[Moscow, Russia] – Akrom Chorshanbiev was arrested in the Odintsovo district of Moscow, Russia, on suspicion of possession of weapons. According to Russian state media, two Kalashnikov assault rifles and ammunition were found in his car. Chorshanbiyev told law enforcement officials that he was an employee of the Private Military Company Wagner Group.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the PMC, declared innocence, responding to an inquiry by Russian State media agency RBC, “We checked carefully. There has never been such a character in PMC Wagner, and there is none. For the future, in order not to confuse an ordinary offender with a Wagner fighter, pay attention to the…characteristic features of PMC Wagner fighters.”
Sometimes the comedy writes itself. On the same day that Prigozhin extolled the high standards of PMC Wagner, an American with a self-admitted chronic masturbation problem reported he saw a recruiting ad on Pornhub for PMC Wagner.
Giggity.
In another inquiry by Russian state media, Prigozhin was asked if the story was true and said, “I don’t know on which sites, but advertising PMC Wagner on porn sites is a very good idea from our marketers. I absolutely completely agree with them, and this advertisement says: ‘Go to fight in the Wagner PMC and stop jerking off.’ Who can disagree with this argument?”
Giggity.
Later in the day, Newsweek confirmed that Wagner recruiting ads were running on Pornhub, and the company had pulled the ad campaign from its website.
A lot of keystrokes have been dedicated to the subject of “is
Facebook listening to my conversations?” The general conclusion is a
resounding, no to at the worst, highly unlikely. I feel like I need to adjust
my tinfoil hat because I’ve had a couple of incidents lately that have me take
pause and wonder, is AI listening to my conversations and using it for marketing?
Before I take this leap, let me provide a bit of background.
I was, up until two weeks ago, the head of Product Marketing at a company that
specializes in providing TV ad attribution to upper and lower funnel KPIs, as
well as conversion events, to brands and networks. The ability to go this TV
displayed this ad in this household, and then this phone or PC visited this
website, or bought this item, or walked into this store, or, well you get the
idea, is both very simple and very complex. The capability to do it to the level
of an individual is possible. To be 100% clear, my company does not in any way
engage in that level of tracking, nor do we use or even accept or process
Personally Identifiable Information (PII). We also have a crystal-clear opt-in
process. Those that know me, I mean know me, know I would quit tomorrow if I
thought for one minute, we were doing something crooked. I’ve been under the
hood.
The point of this is, I “understand,” this technology. I understand
that between tracking pixels, cookies, UID, MAID, device IDs, and connecting all
this data using LiveRamp or Adobe, as two examples, exists. It is completely
true that when all your browsing, search, location, and social information is
aggregated, even in an “anonymous” way, a very detailed picture of you emerges.
A few years ago it was common that if you searched refrigerators online that
you would see ads for refrigerators for the next six months – everywhere – even
if you already bought a refrigerator. Now it seems that if you even thought
about a fridge or said, “Hey honey, I think we need a new refrigerator,” ads
appear. It could be as simple as you walked into a Best Buy store, followed by
Frys, followed by Sears, and the location data was used to conclude you were
looking at appliances. Yes, that simple.
Back to my tinfoil hat. Case study number one.
About a month ago at work, we were talking about printers
and high-quality printers for photo production or other work. I had mentioned
that years ago, I had owned a Minolta color laser printer that created amazing
quality prints for years. That I had it until the drum had worn out, and the cost
was prohibitive for replacement, so I got rid of it.
That same day, on Facebook, I was served an ad for Minolta color laser printer cartridges. I haven’t looked at replacement printers in a year. I certainly didn’t search for anything. I have gone into some office supply stores but not outside of my usual patterns. I hadn’t made any Amazon purchases related to Minolta anything, or anywhere else for that matter. I hadn’t even thought or dreamed about my Minolta printer, that I got rid of 7 years ago after five years of service. There it was, an ad for Minolta laser printer cartridges in my Facebook feed. I honestly went, “meh,” because I understand the technology for ad optimization.
Case study number two.
Today I was driving my daughter around to pick up a prescription. I told her about the massaging seats in my somewhat, new to us, car as we were traveling. I told her where the button was to turn it on and how it feels good on the back. She found the button and described it as like a cat kneading you and that it felt good. Her prescriptions were not back pain related; I have done no searches about back pain, or sciatica, or any other type of back-related pain. I did have an MRI on my shoulder about six weeks ago, but no ads were shown to me for pain management, back issues, or any other issue related to the back. I have done no searches about back or back-related problems. I haven’t been to a chiropractor or any other place where location data could go, hey, maybe we should show him this. So I get home and well, look for yourself.
So now color me very skeptical, because leveraging what I
know, it is getting harder for me to believe that Samsung, or Apple, or
Facebook, or Google, or Amazon, or someone is not listening to my
conversations and showing me ads related to those conversations. Case study one
I can write off to bizarre coincidence. This second one makes it harder for me
to accept that there is something deeper going on. Neural nets, artificial intelligence,
and remarketing algorithms are good (well, in reality, they are pretty flawed,
but they are getting better), but they are nowhere near that good.
Excuse me; I need to tighten my tinfoil hat.
Journalists, activists, and researchers defending the First Amendment
Subscribe to Malcontent News
Register to feed your head holes with the Malcontent News newsletter.
Submitting your e-mail address gives us permission to send you e-mails. We do not sell or distribute our e-mail lists or share them with third parties.