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These are the obvious things they can see in the photos. Not shown are the various assumptions they'll make about you based on your photos such as: gay, likely uneducated, high income earner, most likely republican, narcissistic, etc.

Also not shown is what they'll learn by the totality of the data they collect from your pictures such as how often you go on vacation, how often you're seen in new clothing and what kinds of clothes you typically wear, your health, what types of foods you eat, social graphs of everyone you're seen with and changes to your relationship status over time, how often you consume drugs/alcohol, your general level of cleanliness and personal hygiene, etc.

Even a handful of photos can give companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon massive amounts of very personal data but nobody thinks about that when they pull out their phones to take pictures or install a ring camera on their front door.

Do you do any ML for Big Tech? Because it's actually a lot simpler than that: the input is the sum total of your activity, and the output is the likelihood that you'll click on an ad or buy a product on a specific surface. You certainly can predict demographic information like sexual orientation, education level, income, political party, and with a fair degree of accuracy, but all it does is add noise to the calculation you really want, which is optimizing the amount of money you'll make. To the extent that demographics are computed, it's to make advertisers feel better about themselves. They would almost always be better off with a blanket "optimize my sales" campaign, but it's hard for ad agencies and digital marketers to justify their existence that way.
> You certainly can predict demographic information like sexual orientation, education level, income, political party, and with a fair degree of accuracy, but all it does is add noise to the calculation you really want, which is optimizing the amount of money you'll make.

How are all those data points noise? They're crucial information used for targeting ads to a specific audience. Advertisers pay extra for it, because it leads to more sales. This is not just a gimmick, but a proven tactic that has made the web the most lucrative ad platform over any other. Adtech wouldn't be the behemoth it is without targeting, and the companies that do this well are some of the richest on the planet.

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I understand that tech companies simply care about whether the user will click on the ad, video or like the next song or show. But can this also be used to change user's preferences or thought process?
> and the output is the likelihood that you'll click on an ad or buy a product on a specific surface.

Surveillance capitalism isn't really about ads. Increasingly that data is being used to impact your life offline. It influences how much companies charge you for their products and services. It determines what version of their policies companies will inform you of and hold you to. It determines very big things like whether or not you get a job offer or a rental agreement, but it's also being used to determine even small things like how long a company keeps you on hold when you call them. It's being used to make people suspects for crimes. It's being used against people in criminal trials and custody battles. It informs decisions on whether or not your health insurer covers your medical treatments. Activists and extremists use it to target and harass people they perceive as being their enemies.

The data you hand over to companies is being used to build dossiers stuffed with inaccuracies and assumptions that will be used against you in countless ways yet you aren't even allowed to know who has it, what they're using it for, when they use it, or who they share it with.

Nobody really cares about what ads they get shown when they use the internet so companies like to pretend that that's what their data collection is all about, and they absolutely do use it for marketing, but the truth is that digital marketing is a smokescreen for everything else that your data is being used for and will later be used for.

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