AI Isn't Just Spying on You. It's Tricking You into Spending More
26 comments
·December 17, 2025tantalor
probably_wrong
You may be thinking about this article about how Target knew that a woman was pregnant before her family knew: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558
I wish we had an update on what the situation looks like today.
gruez
>You may be thinking about this article about how Target knew that a woman was pregnant before her family knew: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558
"before her family knew" is a pretty low bar to clear, especially if the daughter was actively trying to hide the pregnancy (eg. by wearing baggy clothing). Moreover if we're taking the example of this specific story, where the women presumably knew she was pregnant (as opposed to the more sensational story of "Target figured out a women was pregnant before she even knew!!1!" that also makes the rounds), it's not hard to imagine how Target might be in a better position to infer her pregnancy without being galaxy brained or creepy. Take the examples given in the article:
>Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug.
heavyset_go
Go over to friend's place and watch the ads they get, you'll get a good idea of what kind of health concerns or illnesses they may have.
So far, in situations where it wouldn't be rude to ask, I've been able to determine with pretty good accuracy that at least someone in the household has the advertised health concerns.
You can also get an idea of their financial situation, given what buckets advertisers put them in and what they're advertised, as well.
Similarly, advertisers know when you're at friend's location, or elsewhere, and may show ads tailored to your profile.
measurablefunc
They have even better psychometric profiles on everyone now than they did previously. This is why Zuckerberg can confidently tell people during an interview that he knows they want at least 15 friends¹ & he is going to deliver those friends to them w/ his data centers.
¹https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-mark-zuckerberg-thinks-yo...
themafia
I would guess that purely observational psychometrics completely fail to predict how people will respond when challenged or stressed. I think they're trading on fools gold.
mingus88
Yeah AI is taking a lot of damage when the actual problem is capitalism
palmotea
> Yeah AI is taking a lot of damage when the actual problem is capitalism
And I think it's fair to to throw flak in AI's direction, if what it does is make capitalism less tolerable by removing some of the "inefficiencies."
While apologists for capitalism have done a good job of pushing me towards wanting to burn it all down, I doubt that's in the cards any time soon and limits on AI technology are far more likely.
charlie-83
It annoys me that big-tech marketing has made most people believe that "personalised advertising" means they get ads which are more "useful" to them. I regularly see people opt in to personalised advertising because of this.
Personalised advertising is about collecting every detail about your life and using it to extract as much money as possible from you. AI advancements might be making this even more effective but it's been this way for a long time.
hansvm
This is one of those places where it's worth disentangling the status quo from an optimal alternative.
Currently, every factlet you leak to one of these systems poisons them toward their profit (and almost unanimously against your best interests). Advertising draws your attention away from the products that would make your life better (cheaper, heathier, tastier, whatever) and toward profitable alternatives.
It doesn't have to be that way though. You physically don't have time to research every thing that exists, or even to hear about every possible product in passing. Supposing some of those would improve your life on average, is word-of-mouth really the most efficient way we can come up with to tell you about the things you do actually want to spend your money on? In theory, this is a great business -- customers want to spend money, companies want to sell things, and the information/discoverability asymmetry means that companies are inclined to get word of their products out there with customers _also_ wanting to hear about those products (if they're sufficiently personalized). If "advertising" were good enough, I'd pay money for it.
That only falls apart because of a lack of trust and ethical behavior. Instead of being treated like the information market it is, it's thrust onto individuals to try to prey on their weaknesses.
palmotea
> It doesn't have to be that way though. You physically don't have time to research every thing that exists, or even to hear about every possible product in passing. Supposing some of those would improve your life on average, is word-of-mouth really the most efficient way we can come up with to tell you about the things you do actually want to spend your money on?
Word-of-mouth vs. paid advertisements is a false dichotomy.
Also, a friction isn't a bad thing. You don't have to "research every thing that exists, or even to hear about every possible product in passing." It's fine to pick a good enough thing from a smaller set.
> In theory, this is a great business -- customers want to spend money, companies want to sell things, and the information/discoverability asymmetry means that companies are inclined to get word of their products out there with customers _also_ wanting to hear about those products (if they're sufficiently personalized). If "advertising" were good enough, I'd pay money for it.
Advertising not a great business in theory, because it's corrupted by a fundamental conflict of interest. Without draconian regulation, it's never going to be aligned to your interests as a consumer.
A better business would be some kind of product review magazine, where they research products and write articles about them.
