Comment by supertrope
2 days ago
As new moms tend to change their consumer purchasing habits they are coveted by advertisers. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h... Certain cohorts and keywords are very valuable so even searching a medical condition once or clicking on a hiring ad for an in-demand job can shift ads toward that direction for a long time.
Yeah I'm less shocked that it got picked up and more how quickly it spread to literally every platform we use, even those that wouldn't have much if any hint that it was happening.
There's clearly quite the active market for this information
It seems more important than ever to have self hosted apps or browser extensions that will intermittently search for these valuable keywords. Ad Nauseum is much better than bare Ublock Origin for the same reason.