Like why do they care how many times I go to porn hub every day or that nothing gets me harder than a free use MILF? Why do they care that I don’t know how to spell consistency so I have to Google it every 3 months.

What the fuck is wrong with people?

  • Justas🇱🇹@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    Fun story: me and my wife kept talking about our nasty neighbour we call “the slug” and she got “Slug removal tips” on her YouTube suggestions.

  • DontTakeMySky@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Cool. Now I can subtly influence you to pay for your free use MILF porn. Or use MILF models in your ads to make you more likely to buy shit.

    Even if you don’t think you can be influenced by that stuff it still likely to change your behaviour just enough, even just 5% more spending which makes it worthwhile to them.

    But honestly your data barely matters on its own. But once it’s merged with everyone else’s…that’s when it’s valuable.

  • forgotmylastusername@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    A spooky thing I noticed at one point I could search a rather vague query and Google was returning results in the programming language I was working with when the query was general enough to have been any language.

  • hperrin@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Money.

    Your data can help sell you stuff. If they know you’re into MILFs, they can sell advertising to the MILF companies. Then you see a bunch of MILF ads. The more they know, the more they can target you. Eventually we’ll have ads in our dreams like in Futurama.

  • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Because your data is used to make models of your behavior and opinions. Once someone knows exactly what you do and don’t like it’s really easy to frame purchase and political decisions so that they sound like something you want, even if they’re really good for someone else.

    • Daft_ish@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 months ago

      Do they know I’m basically a monkey with depression? Can someone tell them that? Might answer some of the questions they are so desperate to find out.

      • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I think they’d be more interested in whether you’re a bonobo or a chimp because that implies a very different approach to relieving stress.

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        3 months ago

        Depressed? Buy these meds! Or spend your money on these therapies, visit these Facebook pages/YouTube channels where we can show you more ads under the guise of providing advice.

        Monkey? Buy this chic barrel! Visit your jungle homeland by booking through this travel site.

        They want to know everything about you so they can sell you (and everyone who fits in the same bucket as you) very specific things that you’re more likely to buy.

        • Daft_ish@lemmy.worldOP
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          3 months ago

          Sure, monkey like meds. Monkey have more meds. Monkey love travel. Monkey buy travel.

          Monkey have money for meds and travel?

          • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            “Need money quick? Gig work! Sell plasma! Buy sell items on <second hand marketplace>.com! Reverse a mortgage! Get credit today!”

            • ULS@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              And if those don’t work the Gun and Rope ads start coming in!

      • deaf_fish@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        If they do it right, you won’t even notice or feel like you have no choice to buy something.

        They want to know you better than you know yourself. I doubt they would be interested in any information you would provide because it would be useless compared to what they can get.

        Most of the phyc research is done by large companies to crack all our brains open so we open our wallets.

        You’re probably depressed because that is what they want you to be. So you maximize screen time for adds and purchases.

  • nudny ekscentryk@szmer.info
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    3 months ago

    The more they claim they know about you the more they can charge for ads. I have recently realized that Google, Facebook and such are not only powerful because they aggregate data, but rather because they can sell their product (=your attention) to other companies very, very well. People often claim companies would not pay for advertisements had they didn’t work — I claim otherwise; they pay for advertisements because Google falsely claims how effective they are and that’s why they need to collect your data and be able to show that to their customers to boost their (Google’s) sales. In other words they don’t do that to sell the customers product well (the one that has been advertised) but rather sell their own product, which is ad space.

    • Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      I’ve heard this a few times. It’s certainly compelling to me, I guess it’s obviously a hard thing to know given it will be heavily debated by those companies and it’s always going to be obscured by them to maintain a mystique, whether it works or doesn’t since in both cases it helps to keep everyone a little bit in the dark.

      Part of this idea that the surveillance economy is not nearly as effective at controlling consumer behavior as claimed makes me wonder if I’m being unnecessarily paranoid when I jealously guard my privacy since it seems it could be that my data is taken potentially in service of nothing. Nevertheless I instinctively just don’t want to take the risk that hooverig up all that data really does work for manipulation and control.

      • Huschke@programming.dev
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        3 months ago

        I don’t think it’s paranoid. Best case scenario, they really are using your data ineffectively, which imo is still bad because you are not getting any benefit from it. But worst case scenario is a government coming into power that abuses this data to extents we can’t possible fathom today.

  • TFO Winder@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    They are interested in your data because you are human and you do human things, the more they understand you and your activities the better they can gather knowledge for economical decisions such as Ads, Trends etc.

    Most commonly they use this information to manipulate you into using their services or changing your preferences by marketing and Ads. The more they understand you the more effective it is.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      More specifically — by matching all of your purchases with every data point about you, and the people you associate with, they can build out statistical models to determine the data points that most strongly correlate to people like you and what motivates or persuades them to GENERATE MORE PROFIT — direct purchases, attention, clicks, discussion, word of mouth, lead generation, etc, etc…

      Or… You know… What motivates/persuades you to support a dictator or vote for a specific political candidate or party, as well as what demotivates/dissuades you from the opposition — including what types of psychological warfare, disinformation, deepfakes, “fake news”, and lies are most successful in achieving these goals — all of which benefits the most horrifically immoral and unethical criminals, corporations, and individuals the most (the “good guys” aren’t the ones using deception and lies to profit and win).

      • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        even more specifically to create what is know as W-shaped attribution. That you can zig zag around the internet (as if following the lines on the W) and when you end up at your purchase, one can analyze the paths you took, and millions of others took, and find commonality to reduce to the path of least resistance.

  • Shotgun_Alice@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Pixar seeing a rise in milf web searches: Ok boys it’s time to release another movie with a mom who has a dump truck ass.

  • Franklin@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    To put it succinctly they aren’t. They’re interested in aggregate data so that a data engineer can use it to understand consumer trends and better predict marketing reach.

    It’s not specifically about you, it’s more of a what they can claim to know about their consumers.

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    We’ve waited all this time to tell you. Unfortunately, we have run out of time. The reason you’re so interesting is

  • RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Because the last bastion of zombie capitalism is pushing money around.

    Folks buy this information because there are other folks willing to buy this information. And so on… and so on…