Few things I find more creepy is targeted advertising. It attempts to “target” based on machine learning, which looks at interactions on social media, webpages browsed and search terms to find what is most marketable for the user, not what is most relevant to the user.
The amount of data that feeds into targeted advertising is quite creepy. And often it makes judgements about a person that are quite wrong, as it’s only looking at population averages with a similar profile, and trying to make an educated guess at what products can be sold to that person. Yet, one isn’t defined by what advertisers think they can sell to you, and you shouldn’t take too seriously what people are paid to put in front of you.
Every time I mention my anxiety, I am fed a steady diet of advertisement for Better Help online mental health services, and the free-to-call 988 anti-suicide hotline. Targeted mental health advertising is downright creepy! When I was concerned about my excess peeing and pooping — from all the water and fiber in food — I was fed a steady diets about prostate and stomach cancers. Maybe because of my google searches, but long after my doctor visit and tests confirmed I was mostly clean, it was still creeply messaging to me. And then since I’ve gotten interested in healthy eating, I see constant advertising for services for people with anorexia, and granola bars and other highly-processed “health foods”. Not foods that are actually healthy, but come with good mark-up for the food processors.
Since I’ve mentioned my issues with new landlord and my search for rural property, I’ve now been getting fed a steady diet of advertising about landlord tenant management software and speculative real estate investments. Then there has been a steady batch of advertising I’ve been consuming about moving services, and extended stay places, as if soon I am to become homeless. I don’t think my current living accommodations are sustainable forever, but I really don’t think I’m in immediate risk of homelessness, despite the bit of a game my new landlord played over the rent check. Clearly if I got notice of the upcoming rent increase in June, my landlord isn’t seeking immediate eviction. He just wants my money and $100 a month more of it come June. Ironically, no advertising for land or property, despite all the time I spend on Zillow and studying the property tax rolls.
Then there are conflicting advertisements I keep seeing between investing for high-net worth individuals and services directed to the poorest of poorest people, such as those on welfare and section 8 housing. I’m not neither — I don’t have a million in investable assets, nor do I get welfare benefits. I’m closer to the prior then the later but not there, yet — and I’ll probably blow it on land and livestock. Some of it’s my personal interest in ways of being frugal and a responsible investing, but it’s fascinating to see the conflict. Discount cellphone providers like Mint Mobile still really want my business, and so do discount internet providers for low-income persons. But the real reason I choose not to have internet at home isn’t poverty, but it’s for the sanity of not having all that commercial crap in my apartment and to save a bit of money.
I know I’m not defined by commercial advertising, which exists solely to sell products to me but it creeps me out how much it knows about me and how it tries to sell me things based on things I have searched or explored on the internet.