• dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Or: “Products you may be interested in!” [List of the exact products you already bought.]

    I am not buying a second laptop just like the one I just bought. It is not, in an ideal scenario, a consumable item.

    • VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf
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      1 year ago

      Reminds me how people who have been paying much more in rent each month for years, often decades, are constantly refused mortgages for being “high risk” 🤦

  • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I think it’s Nate Bargatzki who talked about how he bought a refrigerator and then Amazon kept recommending refrigerators to him. He said “I already solved that problem, Amazon. Remember? You were there”.

    • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Interesting thing is they could do this smartly. You buy a refrigerator, and Amazon could keep track of average replacement age of that product, then about the time it’s due to be replaced, start sending you ads for another. That is when they would be useful.

      Instead we get ads for the thing we just bought and I don’t understand why this practice continues. It can’t actually result in higher profits…right?

  • Polar@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    It more so pisses me off when I buy a really expensive item and Amazon is trying to sell me a second one.

    Like ya, maybe I’ll consider getting another pack of pens, but I think I’m good on the GPU.

  • pfannkuchen_gesicht@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    It’s always funny to me when someone talks about how awesome the tech behind recommender-systems is and what complex problems had to be solved to make it work but in the end it’s still just absolute garbage.

    • dx1@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s not really that interesting, you find hot spots where interest between items is correlated.

        • dx1@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          AI/ML covers a ton of algorithms, some of them are that boring, some of them aren’t.

          Re above. Take all users who viewed all items. Run a MapReduce to segregate them into pairs. Calculate the frequency of pairs and store the result. That clearer? More expensive than complex.

          • pfannkuchen_gesicht@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Reducing the computational cost is what makes it complex… but why am I even discussing this here anyway, I was mocking the topic in the first place. Your disregard of the problems in the details is kinda amusing though, because that’s probably the reason most recommender engines are as crap as they are.

            • dx1@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Well, there’s problems that are complex at the center, and there’s problems that aren’t. This one isn’t.

    • VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf
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      1 year ago

      While you’re here, allow us to tempt you with this fine selection of unadorned plastic garbage cans that are either too small for your garbage or just barely too big for your garbage bags.

  • notatoad@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    this always reassures me a little bit. all the tracking and targeting and whatever that we’re supposed to be afraid of on the internet, and they still haven’t figured out a better form of targeting than this.

  • wearling0600@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s mad!

    I bought a laptop, from Amazon, something I do at most every 2-3 years.

    For months since Amazon has been spamming me with laptop offers. I don’t see what the best case scenario here is, I return the one I bought and get a new one?

  • ZarbtheBard@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Whenever I would buy rabbit food for a rabbit I was taking care of I would always get ads for chinchilla food and food for other small mammals. Like, I’m not out here collecting animals I just got the one.