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 2 months 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 2 months ago
Saarth@lemmy.world 2 months 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 2 months ago
‘Social Listening’ is uh, one way to brand ‘corporate surveillance panopticon’, I guess hahah!
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
go on, tell us more
Saarth@lemmy.world 2 months 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 2 months 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 2 months 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 2 months 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 2 months ago
Gotta eat
QuoVadisHomines@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Yes, but you can choose how to earn ypur living. It is unlikely they cannot do amy other job.
Saarth@lemmy.world 2 months 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 2 months ago
Like ICE
False@lemmy.world 2 months 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 2 months 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 2 months 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.