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Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

From the same author:

"Every day, Americans tell Google they’re going to shoot up their school or workplace. I know this because I serve ads on Google to prospective mass shooters."

https://onezero.medium.com/every-day-americans-tell-google-t...

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>My ad encourages prospective shooters to speak with a mental health professional — not that they ever call. But when my ad is clicked, the prospective shooter’s data passes into my system. This includes the words they type. But it also comprises their age, gender, and income, their parental, marital, and homeownership status, where they live, their browsing history, where they work, the age of their children, the devices they use, the time of their search, and more.

>(Anyone who runs ads on Google — for any purpose — can see this kind of data about who clicks their ads.)

While the intent is noble, this seems very 1984-adjacent.

"I use ad data to try to save their lives" whether they ask for it or not. That's not noble, that's more like controlling behaviour.

Assuming this story is true, anyway.

The "noble intent" would be saving other people's lives

Edit: deleted due to crossed wires on my part.

What? I'm talking about the linked article about mass shooters…

My mistake. The OP had the story you refer to. I was referring to the main story, which did have the phrase "shooting up in every city in the United States" which is unfortunately close. Apologies.

Do you feel the same way about people interfering with your autonomy by offering to sell you clothes or food or a vacation?

It is also complete BS, in many (if not most) cases Google doesn't even have that information, and Google definitely doesn't give that information to advertisers lol.

What this is missing is what you might call, horrifically, the "conversion" rate of such people. Given that he claims to have location data, I wonder how well this correlates with actual mass shootings.

(and as someone else said, there is probably someone out there running the opposite ad campaign to increase the likelihood of school shootings ...)

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