Tech recommendations can reveal more about us than we know ourselves - but how and why does this happen?
    • Madison_rogue@kbin.social
      74·
      1 year ago

      Seriously though, she chose a show that was randomly chosen by the algorithm, she watched it, and more content of that type was suggested to her by the algorithm.

      This isn’t quite rocket science.

        • shinjiikarus@mylem.euEnglish
          14·
          1 year ago

          Has this story ever been confirmed by Target directly? As this happened in America and her father was outraged about it, it would have been awfully convenient, to “blame” the algorithm for “discovering”, she was pregnant. It takes quite a data analyst to figure out trends before someone even knows they are pregnant. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out a pattern for someone if they know they are pregnant and are just hiding it from their dad.

          • what_is_a_name@lemmy.world
            17·
            1 year ago

            Yes. It’s many years in my past, but this was confirmed. Target still does their targeting but now scatter unrelated items in the ads to hide what they know.

        • Madison_rogue@kbin.social
          123·
          1 year ago

          They didn’t figure anything out. There’s no sentience in the algorithm, only the creators of said algorithm. It only chose content based on input. So it all revolves around the choices of the article’s author.

          Same thing with the woman who was pregnant, the algorithm gave choices based on the user’s browsing history. It made the connection that the choice of product A was also chosen by pregnant mothers, therefore the shopper might be interested in product B which is something an expecting mother would buy.

  • EnderWi99in@kbin.social
    40·
    1 year ago

    Because you watched stuff that a lot of gay people watched and then watched more stuff the algorithm suggested based on your previous watch history. It’s not magic or anything.

  • AntiOutsideAktion [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    323·
    1 year ago

    Headline: How did Netflix know I was gay before I did?

    Sub header: After BBC reporter Ellie House came out as gay, she realised that Netflix already seemed to know. How did that happen?

    THE FIRST FUCKING LINE OF THE FUCKING ARTICLE: I realised that I was BISEXUAL in my second year of university, but Big Tech seemed to have worked it out several months before me.

    flag-bi-pride honk-enraged

    • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
      202·
      1 year ago

      Gay is a happily accepted term for “penis+penis”, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, whatever, in the UK & Ireland. It is basically “not straight”; you can think of it as the British word for ‘queer’, because ‘queer’ still often means, well, queer. I wish you would respect British people’s choice of how they identify; America’s obsession with clinical and distinct labeling hasn’t claimed this particular lingual nuance yet. Not everything is an attack on your chosen identity.

    • DonnieDarkmode@lemm.eeEnglish
      17·
      1 year ago

      I’ve noticed that “gay” is used as a more general term for members of the LGBTQ+ community, similar to how “guys” has a pretty common gender-neutral usage

      EDIT: tweaked the wording a bit

      • Em Adespoton@lemmy.caEnglish
        1611·
        1 year ago

        “Guys” hasn’t actually been accepted as gender neutral for a number of years, due to its implicit anti-feminist bias (you’ll fit in if you act like us men).

        I struggle with not using it constantly, as it was the go-to gender neutral term for my generation.

        • Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social
          8·
          1 year ago

          I think this is a bit regional. “Guys” sounds entirely gender neutral to my ear while “dudes” or “bro” sound specifically about men. But I know that “dude” and “bro” are used to refer to either women or men in other locations and “guys” is interpreted as being also referring to men there. I don’t think there is an absolute with these particular terms.

          • Veraxus@kbin.social
            13·
            1 year ago

            As a Californian, I take GREAT offense at the idea of gendering “dude”.

            There is no more gender neutral term than “dude.” You’re dude. I’m dude. He’s dude. She’s dude. They are dudes. The weather is dude. Animals… dudes. Kids: dudes. Elderly: dudes. Girls are dudes. Boys are dudes. Men and women are dudes. Google is dude. Your smart phone… also dude. Parking meter? Dude.

            You can use it for anything… but do not gender it.

        • DonnieDarkmode@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          Thanks for the correction! I still hear that usage fairly often and wasn’t up with the discourse around it. Like the other reply I’m also more partial to “folks” personally (as well as “y’all”), but I think I still use “guys” out of habit on occasion

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    141·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    “Big data is this vast mountain,” says former Netflix executive Todd Yellin in a video for the website Future of StoryTelling.

    Facebook had been keeping track of other websites I’d visited, including a language-learning tool and hotel listings sites.

    Netflix told me that what a user has watched and how they’ve interacted with the app is a better indication of their tastes than demographic data, such as age or gender.

    “No one is explicitly telling Netflix that they’re gay,” says Greg Serapio-Garcia, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge specialising in computational social psychology.

    According to Greg, one possibility is that watching certain films and TV shows which are not specifically LGBTQ+ can still help the algorithm predict “your propensity to like queer content”.

    For me, it’s a matter of curiosity, but in countries where homosexuality is illegal, Greg thinks that it could potentially put people in danger.

    I’m a bot and I’m open source!