NorthWest Biotherapeutics Inc (NWBO)

[CogDiss 1188X]

Part 1 - Al4door says

I just googles Dcvac-L and got just that. Another conspiracy theory gone mad.

Help me understand the conspiracy to which I was referring. I confirmed two things others were seeing and speculated on possible causes that were based in how web companies might typically work.

I said:

First, it seems to go away on google after you’ve searched for DCVax-L several times (I reproduced Flipper’s experience). That makes sense assuming google has optimized its algorithm in certain ways. There’s probably an optimum number of ad impressions before diminishing returns kick in.

As mentioned, I confirmed Flipper’s experience, which others also later confirmed. So maybe we’ve established a conspiracy fact. I then speculated that google has an algorithm that optimizes the number of times it shows the ad. It seems to me to be a conspiracy to deliver value to their customer, Novacure.

I said:

Second, as Biosect points out and I experienced as well, it started showing up after the Optune conversation on this board. Google could be tracking what we read, though multiple ways. Or perhaps some of us did some google searches regarding Optune in response to the conversation here.

Both Biosect and I noticed the ads started showing up around the time Flipper started pounding away at Optune. My explanation is that google could be tracking what we read in multiple ways, or perhaps it was because we did a specific google search for Optune. Essentially both ideas are that google tracks our online behavior so it can target ads.

I didn’t go into the different typical ways our behavior could be tracked. Others have provided some ideas around IP addresses, cookies (browsing history), whatever. None of this is controversial. I mentioned we could have also been triggered the ad because some of us specifically did google searches for Optune.

A test of that would be for those who know they never did a search for Optune to try a search for DCVax-L to see if you get the ad. I’m pretty sure I did at least one search of Optune in the last couple of weeks.

You apparently did not do an optune search recently, since you didn’t see the optune ad. Thanks for confirming my idea! PopeFrancis confirmed as well.

Actually, just kidding. It was a bad idea to try to confirm this idea. It would be like herding kittens, since we did not control the environment (device types, browser types or apps, versions,) or the starting conditions. Doing so would be a wasted effort since the particular way google tracked our behavior and showed the ads is kind of irrelevant (to me at least).

So, is it your understanding that google does not try to target ads to users?

How can that be, when noted conspiracy monger The Wall Street Journal describes how Google (which owns the ad site DoubleClick) intentionally hacked around a safari browser default setting intended to prevent 3rd party cookies from being used unless the user specifically opts in. This allowed google, via DoubleClick cookies, to track safari users browsing. No doubt because they are good guys looking after their users’ best interest. I believe this action violated Apple’s TOS.

GOOGLE INTENTIONALLY CIRCUMVENTED the default privacy settings of Apple's Safari browser, using a backdoor to set cookies on browsers set to reject them, in the latest privacy debacle for the search and advertising giant.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204880404577225380456599176

BTW, they were fined $22.5 million by the FTC for that one.

So, yes, they track user behavior, and yes, sometimes they use underhanded ways to do it.

They’re still up to their old tricks. Just this month they were fined $57 million in France for failing to comply with privacy concerns in a satisfactory way.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/01/21/google-fined-57-million-by-french-data-privacy-body/

There is a lot more evidence one could marshal, but I’ve already beat a dead horse into the ground by even providing one example.

Fortunately, google had the foresight to remove “Do no evil” from their mission statement.

I concluded my post with the possibility of this old conspiracy concept, “coincidence”:

Of course it’s possible that Joe’s Van Damm experience and Optune starting to advertise on social media after the conversation here are both coincidences.

I also mentioned the behavioral psychology concept of priming:

Perhaps we are more attuned to seeing the word Optune after the last couple of weeks. This would fit if it’s only due to Optune’s use of AdWords/Adsense of whatever it’s called.

I think some kind of data mining/sharing is likely however.

I was suggesting that priming would help us see coincidences, not conspiracies.

In sum, I’m not seeing the conspiracy theory you are seeing. Maybe you were referring to the creepy Joe Rogan story? If you read that through, you see I was actually pointing out that his explanation, while technically feasible, had an alternative explanation that is based on social network analysis, which happens to be all the rage in technology (actually, it’s very old but additional new techniques are being developed). I’ll break that story down in a second post.