Personally, I favor draconian regulation. Nationalize the ad agencies. Companies submit a request to the government ad agency for an add, they write a neutral ad with a couple of photos descriptive photos of the product, its name, and a brief outline of features, and that's what gets run.
degamad
> A better business would be some kind of product review magazine, where they research products and write articles about them.
Australia has https://www.choice.com.au/ - a subscription non-profit product review website & magazine.
dylan604
> Word-of-mouth vs. paid advertisements is a false dichotomy.
I think a lot of people confuse paid advertisements by influencers as word-of-mouth. For whatever reasoning, the concept of hired spokesperson seems to have been lost with social media influencers.
phantasmish
Opt-in product catalogues are fine for that. Plenty.
hibikir
Where the AI makes a difference here isn't regular personalized advertisement (which already isn't all that great, based on the percentage of ads I get for products I would never consider at all, or are downright offensive to me), but in understanding your existing consumers, and attempting to do habituation effects.
So imagine you have a bunch of money, watch sports while drinking and are bad at math, and therefore are considered to be a great target for sports betting companies. Making sure you get used to betting most of the time you watch a game is very valuable for the company, so just realizing what teams you like, when they play, and what kind of bets might look good to you, but are really pretty iffy is very valuable to them. Just like they would love to know when you are bored, or depressed, and maybe betting on the game that is going on right now would be appealing: A level of access to you that, say, a casino, or a bar that you haven't visited in a while just doesn't have. And habituation models are simple, you don't need a very expensive system to know when offering you a discount to entice you to don't break a gambling streak will pay off
Now that is using AI in ways that are quite antisocial by most standards: the current advertisement that tries to sell me hair growth when I have all my hair isn't all that scary.
heathrow83829
if you draw a venn diagram of all the stuff i get advertised on and all the stuff I actually buy, the two circles are in completely different locations with virtually no overlap whatsoever. the only time i get ads that are even remotely related to my purchases, are only ads that come after I've made the purchase and am done. personally, i don't see how they make any profit off me whatsoever.
dylan604
Maybe you're confusing who is meant to be making the profit. The people lying to you about receiving relevant, personalized ads are telling the same lie to those buying ads. The ad company tells both sides the lie and their profits are soaring.
heathrow83829
i think the whole "personalised advertising" thing is way oversold and more for the benefit of a sales pitch for the advertisers but reality is far from it. google makes their money on volume, not accuracy. and so all the "information" they collect, doesn't seem to translate into more targetted advertisement.
themafia
It annoys me that there aren't laws to prevent this. Or that anti-monopoly law wasn't effectively used to separate the largest advertising company in the world from a consumer software browser product which is clearly being used to facilitate and amplify these outcomes.
I'm thoroughly annoyed that adblockers aren't installed by default and require an opt out to disable. This will not at all touch first party advertising, but, it will put a huge dent into dynamic third party advertising. Which seems to be the source of the problem you describe.
Our government is genuinely failing to represent the majority on this issue.
1vuio0pswjnm7
"It annoys me that big-tech marketing has made most people believe that "personalised advertising" means they get ads which are more "useful" to them."
"relevant" is another term seen in addition to "useful"
But "relevant" is relative
For example, "relevant" to what?
It's only if Big Tech has collected data about the ad target and, e.g., made some guess about their intent, that the ads could be "relevant"
Whether the ads are truly "relevant" is a question for the reader. The term "relevant" might just be marketing fluff
Either way, Big Tech will keep the data vacuum humming
gretch
Well I can list some things which are completely irrelevant (happens even in online ads despite the advancements).
I got an offer for life insurance for US veterans - I’m not a US veteran so this has nothing to do with me.
I got an ad for women’s hygiene products, but I’m not a woman. So that’s completely wasted on me.
I just bought a mattress, and I don’t need a 2nd mattress, so all of those are irrelevant.
vjvjvjvjghv
AI is just another tool to implement a trend that has been going on for quite a while, probably starting with massive data collection through the internet. I think it’s only a matter of time until we will be seeing individualized pricing everywhere, including retail like grocery stores or gas stations
Maybe I am getting paranoid. But to me a lot of innovation in the last years feels openly hostile and primarily designed to extract maximum money while providing only little actual benefit. AI will just accelerate this trend.
TSiege
More perfect and consumer reports did a joint investigation and have uncovered this already happening.
snorbleck
ahh yes. it's not just this, it's that.
standardUser
The real tragedy is that we don't already have regulations already on the books in response to the endless data-hoarding that's been inflicted on us since at least the first tracking cookie.
This has been true for decades.
I recall my university classes in mid 2000s talking about examples of machine learning models for grocery store purchase patterns.