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Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

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Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#21

Post by vladvasiliu »

air7 wrote: post #14
elliekelly wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very well might be garbage data but if companies are acting on that data it’s still highly problematic. Maybe even worse than if the data were accurate.

The possible silver lining is that companies will quickly realize the data is garbage (which is causing then losses) and stop using it.

Depends on how quick is "quickly".

If anything, they seem to be doubling down on this. From my discussions on the subject with people "in marketing", they are really convinced that not only is the data "accurate enough", but that collecting and exploiting it is actually for the client's benefit.

I wonder how one would go about quantifying the usefulness of all this tracking, because I doubt it's cheap. The best I could get was "we're able to see changes in sales which correlate to marketing campaigns". I can totally buy that and it seems somewhat more advanced of an answer than the more common one of "If didn't work they wouldn't be doing it".

What I wonder though is how they would go about quantifying how much better a tracking-based campaign worked than a "traditional" one would have.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#22

Post by usrusr »

dijksterhuis wrote: post #2

I remember once being in a branch of HSBC trying to sort out a loan. I saw on the screen for my account they had a score of something like "customer behaviour", which was like 54 something. I had drunkenly called HSBC and ended up ranting at the person on the phone a few times (lost cards etc) so I think this was a rating of how well behaved I was towards their staff. The manager I was speaking to changed his tone fa…

There's a very good reason why organizations should be allowed to keep "fool me once/twice/thrice" records: it's what enables them to be nice to customers who don't abuse that niceness.

But there's no process to appeal and the data might be laughably wrong. Outlawing cross-organizational aggregation might be a reasonable middle ground. It gives a further advantage to giants like Amazon, but all the problems compound at interorganizational integration.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#23

Post by usrusr »

air7 wrote: post #14
elliekelly wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It very well might be garbage data but if companies are acting on that data it’s still highly problematic. Maybe even worse than if the data were accurate.

The possible silver lining is that companies will quickly realize the data is garbage (which is causing then losses) and stop using it.

Data that appears "good enough" under the purely economic lens can leave an awful lot of people unfairly out of service.

In a low margin business a single bad customer can easily cost more than what is earned from ten good customers. In that situation, an oracle that rejects eight good customers per rejected bad customer would already be good enough.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#25

Post by PopeDotNinja »

usrusr wrote: post #22
dijksterhuis wrote: post #2

I remember once being in a branch of HSBC trying to sort out a loan. I saw on the screen for my account they had a score of something like "customer behaviour", which was like 54 something. I had drunkenly called HSBC and ended up ranting at the person on the phone a few times (lost cards etc) so I think this was a rating of how well behaved I was towards their staff. The manager I was speaking to changed his tone fa…

There's a very good reason why organizations should be allowed to keep "fool me once/twice/thrice" records: it's what enables them to be nice to customers who don't abuse that niceness. But there's no process to appeal and the data might be laughably wrong. Outlawing cross-organizational aggregation might be a reasonable middle ground. It gives a further advantage to giants like Amazon, but all the problems compound…

In 2006, I spent some time in the hospital after a bike accident. Someone who shared my recovery room was an guy with kidney failure & an extremely poor attitude. I learned he was running out of places to get dialysis because he kept treating the staff poorly & getting kicked out of the dialysis centers. Imagine having some poor newly hired receptionist trying to help this near death, abusive asshole & reading a note in the computer screen that said “do not treat this person under any circumstances”.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#27

Post by vorpalhex »

gmantg wrote: post #19
drtillberg wrote: post #17

A central premise of this article is not correct. If an employer, for example, is using tens of thousands of background data points to deny employment to a person, the employer would need to disclose that to the applicant.[1]. If the things in this article are secret then the law may well be violated. Also, not really the best idea to apply secret proprietary algorithms to these kinds of decisions because you're even…

No need to disclose anything: plausible deniability is enough. And "bias" can be fixed by ad-hoc quotas.

Why wouldn't an HR person or hiring staffer immediately out the company or even sue them?

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#28

Post by justanotherc »

Karunamon wrote: post #13
dijksterhuis wrote: post #2

I remember once being in a branch of HSBC trying to sort out a loan. I saw on the screen for my account they had a score of something like "customer behaviour", which was like 54 something. I had drunkenly called HSBC and ended up ranting at the person on the phone a few times (lost cards etc) so I think this was a rating of how well behaved I was towards their staff. The manager I was speaking to changed his tone fa…

I think that people wind up worried about the wrong thing on these systems. The worst case scenario, where some all-knowing system negatively impacts you because it's rating your behavior on some opaque scale, isn't the one we should be worried about. That by itself is scary enough, but the much more likely case is the one where this system is rating you based on wrong information , and given Finagle's law.. Especial…

The justice system has built into it the requirement to justify allegations against you though. By design everything in the justice system is transparent or its not admissible. So an opaque "score" of any sort wouldn't ever be acceptable evidence.

Re: Data isn't just being collected from your phone, it's being used to score you

#29

Post by gmantg »

Surveillance capitalism to the USA is like heroin to an addict: he thinks he can give up at any time, that he can manage the addiction and find the balance, until he realises that he is a slave to that addiction and can't change anything. The Congress could destroy this "big data is the new oil" business model, but they don't want to give up the money from big tech, they think they can manage this addiction and find a balance between greed and freedom, they find excuses that surveillance is a matter of national security today, but at the end USA will repeat the fate of that addict.
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