A colleague and I were looking up products online and thought one of us had gotten confused because hers showed only images of Black people while mine showed only young blonde women. But, nope, it was the same exact listing engineered to what were assumed to be our demographics. We logged out of our accounts to test the theory, and the default image on a product became an older white woman, which made sense for the product but was also more of a fit for her she said because her search was motivated by age not color.
While I get that perhaps people may respond to images they can "identify" with, it's a bit creepy and reductionist to mine data and boil customers' essence down to the most superficial aspects. I personally would much rather an ad with various different models rather than having some company or AI mirror back to me who they think I am and am comfortable seeing. While this may seem innocuous, the echo chamber created by algorithms regurgitating "you" back to yourself is designed to boost numbers, but when that goes beyond sales and engagement to reinforcing limited ideas and perceptions, it also increases the entrenched ignorance from a lack of expanded perspectives.
For example, I clicked on a few femicide IG posts out of curiosity, and now my feed is filled with male-bashing rhetoric that could poisin my mind if I didn't know amazing men IRL to counterbalance social trying to predict and force feed me what it thinks I want more of. I like learning from others who are male, female, young, older, or from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds because my world and the broader world they've exposed me to via travel, wisdom, and culture is so much richer for it. Heck, I learned investing from an 80-year-old neighbor who became ne of my closest confidants, definitely not from my blondetourage.
Kinda annoying that they believe everyone can only stomach those who look and think exactly like their socially constructed selves (yes, I know many are close-minded like that). It turned me off from buying anything. All we wanted was some darn face cream, and they had to go and make it weird lol! Vent sesh over.
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