This last year I have
switched to a de-googled phone. I chose the Galaxy S9 from e-foundation, and have been very careful to only install apps that have no tracking capabilities.
deleted my accounts on twitter & facebook
stopped using chrome, google-search, and google-blogger
generally used a VPN. I chose Rob Braxman’s service for desktop and Protonmail VPN for cell phone.
On substack I recently posted my electrolysis work on transmutation of Al to Fe using a Al-Mg alloy and 10kV.
Today I went on to Amazon (which I am trying very hard to use less & less) and under the suggested items I should buy is Al-Mg alloy powder.
Huh? I have never searched on Amazon for this. I have never searched *anywhere* online for this. I know that generally speaking there is no person at Amazon who knows what I am doing - rather it is the AI which is putting all this together. How does the Amazon AI put together my activities to such a level a specificity? The simplest I can figure is: they know all the computers I use, and since they are all microsoft all the keystrokes are captured & collated, and they can scrape everything on any website I read or write, … presto-chango, Michael must have an interest in Al-Mg alloys.
Maybe there is a simpler explanation, like anything & anybody connected to Bob G just gets fed into on AI algorithm which Amazon/Google/Facebook/Instagram have easy access to.
Are Instagram users interested in Aluminum being routed to my substack pages?
This is all to say, I feel we might be nearing the end of an era. I can easily see myself growing old and un-used in some colony for crazy people and known-terrorists who use cash and don’t want global agencies telling us what freedoms we still have access to.
We also do not use Google or any of those pesky apps that track us and use VPN. Despite that, EVEN when my husband & I have had a conversation about a subject we have NEVER spoken about before and NEVER searched for online, we will invariably start receiving Amazon suggestions for purchasing said item and targeted ads on certain websites doing the same. What the heck is going on?
This post is well constructed and thoughtful. One of the remarkable corollary behaviors I have noted after writing on Substack is what sort of targeting results. I happen to be a long-time Nexus/Pixel user through multiple generations. Arguably I remain tethered to the Google family of products. I do not use social media since leaving FB 12 years ago nor anything in their family of products.
What is interesting to me is my methodology for posting seems to have affected targeting greatly. I find my inspiration for writing listening to Public Radio, assorted podcasts, etcetera. I then try to enrich a topic that motivated me during my walk on the treadmill. I then generate drafts or posts for my 3X/week substack. Because I use Grammarly for aiding my writing (I am still a beginner as I never blogged or had a newsletter b4 OCT 2021). What is overwhelming and largely pleasing to me is that my monthly stats imply I am generating 500K words per month which appear to be based upon what is in my draft folder or scheduled posts. My posts approximate 1500 words or thereabouts.
The interesting outcome is that whatever is being evaluated to drive my preferences (I am a Prime user) has been almost refined (true of my Google News feed, etc) to reflect things I contemplate rather than my impulses (I write about deeper thoughts rather than impulsive clutter).
Why this excessively long response? I think I will likely subscribe here because of your introduction. I also think your introduction to your Samsung device couples well with another thesis of mine. One of my early multi-part posts was about digital advertisement and targeting. I won't clutter people's feed with my mundane theory.
Thanks for encouraaging me to think and evaluate why I react the way I might to digital advertising. I think the comment by AD is a bit in agreement with what I am trying to say I am observing. Instead of confusing the bots however, I am only providng the sorts of things worth posting. The material that lives in my frontal cortex rather than the filth in my lizard brain. My thesis is that FB reinforces all clicking to those things that make us anxious.