Links for August 28, 2017

Taxonomy of Humans According to Twitter

By linking internal and external sources — a practice known in the adtech industry as “data onboarding” — Twitter is able to tag its users with categories provided by the data brokers.... Once data sets are linked, marketers can then target precise user segments based on different concatenations of demographic terms, like “trendy moms” or “Christmas restaurant goers”.

By scraping Twitter’s ad creation page I was able to produce a full list of all user segments, their names, descriptions and user count: a taxonomy of human beings according to Twitter and its data brokers.


Exclusive: Here’s The Full 10-Page Anti-Diversity Screed Circulating Internally at Google

I’m a Google Manufacturing Robot and I Believe Humans Are Biologically Unfit to Have Jobs in Tech


Rich SF residents get a shock: Someone bought their street

Past homeowners have included Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her financier husband, Richard Blum; House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi; and the late Mayor Joseph Alioto. A guard is stationed round the clock at the stone-gate entrance to the street to keep the curious away. So imagine the residents’ surprise when San Jose residents Cheng and Lam wound up with the street, its sidewalks and every other bit of “common ground” in the private development.... The couple’s purchase appears to be the culmination of a comedy of errors involving a $14-a-year property tax bill that the homeowners association failed to pay for three decades. It’s something that the owners of all 181 private streets in San Francisco are obliged to do.