Entering https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/ allows one to see Google’s assessment of personal interests, based on the various product interactions:
These interests are derived from your activity on Google sites, such as videos you’ve watched on YouTube. This does not include Gmail interests, which are used only for ads within Gmail.
Some observations:
- It correctly determined my gender and age group
- It [correctly] identified interests in: History, Photographic & Digital Arts, Books & Literature, Cooking & Recipes.
- It also included: Adventure Games, Brazilian Music, Shooter Games, TV Reality Shows, footwear, building toys, and Reggaeton.
- There are a number of things I don’t see, such as: travel and dishwasher repair.
- All of these interests were derived from YouTube Activity, nothing from search. Most if not all my YouTube subscriptions are to photography-related channels so it’s hard for me to understand how, for example, Brazilian Music was determined.
The attributed interest that confounded me the most, however, was Reggaeton. I didn’t know I had this interest and may be more perplexing, I didn’t know what it was.
Yet now that The Google has surfaced it, I see that it was something latent within my being, lurking deep in my subconscious, only to be exposed through extensive therapy or as I now have come to learn, the algorithms of Google Ad Preferences.
This realisation has lead me to two points: the use of Ad Preferences as a self diagnostic tool to identify other aspects of my being, in an effort to really know myself (something I have been struggling with since it was the popular thing to do in the 1960’s / 70’s); the potential for automation to replace therapy.
Yes, dear friends, the days of the psychiatrist are numbered. Like those roles that have been either automated through robotics, or sent overseas, the day that therapy will be completed by Google Ad Sense is coming closer.
While physically you are what you eat, mentally you are what you buy. And The Google knows what you buy.
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