I wish tech companies knew more about me
- ID
- 43677
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 05 Nov 2026, 9:40 PM
- Fetched
- 06 Nov 2026, 9:40 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://rakhim.exotext.com/i-wish-tech-companies-knew-more-about-me
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 6.5
- Created
- 06 Nov 2026, 9:41 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersai_ml_learnerssaas_startup_founders
What happened
A first-person essay argues that despite claims of pervasive tracking, ad and recommendation systems miss obvious signals. It lists examples: ads for a mattress and gamepad just purchased, Spotify/YouTube Music never noticing years of skipped vocal electronic tracks, a logged-out Finnish page for a Google AI help search despite English account/browser settings, PlayStation Store menus resetting to Finnish, ads for 3D-printing resin despite no 3D printer, a Helsinki hotel ad despite living in Helsinki and not searching since 2014, and a YouTube homepage full of random ovens after one AEG CCS84751 installation search.
Why it matters
If you build recommendations, ads, or localized SaaS, this is a checklist of cheap failures: don't advertise a just-purchased item, respect account/browser locale over IP location, filter ads by delivery country, and use explicit skip/purchase signals before complex modeling. The 290-point/258-comment HN thread suggests builders recognize these gaps; decide which single rule you would ship first.
Discussion angle
Which explicit signal—purchase history, skip behavior, account locale, or delivery address—would fix the most examples here, and how would you test that rule in a multilingual Malaysian app?