Could you stop enabling the police state, please?
Comment on Apparently Palantir can access the content of social media accounts that were deleted a decade ago.
Saarth@lemmy.world 3 days ago
There are dedicated tools, called Social Listening tools that do just these. Some examples are Brandwatch, Sprinklr, Talkwalker and Meltwater.
Not just Palantrmir, anyone and everyone is using these tools. From consumer companies to investment banks to your favourite content creator is using some kind of social listening to stay on top of trends and understand how you behave.
Reddit and Twitter are two social platforms that provide the most data openly and freely, and in reddit’s case you can get a lot of historical data without extra cost.
QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Saarth@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I wish lmao. But there are tons of data companies selling all kinds of data on people to whoever will pay them for it. Me working for identifying trends or what flavour of green tea is popular are less harmful use cases.
What we need is regulation to reign in big tech. These API licenses are expensive and I suspect is a big reason why Reddit ended free data sharing (which led to death of third party reddit clients).
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
‘Social Listening’ is uh, one way to brand ‘corporate surveillance panopticon’, I guess hahah!
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
go on, tell us more
Saarth@lemmy.world 3 days ago
There isn’t much to tell. We gather conversations and analyse it to understand consumer behaviour, trends, campaign performance etc.
If you don’t want your data showing up in social listening tools, make your social accounts as private as possible.
Saarth@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I can tell you from the perspective of someone working in consumer insights for a consumer company, sales and retail data is far more important and influences decisions way more.
So I’d say put your money where your mouth is. If you don’t like certain companies or brands stop buying their products. If you think groceries are getting expensive buy cheaper alternatives or private labels. You can do this with a lot of non-food grocery items. Private label is almost always cheaper and you get pretty much the same shit as global brands.
Saarth@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I see a lot of conversations of people mentioning how expensive things have gotten, yet we see in sales data that our expensive products sell more (this is also due to the fact that more ad dollars are spent on higher margin products) but try and buy cheaper alternatives whenever you can.
HasturInYellow@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Why are you doing evil work…? Like… Why develop these tools that will so obviously be used to worsen our lives?
False@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Gotta eat
QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Yes, but you can choose how to earn ypur living. It is unlikely they cannot do amy other job.
Saarth@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I think coming out of an MBA, this is one of the less harmful jobs. I’d rather not be in consulting or investment banking or sales or big tech.
guy@piefed.social 3 days ago
Like ICE
False@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I feel like there’s a big difference between snatching people off the street and making ad targeting smarter. Yeah they both suck, but orders of magnitude here.
Eheran@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I agree but at the same time, in a different thread who’s topic specifically is shaming a company for working on the white house, people are foaming from their mouths that someone is working for Trump and downvote anyone who disagrees. The double standard is just mine blowing.
Saarth@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I’ve been working mostly on the analysis side of things, currently I do this for a consumer goods company.
And yes I do it to make a living. Got hired as an analyst in this field out of MBA and stayed in this. Also being chronically online and familiar with social networks helped.