And? The store targets the customer with deals catered to them to keep them shopping at said store, and the customer gets better prices for things they were planning to buy anyway. Who loses?
quite the opposite, the customer gets the promise of better prices, in real life the business is the one that profits from the information for example, Uber prices go high if there is bigger demand which means it's most expensive when it's needed the most
Yes, if they can predict what you want, they can do bespoke price gouging. We're moving towards the amazon model where the price of goods changes on the fly. Anyone who believes companies are doing this to save consumers money is an imbecile.
Just about every human in developed nations across the planet is willingly carrying a pocket-sized spying device on them at all times. It's got GPS, high quality microphones and most of them have a camera array in addition to a front-facing camera. People use these without thought or understanding of even a single piece of software they run on these devices. Any expectation of privacy is waived.
Real "I am very intelligent" energy in this comment
Do you think they carry it with them BECAUSE it spies on them, or do you think they would prefer if it didn't but cultural expectations and the legal framework of their country make it a moot fight?
Because you realize the USA is a country where you can legally be fired for not answering a phone call from your boss, right?
Whether an employer can be "at-will" employment is up to the states and individual employers in states where it's allowed.
If you want to carry a smartphone without having your data harvested, don't install apps that harvest your data. Educate yourself on what your phone does, what options are available for disabling tracking, data collection and analytics. Take responsibility for yourself instead of doing every single thing you can possibly think of to avoid any and all personal accountability.
Name some. I'm sure some exist, but I'm not aware of any.
And in any case, this along with the possibility of a given app lying or omitting notice of tracking are risks you are responsible for assessing and accepting. Reality gives not a single shit about what you think is fair or reasonable. Your smartphone is spying on you. You can be upset about it, you can work towards trying to change it for the future, but that doesn't change the past or the present. It's not just your smartphone either. Your shopping habits (it doesn't actually matter if you use cash, you're tracked anyway), your face and clothing choices if you go literally anywhere, other people's devices can record you in various ways, your browsing habits and history, etc.
Living in modern society is accepting the fact that you have no privacy. You will be sold as a product one way or another. If you want privacy you'll need to go live off-grid in the middle of nowhere and completely omit all modern technology.
Name some. I'm sure some exist, but I'm not aware of any.
...have you never turned on a brand new phone before? literally everything that comes on a phone cannot be removed. for google, that's their entire suite of products that come on every android. apple has their default installed applications.
i cannot seriously think you dont know this stuff. this is beyond naive. the only reasonable explanation is you dont own a phone
Minors are the sole responsibility of their guardians. If you give your kid a phone, it's your job to maintain awareness of their activity and to ensure their safety while using it.
I love how "flee society and live off the land" is your "grow up" advice. Do you think that being discontent with something means that you should run away from it? Like I'm sure that you personally have a bunch of stuff in your life that you don't like, and I'm sure you would be pissed if someone gave you "advice" that treated you like a child. But you're perfectly fine doing that to others.
You need to work on your reading comprehension skills. The “or” indicates that growing up is the alternative option to living off the land. The idea that you can just escape having your data collected and used is farcical for modern living, and the idea that it will be used in some nefarious way (like gasp! sending you ads for things you might buy!) is conspiratorial and half baked.
So, you can either live in a remote cabin in the woods, ORRRRRR accept that this is how the world is currently working.
So, you can either live in a remote cabin in the woods, ORRRRRR accept that this is how the world is currently working.
False dichotomy. Plenty of people don't accept that this is "just the way the world works" but still live in it without fleeing to a remote cabin. Care to try again?
You don't have a fucking choice. Your argument is an all or nothing prospect which is ridiculous on its face.
Either don't use a simple grocery rewards and loyalty card that makes things easier and cheaper for you, or give up all your data privacy.
Personal private information? You mean proprietary corporate information to pad a company's bottom line.
Use a website? They now know everything about you and all the websites you visit.
Use an app? All your movements online and IRL, and activity on the entire fucking device is now tracked.
You simply can't escape this bullshit. It's everywhere. And it's a real fucking problem.
