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crazygringoyesterday at 3:38 PM6 repliesview on HN

...yes?

I like good recommendations better than bad recommendations. The value I get is better recommendations.

Like, I literally update the categories of things I'm interested in, in my Google profile, so I get less useless ads.

People complain about bad and useless recommendations and irrelevant ads all the time. Personalization is how you get better ones.


Replies

snapcasteryesterday at 4:20 PM

Why would the recommendations be "good"? I assume you mean "good" here to mean good for you or in your interests. That isn't how ads are sold, they're sold to the highest bidder

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keeheeyesterday at 3:42 PM

Just wanted to verify how far you are willing to go to get a list generated for you that’s probably not even that unique from the other Y number of people who love being suggested obvious information.

How many combinations of the restaurants around you do you think exist and are needed to provide that information? Certainly need Uber guzzling down Terabytes of data to rank the local Chiles over the local Applebees.

Lets be honest, restaurant suggestions aren’t a real problem anyone has.

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HWR_14yesterday at 3:45 PM

> People complain about bad and useless recommendations and irrelevant ads all the time.

I've never heard any complaint about that except from people who work in adtech.

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knollimaryesterday at 3:46 PM

Good recommendations are places where you maximize payment [to people willing to pay], not best experience.

It's going to be a conflict of interest like most ads. It's not optimized for you but toward you

goopypoopyesterday at 4:01 PM

How often do you act on these recommendations?

buellerbuelleryesterday at 4:55 PM

The "value" you get is recommendations generated by some combination of:

-opaque optimization function over which you have no control and is not tailored to you (but yay you can sort by a few predetermined fields)

-willingness of the recommended to outbid one another for your attention

-companies who have paid some baseline pay-to-play vig

If you want real recommendations, talk to someone who isn't profiting off of you.