<story><title>An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son&apos;s birth</title><url>https://twitter.com/gbrockell/status/1072589687489998848</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>NorthOf33rd</author><text>Instagram is not a person. Don&amp;#x27;t ask it to be decent.&lt;p&gt;Those ads are not your friends. Don&amp;#x27;t expect them to treat you like they care.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re not sharing your information with a human. You&amp;#x27;re sharing it with a business who is tuned to maximize profit. The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t care about you. You&amp;#x27;ve made the decision to let a business deep into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are the consequences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>allemagne</author><text>This is mostly very true, but I think the author understands this better than you&amp;#x27;re implying. The point of this tweet is to influence public opinion. This:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative.&lt;p&gt;would hopefully not be true anymore due to negative PR, companies would take action out of pure self-interest, and it would stop this situation from happening to future people.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s of course still the broader problem of companies ravenously and irresponsibly gathering as much data on individuals as possible. To me any increase in a company&amp;#x27;s liability for the information they&amp;#x27;re hoarding, even in the form of righteous outrage that on its surface seems to anthropomorphize them, is a step in the right direction.</text></comment>
<story><title>An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son&apos;s birth</title><url>https://twitter.com/gbrockell/status/1072589687489998848</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>NorthOf33rd</author><text>Instagram is not a person. Don&amp;#x27;t ask it to be decent.&lt;p&gt;Those ads are not your friends. Don&amp;#x27;t expect them to treat you like they care.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re not sharing your information with a human. You&amp;#x27;re sharing it with a business who is tuned to maximize profit. The ROI on dealing with still births for advertising is probably negative.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t care about you. You&amp;#x27;ve made the decision to let a business deep into your personal life, a space once reserved only for loved ones. These are the consequences.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>VikingCoder</author><text>Any person can ask others to change their behavior.&lt;p&gt;And if they get the attention of the company, the company may change its behaviors.&lt;p&gt;Whether out of sympathy or self-interest is kind of immaterial.&lt;p&gt;As users, we&amp;#x27;d like the companies to change their behavior.&lt;p&gt;Companies rely on users&amp;#x27; good will.  Once they depend on users for revenue, they need to act to a certain degree as though they care about those users.  Or users may leave.  These are the consequences.</text></comment>