#advertising algorithms

EU and UK open antitrust probe into Google and Meta over online ads (March 11, 2022)

Regulators in Europe and the UK have opened an antitrust probe into a deal between Google and Meta on online advertising, in the latest effort to tackle the market power of the world’s biggest technology companies.

The move follows US antitrust investigators who are also probing an agreement informally known as “Jedi Blue.” The search engine giant and Facebook’s parent company have been accused of working together to carve up advertising profits, acting together to buttress their businesses.

“Advertising is very important and because of that, it is important that there is competition on who can place ads where,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief, told the Financial Times. She said the UK and the EU had agreed to open the probe into the matter on the same day. “There are other people than Google doing it. What we suspect here is that there may have been an agreement between Google, and then Facebook, only to use Google services and not competing services. That’s a giant problem.”

It believes the teenage boy is queer in some way but seems incapable of pinning down an exact identity (*cough* possibly because it has the rest of its information all wacky *cough*) (it might think he is specifically a trans teenage boy since there was awhile I kept getting recommended stuff clearly geared towards teenagers/young people considering transitioning), likes video game content, indie rock music, video essays geared towards people in their teens-20s, etc.

It believes the middle aged mom is going through menopause (do you know how many ads about menopause I have gotten as someone not yet 30?!), likes gardening, crochet alongs (I don't know why it keeps recommending this, I do crochet but I've never watched a crochet along), NPR/NBC relatively no-nonsense center-left news, some further left independent news coverage that is still extremely minimal nonsense and clearly marketed towards gen x women (which I will admit I actually prefer to the stuff marketed closer to people my age), environmentalism, gospel music, dad rock, classical music for background stuff, and it thinks she's either a nurse interested in agroecology or someone working in agroecology interested in the medical field. For what it's worth the algorithm does recommend stuff about supporting queer teenagers to her which is maybe a good sign for the actual queer teenagers who share a youtube account with their mom (somehow? in the year 2025?). It also thinks she recently went through cancer which I guarantee is because I was looking up information about my actual mom's cancer treatment/survivability which if she hadn't survived would have made those particular ads go from annoying to just awful so like dang. Actually just in general the ads directed at the supposed middle aged mom are just so much worse than the ones directed at the teenage boy but that would be an entire other post complaining about that.

It believes that middle aged mom has access to the phone/youtube account in the morning, hands it off to teenage boy during the day, takes the phone back sometime in the evening around when I'm cooking dinner, and then the teenage boy takes it back for the rest of the evening. While I certainly didn't set out to create this appearance, I encourage the algorithm in believing this by whenever it asks why I'm scrolling past so many videos without clicking on any I always pick the option for too many recommended videos for another user of the account. Because I love lying to youtube especially when it's on my phone and I can't block the ads. And the result is low key kinda funny.

Anyway, the algorithm has decided that the me that is my teenage son is busy getting ready for graduation, applying for colleges (sir your should have been on that well before this if you existed!), looking for stuff for his dorm, etc. And middle aged mom is also getting hit with ads about how to be helpful with going on college tours etc.