Comment by jorts

13 days ago

It was probably a decade ago and I recall using something within Google that would tell you about who they thought you were. It profiled me as a middle eastern middle aged man or something like that which was… way off.

12 comments

jorts

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sgc  13 days ago

If I were extremely cynical, I would suspect they might have intentionally falsified that response to make it seem like they were more naive than they actually were.

  • tga_d  13 days ago

    I suspect the more likely scenario is they don't actually care how accurate these nominal categorizations are. The information they're ultimately trying to extract is, given your history, how likely you are to click through a particular ad and engage in the way the advertiser wants (typically buying a product), and I would be surprised if the way they calculate that was human interpretable. In the Facebook incident where they were called out for intentionally targeting ads at young girls who were emotionally vulnerable, Facebook clarified that they were merely pointing out to customers that this data was available to Facebook, and that advertisers couldn't intentionally use it.[0] Of course, the result is the same, the culpability is just laundered through software, and nobody can prove it's happening. The winks and nudges from Facebook to its clients are all just marketing copy, they don't know whether these features are invisibly determined any more than we do. Similarly, your Google labels may be, to our eyes, entirely inaccurate, but the underlying data that populates them is going to be effective all the same.

    [0] https://about.fb.com/news/h/comments-on-research-and-ad-targ...

    • giancarlostoro  13 days ago

      This. They would have been better off just tagging you with a GUID and it would have been less confusing. "This GUID is your bubble"

  • giancarlostoro  13 days ago

    I think its their currently targeted ad demographic or whatever. Its probably a "meaningless" label to humans, but to the computer it makes more sense, he probably watches the same content / googles the same things as some random person who got that label originally, and then anyone else who matched it.

fn-mote  13 days ago

The idea that Google’s lack of knowledge of you a decade ago is somehow related to what they know today is naive. Dangerously naive, I would say. Ad targeting technology (= knowledge about you) is shocking good now.

  • asksomeoneelse  13 days ago

    Color me unconvinced. Google can't even figure what language I speak even though I voluntarily provide them the information in several different ways. I can't understand half the ads they serve me.

    • mrguyorama  13 days ago

      Google doesn't choose what ad to show you. Google serves up a platter of details and auctions the ad placement off to the highest bidder.

      That platter of details is not shown to you, the consumer.

      What you are experiencing is that your ad profile isn't valuable to most bidders, ie you don't buy stuff as much as other people do, or your ad profile is somehow super attractive to stupid companies that suck at running ads who are overpaying for bad matches.

      It is not evidence that google knows nothing about you.

      Google is pleased that you think they don't know you. It helps keep the pressure down when people mistake this system for "Perfectly target ads". The system is designed to make google money regardless of how good or bad their profile of you is.

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