{"id":3684,"date":"2014-09-09T06:39:20","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T10:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3684"},"modified":"2015-01-03T06:40:30","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T11:40:30","slug":"google-algorithms-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3684","title":{"rendered":"Google Algorithms at Work"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Google\"<\/a>

(photo: c1.staticflickr.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Everyone has noticed\u2014and is from mildly to serious annoyed\u2014that after we visit a website looking for garden tools, say, Google generates an avalanche of related ads. Last year I bought a scarf online and, for the next few months, my social media were draped in it. What gives? I already bought the darn thing! You\u2019d think the system could distinguish between \u201cPurchase completed\u201d and \u201cStill interested. Maybe? Nice, right? You like?\u201d<\/p>\n

Two RISD graduates\u2014Jason Huff and Mimi Cabell\u2014decided to test the limits of networked marketing by emailing to each other, page by page, Bret Easton Ellis\u2019s 1991 scorcher, American Psycho<\/em>. You\u2019ll recall the book is about Manhattan businessman and serial killer Patrick Bateman, and is notorious for its graphic sex and violence. What ads would Google\u2019s hard-working algorithms find relevant to these emails? Huff and Cabell wanted to know. The interesting results revealed what the author\u2019s say was \u201cGMail\u2019s unpredictable insensitivity to violence, racism, and sex.\u201d<\/p>\n

A page that included the murder of a man and a dog by a knife-wielding attacker did generate ads for knives and, in a grisly touch, knife sharpeners. And a page with a racial slur carried no ads at all. But the most common ad across 408 pages of mayhem? Crest Whitestrips. Maybe a \u201cjust keep smiling and all this will go away\u201d message there.<\/p>\n

You can get a pdf of the book they compiled<\/a> from their results, which includes all 800+ ads as footnotes (minus the contribution by Bret Easton Ellis). Something he wrote that appeared on page 27 stimulated an ad for \u201cfolding chair parts.\u201d I can\u2019t imagine. And, on the very last page, a way to avoid \u201c3 Awful Guitar Mistakes.\u201d Probably not one of Bateman\u2019s top-of-mind worries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone has noticed\u2014and is from mildly to serious annoyed\u2014that after we visit a website looking for garden tools, say, Google generates an avalanche of related ads. Last year I bought a scarf online and, for the next few months, my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Google Algorithms at Work","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing","category-the-morgue"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-Xq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3685,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3684\/revisions\/3685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}