggregate statistics can be generated for any site that has more than a handful of users.

Its never been clear to me why Facebook would have better ad targeting data then Google. Facebook has only ever had a passive view of its products, whereas Google has an active one - people go to Google and declare their desires and intents. Who cares about age and demographics when someone will tell you exactly what they're currently looking for?

It turns out people don't really search for most of the things that are out there to sell - cola, soap, milk, chocolate, candy, fuel. Yes some people do search and research these things but compared to the number of people who buy these categories (aka category penetration), the # of people searching is vanishingly few.

It turns out that in other categories, a LOT of people search for things but very few buy them. About 1.5 million luxury cars are sold in the US in any given year but you could bet the number of searchers would be in tens to hundreds of millions.

So the Google data works for some businesses which are in the Goldilocks zone when it comes to search behaviour (ie. It's a product that just the people who wamt to buy will actively research before buying) but for many other businesses - especially the ones with giant marketing budgets, search is just hygiene cost, not a business driver - ie. spend enough so your competitors don't appear as the first results in search ranking.

At the scale of many businesses (especially the ones in the first paragraph), broad demographic segments (and yes TV!) turns out to be a very efficient way to build a brand and yes you can also selectively augment with other data based marketing.

For other businesses (think niche cosmetics brand) paid word of mouth (aka influencer marketing) and pushing the paid word of mouth content to more people who are likely to be have the same interests (eg. Follow fashion bloggers) turns out to be hugely efficient and relevant and that's something Facebook excels at.

Because you can sell them something other than the one thing they are looking for.

Contrived example: I search for "buying new SUV" so clearly you should show me new car ads and car buying articles and reviews. But if I am a mid-30s married person, you might also try to sell me car seats for the babies I demographically am likely to have or want to have soon. OTOH, if am an older 60s retired widow, you may want to advertise warranty and car maintenance plans for my peace of mind about taking care of the car.

Actually it's a little more nuanced than that, because I could be mid-30s and married but choosing to be childfree, or I could be a 65 year old widow and former car mechanic who is more than capable of taking care of my own vehicle. So collecting the demographic data is about building a gradient of probabilities, things that are ranked in likelihood of value/relevance, and using that information to inform the demand side of advertisers deciding how much to bid for my eyeballs.

Sure if that was how Google worked - but Google would also have found you searching for "what to expect from pregnancy?" and "tax implications of a spouse dying", or "developments in car maintenance".

Facebook finds out what you think to share, Google finds out what you're doing and generally the path you took to get there.

Google News has always uncannily followed by current job's tertiary areas, for example.

Not that I disagree with what you said, but maybe you can think about it this way (again, contrived oversimplification):

- Google are the experts/masters of knowing "what you want", expressed via your search intents

- Facebook are the experts/masters of knowing "who you are" (including demographics, as well as family/friends/connections, interests/hobbies/personality, etc.)

Google can guess at the same type of "who" information that Facebook owns (e.g. gender inference), and vice versa Facebook can guess at the type of info that Google owns (e.g. search/purchase intent), but both have distinct relative advantages over the other, which is why there is still competition in this space (the GP comment was questioning, why hasn't Google just "won", why is FB even in the picture, etc.).

Facebook also tracks you with the “like” button on 3rd party website. They know which page you have browsed and for how long

It's more explicit now. Most sites add the Facebook Pixel as they want to track conversions on their site. Most brands have this on their site. Facebook can do all of the analysis that Google can with that, such as knowing how many people add something to their cart, checkout, etc.

The power is in combining that data, like one of the grandparent comments mentioned. They will know if you buy a SUV (since the dealer uploads the data as an offline conversion) and that you're browsing baby clothes on Walmart/Target. Now you're a "new or expecting parent".

Some of these interest categories are not that explicit but the lookalike audiences are. That's a whole other post :)

What do you think Google Analytics does?

As an advertiser that specializes in targeting niche audiences, for anything except search itself, Facebook has amazingly better targeting than Google. Google display and Youtube targeting for ads is just so bad. Not sure how its possible.

Not an expert on the topic, but Facebook allows for very localized/granular targeting. I'm sure that somebody could identity individuals with the data they expose.

A bit dated and probably things have changed... but yes.

http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...

I wonder if this boils down to - who has provided more labeled photos of themselves?

I would have thought the opposite - that more people would have given accurate info about age and gender to Google than Facebook. After all, your search results on Google, YouTube etc, your premium subscriptions to YouTube or Google drive etc all provide accurate info to Google.

Btw by saying this, I don’t mean to say I trust Google more than FB. I trust neither and prefer DuckDuckGo.

Do you trust DuckDuckGo?

More than goog or FB? Held yeah.

FB is like. Creepy stalker sways hiding upside every window and spying on you when it’s completely unrelated to your relationship with FB.

Goog is more like the gestapo eavesdropping on every phone call you have and visit to the library you make

DuckDuckGo is like asking a stranger for directions who’s going to forget they ever met you in a few minutes.

What reason do I have to assume that DuckDuckGo is not collecting data about me? How can I be sure they're going to forget we ever met after a few minutes?

The fact that their entire business and privacy policy is built on that idea? Trust isn't a binary thing. You can trust someone but still, rightfully, be concerned that what they're saying may not be 100% accurate.

But if you have to choose who to trust more between two established companies, with one stating 'We don't collect your personal information, here's why you should care.' and another saying 'When you use our services, you’re trusting us with your information'. And the latter proceeds to hit you with a 50+ page doc explaining how they track essentially every interaction you make on their services, or services that use them, which would you trust more?

My question was whether or not we should trust DuckDuckGo, not whether DuckDuckGo is more trustworthy than some alternatives, and not whether they collect less user-specific data than some alternatives.

My thinking is that there isn't much reason to trust them. I disagree that their business is built on them being trustworthy. Their business is built on people believing them trustworthy. This may act as a disincentive to act in an untrustworthy manner, but it is simply another factor for their cost-benefit analyses. Most companies benefit from appearing trustworthy, such as banks, but the unfortunate reality is that this doesn't mean that they will actually work in your best interest.

> My question was whether or not we should trust DuckDuckGo, not whether DuckDuckGo is more trustworthy than some alternatives, and not whether they collect less user-specific data than some alternatives.

Your question would be answered far better by reading their privacy policies and help site[0] to get an idea of everything they do to preserve your privacy, rather than asking on Hackernews. Of course, if you don't believe what the company is saying, I'm not sure what a rando on HN can say to convince you otherwise?

[0] https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/no...

Even if they are just faux-trustworthy, that certainly limits their room for maneuver. Facebook basically says "so what" and issues a non-apology later. DDG's whole reason to exist is predicated on their behavior.

Don't assume it, then. That said, the scope of what the can do with the collected data is pretty much limited to selling it to a broker, unlike Google which can and does do incredible things with their corpus of collected data over the years.

Unless there is a better option, I know which one I feel safer using.

>Unless there is a better option, I know which one I feel safer using.

There is one option you might not be considering: reducing one's use of internet search engines.

It's a fair option, and I do what I can do reduce it, like searching on the sites I want to pull data from (I usually know this beforehand). But the internet is a rather large place, and there is only so much navigation one can do without resorting to a search engine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com