<story><title>Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web</title><url>https://www.neustadt.fr/essays/against-a-user-hostile-web/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jccalhoun</author><text>I use ublock origin and privacy badger not because I am worried about privacy but because the internet is basically unusable without it.&lt;p&gt;Because of this, I don&amp;#x27;t see many ads. But I have been an amazon customer since 1999 (according to what they say on their website when I&amp;#x27;m logged in.) Looking at what they recommend for me, this personalization stuff is crap.&lt;p&gt;In music, Amazon recommends bands I never listen to like Montrose, Metallica, and the Doors (and to be fair, some people I&amp;#x27;ve never heard of so I guess it is possible that I would be interested in them. Greta Van Fleet? William Patrick Corgan?)&lt;p&gt;In books, I do like scifi but they recommend a bunch of books with spaceships shooting each other on the cover - not what I have ever been interested in.&lt;p&gt;In the &amp;quot;humor and entertainment&amp;quot; section of books they do list some books that I would be interested in but, strangely, none of them are &amp;quot;humor&amp;quot; but are all academic books about videogames (which I am interested in). Even here the recommendation engine is very unsophisticated because in between academic books on videogames there are books on the art of Zelda and other coffee table books that I am not interested in.&lt;p&gt;And the first book in their recommended children&amp;#x27;s book section is 1984. (and I don&amp;#x27;t have any kids any way).&lt;p&gt;If this is the best they can do with 18 years of tracking my purchases then I am not worried.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wutbrodo</author><text>&amp;gt;  In books, I do like scifi but they recommend a bunch of books with spaceships shooting each other on the cover - not what I have ever been interested in.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re making a huge mistake by judging a book by its cover in this case. The copy of the Foundation series that I had as a kid was very space opera looking too, and I&amp;#x27;ve seen gaudy covers on everything from Dune to Kim Stanley Robinson. For Sci fi in particular, publishers have an incentive to trick a large chunk of the audience into thinking that its Star Wars-y, and there&amp;#x27;s not much incentive in signaling the things that you or I would get out these books.</text></comment>
<story><title>Against an Increasingly User-Hostile Web</title><url>https://www.neustadt.fr/essays/against-a-user-hostile-web/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jccalhoun</author><text>I use ublock origin and privacy badger not because I am worried about privacy but because the internet is basically unusable without it.&lt;p&gt;Because of this, I don&amp;#x27;t see many ads. But I have been an amazon customer since 1999 (according to what they say on their website when I&amp;#x27;m logged in.) Looking at what they recommend for me, this personalization stuff is crap.&lt;p&gt;In music, Amazon recommends bands I never listen to like Montrose, Metallica, and the Doors (and to be fair, some people I&amp;#x27;ve never heard of so I guess it is possible that I would be interested in them. Greta Van Fleet? William Patrick Corgan?)&lt;p&gt;In books, I do like scifi but they recommend a bunch of books with spaceships shooting each other on the cover - not what I have ever been interested in.&lt;p&gt;In the &amp;quot;humor and entertainment&amp;quot; section of books they do list some books that I would be interested in but, strangely, none of them are &amp;quot;humor&amp;quot; but are all academic books about videogames (which I am interested in). Even here the recommendation engine is very unsophisticated because in between academic books on videogames there are books on the art of Zelda and other coffee table books that I am not interested in.&lt;p&gt;And the first book in their recommended children&amp;#x27;s book section is 1984. (and I don&amp;#x27;t have any kids any way).&lt;p&gt;If this is the best they can do with 18 years of tracking my purchases then I am not worried.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bambax</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s really amazing how bad those personnalisation engines are; AI seems pretty stupid for now.&lt;p&gt;But as I was making the exact same point a few days ago here on HN, someone responded to say that maybe it was on purpose, that if recommendations were too good they would creep us out.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t know what to think of it but I found the objection interesting...</text></comment>