this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
163 points (98.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35394 readers
870 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm speaking of online data harvested through apps, websites, hardware (such as phones/streaming devices).

I mean if multiple versions of the same harvested data are being sold, wouldn't the value decrease because of the competition? When it comes to aggregate data, how much financial value can there really be in knowing that a million office workers just clicked on the same cat meme?

How does the quantity of time and expense toward "personalization" not simply overshadow the return, given that no one can click on even a small percentage of those numerous ads, let alone buy the shit being advertised?

It just seems like there would come a time when the value of user data is sucked dry, or at least significantly decreased.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz 83 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Seeing how 90% of the ads I get are reeeeeally missing the boat, they might already be over- harvesting my data?

[–] MajorHavoc@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Exactly.

Alternately, perhaps the algorithm knows me better than I know myself. Perhaps the humidifier I just bought is about to kick off a new hobby of collecting humidifiers. /s

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Yep, just like a couple years back when I bought a part for my Toyota. Maybe I was about to collect the same party for a Mazda and a GMC

[–] Papanca@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I almost spit out my tea, thanks!

[–] tooclose104@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's getting weird. I'm suddenly seeing a lot of things pretending to not be ads but specifically referencing my age or things generally blanketed to my age group. But weird things like life insurance and dick pills. Stuff I've never searched before because I already have employer provided insurance and my shmegan works as intended.

[–] DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah I've got ads for very weird, retiree, conservative dad shirts a lot a while back, with text like "dad: I fix things and like cars" or something dumb like that.

I'm in my thirties, European, super left, don't like/never wil have kids. Wtf?

(By the way algorithms those facts are just a present, see what you wanna do with it)

[–] BitingChaos@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm still waiting for the spooky stuff I've been hearing about for years.

I'm being tracked. My information sold and exchanged. Big, evil corporations trading my data with other companies like it was baseball cards. All my inner-most desires leaked!

All to get an ad for a "litter box robot" or whatever when I'm browsing memes.

[–] DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

I did notice that one we talked about vacuum cleaners or something, we got some ads about that. Weird i guess. But 90% of the time with household stuff like that its: research something (and start getting ads), buy something and keep getting ads for another month. And companies are posting top dollar for those ad- companies and their algorithms???

[–] thonofpy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Y'all are getting ads?

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My ads think I'm an oncologist. I've been pretty good at obscuring my digital footprint but this latest bit is a little weird.

[–] DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wait what? You get ads for oncologists? Like what? Cancer medication?

[–] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Continuing education mostly. Retreats, online courses, stuff like that.

I've had a few major surgeries that are often used to treat cancer, and I to understand what I was getting myself into I basically had to put myself through an abbreviated online med school. Got actual med school syllabi, went through the relevant classes, read the textbooks, asked my doctors anything I didn't understand and a few verification questions to make sure I was understanding the content properly. I basically know enough to be dangerous. Right around then I started getting a lot of ads for jobs in the medical field and I guess I tricked the algorithm into thinking I got a good one.

[–] DozensOfDonner@mander.xyz 2 points 1 year ago

Ah lol, that makes sense actually. I guess the algorithm isn't nuanced enough to pick out a case such as yours