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Re:Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work by charcircuit on Saturday February 19, 2022 @11:26PM (#30403218)
> The danger is that an advertising surveillance company that has leveraged its ad surveillance into hundreds of billions of dollars per year in revenue has access to (and uses!) 100% of your personal correspondence, today and every day, no maybe.

There is nothing dangerous with being shown more relevant ads.

Re:Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work by rendall on Sunday February 20, 2022 @01:05AM (#30403603)
You are correct, and if that were the end of it, people like myself who are concerned about it could rightly be labeled paranoid.

However, the collected data create an intimate, detailed portrait of you. Data aggregators can know how old you are, your general state of health, where you have been, your interests, including sexual interests, your political views both expressed and unexpressed, your associations, your associates, your family, your daily habits, your unusual habits, your credit score, whether that credit score is accurate, etc, etc.

And, this is true for everyone you come into contact with: friends, family, business associates.

An AI could, with this data, model you and your behavior more accurately than could your own spouse.

Moreover, not only must you trust the people with access to that data, and everyone they sell it to, to only ever use it for targeted ads, but you must trust everyone who will ever have access to it, forever.

While you may believe you're boring and your views are entirely uncontroversial, times change. Or, hell, with enough data and motivation, someone can paint a damning portrait of you made up whole cloth from true, innocuous details.

You have to just hope that neither you nor anyone you associate with become a political target, or the target of criminal activity, or garner just plain negative attention, for whatever reason, because if so, you and your loved ones will be trivially easy to find and manipulate.

Re:Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work by charcircuit on Sunday February 20, 2022 @02:35AM (#30403961)
>model you and your behavior more accurately than could your own spouse.

To me this is a natural thing. It makes sense that computers are better at remembering and interpreting data than humans. YouTube is able to recommend me videos much better than I could myself. I don't remember the names of all the people I like, but YouTube does.

Re:Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work by rendall on Wednesday February 23, 2022 @05:15AM (#30439612)
> To me this is a natural thing. It makes sense that computers are better at remembering and interpreting data than humans. YouTube is able to recommend me videos much better than I could myself. I don't remember the names of all the people I like, but YouTube does.

This is a true statement that doesn't address any of the arguments; a non-sequitur. Yes, computers are better at remembering and interpreting (some) data than humans.

What does that have to do with the humans who access and use that data for their own, very human ends? You skipped that part.

Re:Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work by eyelidlessness on Sunday February 20, 2022 @12:49AM (#30403548)
When I have the stomach for it, I click irrelevant ads which don’t reflect my interests. You know—out of curiosity—to spend their money. It’s astonishing how quickly a silly hat becomes literal violent propaganda. I mean, in the same minute.
Re:Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work by dotancohen on Sunday February 20, 2022 @02:35AM (#30403960)

  > It’s astonishing how quickly a silly hat becomes literal violent propaganda. I mean, in the same minute.
Could you please explain?
Re:Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work by eyelidlessness on Sunday February 20, 2022 @12:06PM (#30407183)
Like if I click an ad for, say, hunting gear… I’m instantly inundated with “thin blue line” and not very subtly threatening “guns rights” stuff and pretty much every single thing I would expect to see in a far right mob.
Re:Tell HN: YouTube and how my wife lost 7 years of work by dotancohen on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @01:13AM (#30424549)
Interesting, thanks.