Hacker News Reader

Comment by zimbatm | Hacker News Reader

The algorithms are usually statistical which by definition makes them prejudiced. Targeted ads only mean targeted to some group that they believe you belong in. Maybe some day each person will be exactly profiled but it's not the case right now.

The other issue is that humans are much more permeable to their environment than we would like to admit ourselves. We are influenceable. Ads invade our environment constantly for that reason, their goal is to influence us into buying something. They can take us to directions that we want to avoid. What if a fat person is trying to lose weight ? Ads have measured that this individual is likely to buy cake and present him with delicious assortiments everywhere he goes. It's beneficial for the companies but what about that individual ?

The algorithms can only be accurate to who you are, not what you want to become.

View on HN

What if a fat person is trying to lose weight ? Ads have measured that this individual is likely to buy cake and present him with delicious assortiments everywhere he goes. It's beneficial for the companies but what about that individual ?

Conversely, what if the algorithms have decided that the person is a good lead for a local gym, and those ads push him or her into losing weight?

We're all influencing each other, constantly. In a way, banner ads and such are some of the most honest ways of going about it, since they're clearly delineated as such.

The algorithms can only be accurate to who you are, not what you want to become.

If aforementioned fat person searches for "weight loss" and Google starts showing ads for that, haven't the algorithms been accurate to what (s)he wants to become?

I don't think the issue is whether ads should prompt them to lose weight, or they shouldn't. I think the crux of the issue is that we (humans) are ceding this judgment (which have political and societal ramifications) to the ad matching algorithm. Some people (myself included) find that bothersome.

Of course not every example of a targeted ad is going to be controversial (like advertising merchandise of a sports team that I like versus the one that is just popular in my area) but its problematic that we don't have any sort of machinery in place to control/modify the examples that are politically/societally important.

At least if that machinery were in place, then we could transfer the agency of decisions to the humans that run google, rather than the algorithms that are just running in the background.

> The algorithms are usually statistical which by definition makes them prejudiced.

Okay, maybe they are "prejudiced" if by prejudiced we mean making decisions based on statistical heuristics. I still don't see how that's a problem if they're rooted in fact.

> The algorithms can only be accurate to who you are, not what you want to become.

Actually, the best advertising is aspirational. It's easy to sell a fat guy a cake, but it's even better to sell him on the prospect of no longer being fat (ie. a gym membership).

It's a problem because it's illegal in many countries, including in the US. Whether you think it's morally justified or not isn't the problem -- the fact that it's illegal is.

With these laws in mind, is an algorithm that says "people who tend to purchase cosmetics are better drivers" illegal? Is an algorithm that says "people who tend to purchase cocoa-butter-based skin creams tend to have worse driving records" illegal? Should their be some sort of test put in place for these algorithms to make sure they're giving out legally-okay results, just like government officials test the gas pumps to make sure they're pumping fairly?

It really throws a wrench in the algorithm, because there are a million little unidentifiable things that are correlated one way or the other with race, gender, marital status, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com