The perils of media serving algorithms

Today it is hard to avoid the effects of software that decides or suggests the material that you see. Social media, entertainment streaming services and retail sales are some of the situations where very long lists of content are sorted or curated that are almost inescapable.

Many users have fears that the media monsters behind the algorithms are not so subtly manipulating us for their own purposes, whether that is sales volume or influence. There may be truth in that but I prefer to leave that conspiracy hunt for another time and focus today on the effectiveness of the systems. Giving people what they actually want is after all a viable sales model.

So assuming they are intended to enhance your experience, save you searching and give you what you want, how well do the algorithms do it? Here are some thoughts to kick things off.

Circularity
If you have been watching category C material the system keeps showing more of that category for you to see, so you watch more of it, so the system shows you more of it, so ā€¦

Immutability
You watch a movie in a genre that you donā€™t usually favour on the recommendation of a friend. Now that category features in your list for all time. I read a lot and have the all-you-can eat Kindle subscription. I donā€™t actually recall it but I must have once read a ā€œRomanceā€. Now every search I do features shirtless men with bulging oiled pectorals and six-packs! The stupid bot has decided I like bodice rippers! Arghh!

No User control
Following on from the last section there is typically no user override. Kindle has no way for me to get those shirts back on and banish their brooding sweaty owners.

Incomprehensible connections
In the recommended movies under Because you Watched ā€¦ Sometimes the algorithm has a complete brain fart. Because you watched a documentary on whale migration we are recommending Teenage Zombie Chainsaw Massacre.

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To slot into Immutability, you look at item X a lot because you are in the market for one and are properly researching the market, you eventually buy one (or decide not to buy one for whatever reason) ā€¦ but the stupid algorithm keeps on showing you item X for months afterwards.

Regarding ā€œuser controlā€, I have seen some ads that do allow you to express a negative sentiment about the ad e.g. close it. I donā€™t think there is (yet) enough scope to really control the algorithm - and it isnā€™t necessarily in the interests of the companies to give you that control.

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Add another couple of issues - two of us with different interests use the one computer. I know what Mr Z has been looking at when I get the adverts, no doubt he has to put up with my adverts. The other - we are on a satellite service and our ā€œlocationā€ differs from suburbs of Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and regional towns. So we get location specific adverts - WA Govt radar detector ban, a Sydney lawn care, Aged Care Homes in Camberwell, none of which are applicable to us in the outer boonies of Qld.

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On facebook (yes, I am yet to leave) I am finding that my friends actually donā€™t see much of what I post. I tend to get wound up about ā€œstuffā€ and will post news items from (for example) the Guardian, Independent Australia, and articles from The Conversationā€¦ and my friends dont read them very often. Occasionally Iā€™ll get a comment but mostly not. When asked, they are saying they dont see those but instead are more likely to see shared graphics which often depict the content. Or Cat videos. I know that my friends have not unfollowed me, because photographs I post, and general spiels always draw comment. Facebook thinks my friends dont want to see proper news. At least I think thats whats going on. Of course its possible that they see the items but wish I would stop posting them, so ignore them. LOL!

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How is it you donā€™t want to know what Himself is searching for?

If you each had separate Google accounts (or Microsoft or Apple or whatever) they would track you instead of your IP address. I use a couple of Gmail accounts to create separate personas so that when I search for instructions on how to make bombs and chemical weapons that account will not get polluted with ads for mundane consumer goods. I believe that using VPN gets over this problem and substituting Duckduckgo for Google search will also help.

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LOL. I would suggest the former.

Both can be true at the same time e.g. you post rants, your friends nervously and uncomfortably look the other way and studiously ignore the posts, after a while Facebook learns that your posts will elicit no response (at best), so it lowers the priority of showing those posts to your friends - and just sticks to cat videos. Canā€™t go wrong with cat videos.

Most people are non-confrontational. So if your friends disagree with you, they may prefer to ignore your post rather than express their disagreement. In addition, if the topic is controversial, they may prefer not to commit their opinion in writing for posterity. The internet never forgets.

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Interestingly they are much more likely to respond to one of my rants (which are usually short) than to a link to a news article which means they will have to hit the relevant site and do some reading. I already know they donā€™t disagree with my PoV, because we often rant together over tea and scones!

Must go watch some cat videos. Or go out in the back yard and watch my own make a fool of himself chasing leaves and lizards

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A lot of what you are talking about - retargeting /remarketing (ads that are targeted dependent on your searches and visitation to specific sites, are all happening because of ā€˜cookiesā€™. Google is phasing our cookies (your IP address gets a cookie attached to it) over the next few years (privacy laws are kicking in) so this retargeting / remarketing will cease. Facebook / Instagram are what we call ā€˜closed gardensā€™ and your activity on there remains within their confined walls. As an advertiser you can build a ā€˜look a likeā€™ audience within facebook / instagram to advertise to, which means that facebook will create an audience based on the characteristics that are clicking on the advert the most. So if your demogaphic is clicking on adverts within these closed gardens, you are also considered a prime target for the advertiser. When you join facebook / insta / tik tok etc, you give up your privacy to some degree for advertising purposes. So whilst you will see this fade and then eventually stop on search engines such as Google, you will always have it in closed gardens like social media.

