The simplest explanation is that they are getting a return on what they spend on Meta. (There are more complicated stories involving attribution, but that's the simple one.)

Cataloguing will make your own feed worse! But hey, if you’re up for it send them to me.

This is where the innovation of crypto comes in. Inability to recover makes these things more lucrative.

Holy shit this is good.

I never thought the feet guys would come for me.

I know panicworld I did not know you guys had done a foot segment.

I get that this stuff happens to women all the time.

But… my feet? On Marketplace?

If it’s #4, I actually find that kind of charming in an “old internet” kinda way. It seems quaint compared to whatever algorithmically curated, advertising powered content is on like toesuckers dot com

I'm leaning toward hypothesis 4. Open to other theories, however

I would like to crack this case, ideally without further interactions with my suitors. (No offense meant. Just not my thing, gents.)

Hypothesis 4: A sizable community of men is using Facebook Marketplace as sort an undercover Grindr-but-for-feet. Under this scenario, any foot-inclusive image is coded as a signal to foot fetishists.

(In this scenario, I'm a dude with a bright back-pocker handkerchief walking around SF in 1978.)

Hypothesis 3: The AlgoRitHM

Somehow, my Marketplace listing was promulgated via rec systems to a large network of foot-focused gentlemen. I've seen weird rec tunnels before, but seems like a stretch.

Hypothesis 2: A buddy is messing with me.

Plausible in theory, but these are five separate, mature accounts. Too much trouble.

Hypothesis 1: I have extremely attractive feet.

This theory can be discarded immediately based on feedback from family and friends. My feet are functional feet, not aesthetically pleasing feet.

It get avoiding using novel surveillance techniques to try to answer merely interesting social science questions, but if something's fully industry practice it doesn't seem like academic investigation risks normalizing it further.

Anyhow, very interesting paper!

Per the companies, they have given their consent by using the product.

I'm not saying I find that argument compelling -- but so long as it is considered legally valid I don't think anyone is well served by review boards treating feed interventions as moral abominations that can't be studied.

Yeah, I guess I'm curious why there isn't a de facto policy that "if a practice is widespread in industry, academics should presume IRB approval to study/replicate it for research purposes."

This would go for data collection practices, feed ranking systems etc.

I haven’t seen stuff involving outside counsel but that doesn’t mean much. I would note the in-house stuff has gotten some attention, including today, when a judge found that some Meta legal docs were not privileged due to the crime-fraud exemption.

news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/m...