FB Promotes Products Users Discuss in Posts
As consumer tech radio personality Kim Komando stated, “If it sometimes seems like Facebook knows you personally, that’s because it does. It has algorithms that track what you like, watch and click on, and then it passes that information on to Facebook advertisers.”
Imagine you want to buy something. Now imagine that your Facebook stream suddenly sends you ads about that very product. No need to imagine anymore⏤it’s happening.
Facebook has had one tough quarter: data privacy scandals, shrinking margins and a market capitalization that has been trimmed by more than $100 billion as the internet giant’s shares fell from a record $217 per share to the $160 range. Facebook now needs to show investors and analysts that it can jump-start earnings growth to restore faith. It can do that by pairing AI and predictive shipping.
The current Facebook business model is based upon renting user intelligence to advertisers.
Regardless of who is mining the data, Facebook eagerly monetizes advertising insights based on user details. Writer Cale Guthrie Weissman states that “Zuckerberg keeps insisting Facebook doesn’t sell our data. What it does is even worse. Renting aggregated data is even more powerful.”
As of 2017, Facebook had more than 150 people working in AI and is currently sitting on yottabytes of information about behavior and preferences. According to analysts Julia Angwin and Surya Mattu, “Facebook has tracked more than 52,000 unique attributes to classify users.”
Facebook has three new AI algorithms, which will push further into its ability to target users: DeepText, DeepFace and FBLearner Flow. DeepText analyzes vast quantities of information, much of it from commercial data brokers. According to skeptical analyst Jeffrey Chester from the Center for Digital Democracy, “Facebook is dishonest, bundling a dozen different data companies to target one individual.” Whether you believe the company is being dishonest, building the equivalent of a dozen data companies to target the individual is significant.
DeepText can analyze and decipher your own words to direct you toward products you most likely want to purchase. And there by have your product just waiting to be delivered to you. Convenient? Maybe. Intrusive? Definitely.
The article written by Kerry Wright for CNBC.com, is very long and very detailed. And it has a lot of frightening and yet promising information that you will find interesting no matter what business you are in.
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