Ford Eyes Use of Customers’ Personal Data to Boost Profits

Fords 2020 R&D Budget:

1. Battery technology - 5%

2. Lighter weight materials - 5%

3. safer cars - 5%

4. Popup ads in the windshield - 85%

What could go wrong?!

"Sales are down, anyone have an explanation?"

"Well, sir, it seems young people today just aren't as enamored with cars as with previous generations."

"Is there anything to be done?"

"Privacy has been in the news a lot lately. What if...I'm just spitballin' here...but what if we made our products even less appealing? Have the CEO rattle off all the shit we know about customers, and then talk about how we're going to MON-OH-TIZE the shit out of those data? I mean, nothing else is working."

"Out-STANDING, Johnson. I see a promotion in your future!"

It really is one of those game changers that makes you realize the way we've always done things isn't necessarily the right way.

We're so used to being abused by marketers that it's hard to see any other way to use the Internet.

Back when, exactly? Because if you're complaining about size, I remember when a '70s Dodge Dart passed for "compact car". (For reference, youngin's, you could put multiple bodies in the trunk of a Dodge Dart.) And a shadow of what? Gas-guzzling V8s that put out a whopping 250bhp? 350bhp if you were lucky? With drum brakes to haul yer ass down to zero? My 72 year old mother drives a '16 Corvette that puts out 450bhp and gets 25mpg. It'll stop so fast you can feel your retinas loosening. I'd have to take it to a track to get it out of shape, I dare not test its handling limits on a public road. All for $50K. (EDIT: oh, and aesthetics? I loathed those swoopy, gaudy, plastic penismobiles. Until I saw the new ones and said, "I would now like to own a Corvette, for it is much hotness.") Other examples abound. If you're into cars, there is no better time than now.

No, I think it has more to do with the collective realization that maybe a car is less a ticket to freedom and more an albatross around the neck of its owner. Expensive, dirty, and in urban areas an increasingly annoying way to get around. I was thinking just yesterday, as the fuel light came on in our ICE car, "gawd, what a pain in the arse these things are. I'll be glad when all of the vehicles in our house are electric." And I'm old.

Or more simply, maybe we collectively figured out that automobiles make a poor substitute for a penis.

Welp, guess I won't be purchasing the mustang I wanted. This has got to stop. Like the final paragraph states: If I pay for a vehicle in cash, I damn well don't feel like paying with my privacy and data, too.

This is the very same reason I'll never use Windows. Telemetry is an invasion of privacy. It's also why the "right to repair" is such an important issue. Owners of cars (or any device, for that matter) should be able to go into the software (including breaking encryption) and disable or remove components that report data to external sources.

If I want cheap services in exchange for data, I'll go with Lyft. Fuck yourself, Hackett.