Ask HN: Do Tech Companies Segment by Gullibility?

2 points by bensonn 2y ago ↗ HN

I am trying to be fair with the title. By Tech I mean ad-driven "tech" companies like Google and Facebook. Companies the surveil, aggregate, and sell access to data.

If you can target by age, wealth, region, interests, etc. Can you target by gullibility or vulnerability?

I am sure these companies have figured it out. Maybe mental/disease issues like Down Syndrome, Alcoholism, or gambling addiction. Perhaps age deterioration where general acuity is lessened or dementia. Teens more susceptible to peer pressure.

I am sure there are a lot of other possibilities. Curious if these are actual segments that can be targeted, directly or indirectly?

(no I don't want to target them)

4 comments

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dave4420 2y ago ↗

You can probably target by “believes in several conspiracy theories”.

explain 2y ago ↗

The person who believes in no conspiracy theories is the most gullible of all. They believe everything that "authority" tells them, and questions nothing.

The person who believes in a huge amount of conspiracy theories is gullible, but at least is picking and choosing, and not blindly listening to what they are told.

The person who believes in some conspiracy theories and not others is sane, because a lot of former conspiracy theories are now accepted fact.

Zetobal 2y ago ↗

You can't target directly but you can target the symptoms.

tillomaniac 2y ago ↗

Short answer is yes. You can use statistical modeling techniques on an input dataset to generate numeric scores that estimate the degree to which someone is gullible.

This, of course, assumes that the input data has a strong enough signal to predict (or describe) gullibility, which may or may not be true depending on the data you have available.

Data scientists model personality characteristics like gullibility in domains such as message testing (advertising) and persuasion modeling (political elections).