Do you have any thoughts about the accuracy of matching algorithms? The four modes of failure that I mentioned are applicable to open and closed environments. Many examples of coded stupidity are found within a given environment like a particular streaming service or vendor like Amazon Kindle where you are logged in and clearly identified without recourse to cookies.

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The data gathering algorithms that platforms use based on daily activities to serve you content may seem out of whack occassionally as they are also calculating that your ā€˜typeā€™ has also watched or responded to ā€¦ Algorithms are constantly learning, and this is just part of the process, not necessarily that they are out of whack. Algorithms are not set and forget. As the world becomes more reliant on digital content, and publishers and advertisers become totally reliant on you receiving and digesting that content, algorithms will become smarter - look at the way it has changed in the last 3-5 years. These algorithms donā€™t just calculate your preferred content, they are calculating how long you spent on that page of content, how you got to that content, and if you go back to that content. When we are buying programmatic advertising, or advertising based on behaviours we can narrow it down to the enth degree based on your digital activity, your credit card activity, and what you actually buy, as well as the normal demographic data of sex / salary / family / location / schooling / career. So, it is twofold, algorithms learning what content / advertising you engage with based on you past activity OR based on ā€˜look a likeā€™ audiences, and advertisers targeting you either based on previous activity and / or you are deemed as their target audience due to your demographic identity.

Isnā€™t being a slow learner another way of saying stupid?

What have you got against dog videos, huh? Cat videos ā€˜greatā€™, but dog videos are just not up to scratch?!

Signed,

Max
Good Boy

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If they are the algorithms tracking my habits poorly informed?

Long after Iā€™ve made a purchase decision and done the deal they seem to be offering me similar offers for a product I no longer need to purchase.

Self inflicted? I need to stop purchasing over the counter or ordering with a phone call and not leaving an email.

To shoot that one down some online adverts suggest recent in store transactions can link my mobile number used to advise delivery into store or CC to my online persona. Although why Iā€™d need another of the same?

The big question here is what else might retailers do with our details entered into their ordering systems when we order in person?

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Max, I am outraged too. Who could not follow Olive and Mabel and be dismissive of your canine familiesā€™ abilities to do damn good videos?

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Do you have a link to more information about this?

What is meant by ā€œGoogleā€ in this context? Google as search provider? Google as browser provider (Chrome)? Google as ad provider?

Iā€™m not aware of any privacy law in Australia that would restrain Google or any other company from using cookies but of course Google is free to cease using cookies voluntarily.

Even the lame European laws just mean endlessly clicking to ā€œAcceptā€ / ā€œAcknowledgeā€ that cookies are being used.

It is always an option for your web browser to throw cookies away so that no permanent association occurs - although this is an ongoing battle.

To what extent is that an assumption? Even if all browsers simply abandoned support for cookies (hence all cookies got thrown away immediately and all cookies became useless), that would not necessarily mean that this kind of tracking would cease. There are other ways. They would find other ways.

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The retailer will use your details for remarketing, you can tick a box to prevent this just prior to checkout. The reatiler will also use your IP address for remarketing if you have abandoned the shopping cart. With privacy laws that is all they can do. Back on the algorithms that google / bing etc or advertising trade desks use, algorithms do not pick up that you have purchased, would be great if they could and that would eliminate the flood of advertising for similair / same products coming your way.

Google is to restrict the number of advertising cookies on websites accessed via its Chrome browser, in response to calls for greater privacy controls. It said that it would phase out third-party cookies within the next two years, Cookies are small text files that are used to track users across the web.Jan 15, 2020

[

Cookies crumbling as Google phases them out - BBC News

](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51106526#:~:text=Google%20is%20to%20restrict%20the,track%20users%20across%20the%20web.)

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There are many articles on Google phasing out cookies, I work in advertising and it will change the way we currently go to market completely. For example at the moment I can target a person who is interested in any subject (site data from cookies), who is in a specific geo location, (also from cookie data, not their IP address/server location) without cookies, this targeting disappears.

I wasnā€™t so much caught up about being showered with offers trying to get me to decide to buy from a given vendor or to make a once-off purchase but the situation where I am already committed to some degree (eg Stan or Amazon Kindle) where I have signed up for their product class (movies or books) and I have decided they can sell to me.

Having got some commitment from me and having all my usage history or purchasing history at their disposal their aim ought to be; to keep me as a customer, to encourage me to buy more and to make me happy to recommend them to grow their business. Vendors who make no effort to get repeat business or to use word of mouth are idiots (or frauds).

So why do they keep foisting rubbish on me that wastes my time? It isnā€™t that the bot needs more data, in each case it has hundreds of items to refer to. In failing this way the bot reveals that it is just having a wild guess what I might want to access next based on very crude metrics. The art has a long way to go before I will be somewhat satisfied with the recommendations.

And why not give me access to directly influence my choice? Why canā€™t I say ā€œstop with the bodice-rippers alreadyā€?

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Agree that they could be more proactive about gathering what you want to see and engage with. Amazon Kindle seems to get a few mentions, I am not a subscriber, so unaware of the traffic that is being presented. I do subscribe to Stan / Netflix / Spotify but donā€™t seem to be presented with content that is not appropriate, Facebook on the other hand does me in each and every time.

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