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Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

nytimes.com

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Re: Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

#21

Post by perseusprime11 »

nerflad wrote: post #2

Cute? No. These ads are smug and tone-deaf. Complete disregard for privacy has become the rule rather than the exception on the internet, and these ads practically celebrate that. I don't care if the data is anonymized. I've never had a Netflix account and I've already started building my .flac library back up and will be cancelling my spotify subscription. The convenience of these services is not worth their disresp…

I'll go one step further and say that they are actually mean-spirited. Read this again- "To the 53 people who've watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?"

Re: Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

#22

Post by 0x0 »

untog wrote: post #16
nerflad wrote: post #2

Cute? No. These ads are smug and tone-deaf. Complete disregard for privacy has become the rule rather than the exception on the internet, and these ads practically celebrate that. I don't care if the data is anonymized. I've never had a Netflix account and I've already started building my .flac library back up and will be cancelling my spotify subscription. The convenience of these services is not worth their disresp…

Devil's advocate: what is harmful about using anonymised data this way? In an actual "this is how it will negatively affect you" sense? I ask because while I share your concerns (perhaps not to the extent you do) sitting on HN agreeing with each other does little, and neither does cancelling our accounts. What you'd need to do is explain to a vast number of users why this is problematic in very clear terms, and I'm y…

Things like this can happen when corporations know more about you than you think: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

Re: Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

#23

Post by dna_polymerase »

nerflad wrote: post #2

Cute? No. These ads are smug and tone-deaf. Complete disregard for privacy has become the rule rather than the exception on the internet, and these ads practically celebrate that. I don't care if the data is anonymized. I've never had a Netflix account and I've already started building my .flac library back up and will be cancelling my spotify subscription. The convenience of these services is not worth their disresp…

> Complete disregard for privacy has become the rule rather than the exception on the internet, and these ads practically celebrate that.

Ahahaha, has me in tears, really. For all we know, these claims could as well be made up. We can't verify that 53 people watched any movie 18 days in a row. Why? Well because they didn't actually violate these peoples privacy by dropping their names. The only entity that could use this information and track those people down is the NSA (correlating Traffic). But they wouldn't need tweets to do that.

My point is: Please stop making a fool out of yourself. There are really harmful players out there, people that can ruin your life not your audio listening experience. Rage in the right direction.

Re: Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

#24

Post by mort96 »

untog wrote: post #16
nerflad wrote: post #2

Cute? No. These ads are smug and tone-deaf. Complete disregard for privacy has become the rule rather than the exception on the internet, and these ads practically celebrate that. I don't care if the data is anonymized. I've never had a Netflix account and I've already started building my .flac library back up and will be cancelling my spotify subscription. The convenience of these services is not worth their disresp…

Devil's advocate: what is harmful about using anonymised data this way? In an actual "this is how it will negatively affect you" sense? I ask because while I share your concerns (perhaps not to the extent you do) sitting on HN agreeing with each other does little, and neither does cancelling our accounts. What you'd need to do is explain to a vast number of users why this is problematic in very clear terms, and I'm y…

Anonymized data generally is not very anonymous. You can only trust that data is actually anonymous if there exists no non-anonymous dataset with which you can cross reference the anonymized data, and you can guarantee that no such database will ever exist.

I'm willing to bet that many "anonymized" datasets are of the kind which could relatively easily be deanonymized, especially datasets which are frivolously used to make ads "funny".

Re: Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

#25

Post by voltagex_ »

nerflad wrote: post #2

Cute? No. These ads are smug and tone-deaf. Complete disregard for privacy has become the rule rather than the exception on the internet, and these ads practically celebrate that. I don't care if the data is anonymized. I've never had a Netflix account and I've already started building my .flac library back up and will be cancelling my spotify subscription. The convenience of these services is not worth their disresp…

Without piracy I have two problems with my music collection:

1. My running playlist would cost $700+AUD to buy.

2. Most places don't have FLAC available or even 320kbit MP3

Re: Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

#27

Post by School-Cotton »

Just_Smith wrote: post #17
mosselman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nerflad is exactly on point with his harshness if you ask me. I don’t care for those ads at all and they prove that privacy is a non-issue for Spotify. It paints the picture of employees perusing my data to see if there is anything funny to take to a weekly show and tell. All the while laughing at our stupidity as customers for trusting them.

Your comment makes me wonder how you believe this data is viewed in the business. I work in BI, who are usually the developers who turn such data in to insights that can be comprehended by the people in businesses who don't know the first thing about databases. Just from my personal experience in such analysis, I think it's highly unlikely they're looking at the "who" behind the weird listening patterns they're repor…

This doesn't matter. The public audience of these ads doesn't know any of what you're saying. The important thing is how it appears.

Re: Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

#28

Post by nerflad »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #23
nerflad wrote: post #2

Cute? No. These ads are smug and tone-deaf. Complete disregard for privacy has become the rule rather than the exception on the internet, and these ads practically celebrate that. I don't care if the data is anonymized. I've never had a Netflix account and I've already started building my .flac library back up and will be cancelling my spotify subscription. The convenience of these services is not worth their disresp…

> Complete disregard for privacy has become the rule rather than the exception on the internet, and these ads practically celebrate that. Ahahaha, has me in tears, really. For all we know, these claims could as well be made up. We can't verify that 53 people watched any movie 18 days in a row. Why? Well because they didn't actually violate these peoples privacy by dropping their names. The only entity that could use…

> For all we know, these claims could as well be made up.

The companies have confirmed that is not the case.

> They didn't actually violate these peoples privacy by dropping their names.

The articles mentions a Spotify ad that said “To the person in NoLiTa who started listening to holiday music way back in June, you really jingle all the way, huh?" I mean, how much more specific can you get? Nolita is five square blocks[0]. If you think I'm making a fool out of myself by being concerned with this, I don't know what to tell you.

[0]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nolita,+New+York,+NY/@40.7...

Re: Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

#29

Post by Just_Smith »

School-Cotton wrote: post #27
Just_Smith wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment makes me wonder how you believe this data is viewed in the business. I work in BI, who are usually the developers who turn such data in to insights that can be comprehended by the people in businesses who don't know the first thing about databases. Just from my personal experience in such analysis, I think it's highly unlikely they're looking at the "who" behind the weird listening patterns they're repor…

This doesn't matter. The public audience of these ads doesn't know any of what you're saying. The important thing is how it appears.

If my job was limited to what was understandable to the average consumer, I likely wouldn't have a job.

Re: Netflix and Spotify Ask: Can Data Mining Make for Cute Ads?

#30

Post by nerflad »

Just_Smith wrote: post #17
mosselman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nerflad is exactly on point with his harshness if you ask me. I don’t care for those ads at all and they prove that privacy is a non-issue for Spotify. It paints the picture of employees perusing my data to see if there is anything funny to take to a weekly show and tell. All the while laughing at our stupidity as customers for trusting them.

Your comment makes me wonder how you believe this data is viewed in the business. I work in BI, who are usually the developers who turn such data in to insights that can be comprehended by the people in businesses who don't know the first thing about databases. Just from my personal experience in such analysis, I think it's highly unlikely they're looking at the "who" behind the weird listening patterns they're repor…

In this example, you're absolutely right, and if all they had was my name and my listening history, that wouldn't be so bad. But some of the ads do reference specific individuals. Spotify in particular have made it clear that 1.) listening behavior profiles may be "anonymized" in the sense that they have had the names sanitized from them, but there is a myriad of other potentially identifiable data, such as location, that has not been sanitized, and 2.) they are willing and able to comb through this data to find anomalies.
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