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I know there is the famous Target case where Target sent pregnancy related ads to the living-at-her-parents daughter. That's how the dad found out. I remember
by WirelessGigabit 2y ago
I know there is the famous Target case where Target sent pregnancy related ads to the living-at-her-parents daughter. That's how the dad found out.
I remember a podcast about this. Maybe Reply All. But I cannot find it anymore.
- forrestthewoods 2y agoHow Companies Learn Your Secrets (2012) https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....
- pweezy 2y agoI learned about this from the audiobook version of The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Maybe that is what you're thinking of?
- WirelessGigabit 2y agoThank you so much! I owe you a <insert-drink-of-your-choice>!
- brians 2y agoIt later turned out Target sent some of those ads to all families, blindly—it wasn’t causally related to the daughter’s pregnancy. Whoops. But this way makes a better story.
- MrJohz 2y agoDo you have a source for that? I've heard that claim before, and I can completely believe it, but I've never seen any real evidence for either side of the story, just a lot of guesses about how the system might have worked.
- mavhc 2y agohttps://medium.com/@colin.fraser/target-didnt-figure-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did-a6be13b973a5 https://medium.com/@colin.fraser/target-didnt-figure-out-a-t... is the main critical post
- mcmoor 2y agoI was expecting a concrete evidence on why the story is false instead of speculations arguing that it's unimportant. For me it feels like preaching to the choir, I already feel that AI profiling isn't as powerful as people screamed, and that one story is repeated too often, but I need some real argument to say so.
- tedunangst 2y agoEven the original NY Times story was I heard from somebody who heard from somebody... Did the reporter talk to the angry dad? Who did they talk to?
- fortran77 2y agoWell, the truth is somewhere in the middle. See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=598a9c396668 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.... and https://www.kdnuggets.com/2014/05/target-predict-teen-pregnancy-inside-story.html https://www.kdnuggets.com/2014/05/target-predict-teen-pregna...