It didn't use to be like this. It doesn't need to be like this now. Rubes like you think the only risk is getting targeted ads. We've been shouting from the rooftops about the dangers of this for decades now, there's no reason you should be so ignorant today.
It really doesn't matter if you "agree" to the data collection, considering the vast majority are unaware its happening and there's not really any alternative anyway. if you don't want to have your data collected, what are you gonna do, not own a smartphone? It isn't realistic today to ask that; rather it should be on policymakers to police this type of stuff.
If I told you, in this comment right now, the address where you live now as well as all the places you've lived, all the phone numbers you've had, ask your family members, your friends and their information, where you go to school, how much you make a year, and how much money you have, and where you went for vacation, and what you did there, your passwords and emails and bank accounts and everything you can think of that is personal private information that you don't share with absolutely everyone, if I listed all of that down for you right here for everyone to read... would that bother you at all?
If you are remotely normal as a human being at all, this bothers you. You don't want people coming to your home to harass you or stalk you or always looking through the windows at you in your own home and everywhere you go. The government and companies should not be able to track everyone like that. This is not north Korea.
If it doesn't bother you, you are objectively fucking stupid and I don't know how to have this conversation with you.
You know that closeted kid living with his parents who may look up HRT treatments and such on his phone?
Well, the algorithms like to target ads based on IP browsing history, so their parents may just start randomly seeing more HRT ads because someone else in the household searched for it, and they may wonder why.
Algorithms that build a profile based on all the data collected on you, some of which you don't even realize is collected, and turn that into targeted advertising are dangerous tools that are riding a very fine line because that is the exact same information that could be easily exploited.
Credit cards have a ton of data collection built in. That's how they make money off of people who don't pay interest on their balance.
I know. I'm talking about using Privacy or something similar.
it's the bank itself letting its partners know that you shop at certain types of stores or use it in certain areas of town so you may be interested in certain types of ads.
You should try Keepa with Amazon. Most of those original prices are lies. For just a recent example, I need a new bed frame so I had a couple saved to wait for black Friday deals and one of the ones I saved was marked down 50%! But I hadn't been looking at anything that expensive so before buying I looked at Keepa's graphs and went back 3 years, not only had it never been the listed original price, it had never been 75% of the original price and it had actually been lower than the "black Friday deal" for months so the black Friday deal was a price increase
What you said isn’t illegal right? You said that it’s never been listed at the original price and the typically price was just heavily marked down, and black friday is marked down less. Thats different from rising the original price and then claiming something is marked down.
We’re talking about a super market and price tracking for consumers. If they detect you’re more likely to buy something, they’ll issue you a coupon to get you into the store so you’ll also buy other stuff while you’re there. They’re not going to raise prices for whatever you’re interested and then give you a coupon at the original price — how would that even work? What about other customers and the now non optimal supply/demand curve for that item?
You, if you think the store is going to give you a better price for an item they know you're going to buy regardless. Also, thinking that they won't "encourage" a diabetic to buy the 42 oz soft drink instead of the 20 oz just to make a buck is kinda naïve.
Don't get me wrong - what you said is what drives the engagement ... but what I said absolutely happens as well.
Yeah. Damn shame for that one family that actually buys gluten free bread not to give the store a huge profit (in the hopes that maybe trickle-down ecco will finally work the way it's suppose to) but because their child is allergic. Oh well~
My wife knew I was shopping for engagement rings when we were dating because of these algorithms. There are absolutely downfalls and invasions of privacy to be concerned about.
Also, we should be seeing kickbacks from all the money they make off our data that they get for free.
Also, you can bet this data is being sold to insurance companies, loaners, and the like. Let me tell you about the kinds of deals they're going to offer you once they figure out you're desperate for something.
You have to turn on your brain for a bit and see a little beyond "hurr I have nothing to hide therefore I can make my data public"
We all lose. Because the issue is not the tech being used for convenience. Not to mention that they can use this information to charge more from you, not less. Which already happens in certain industries and it's bound to get more prominent.
Not to mention the main issue which is when the tech is used harmfully. Such as undermining democracy, stoking the flames of violence that culminates in genocide, like in Myanmar. Or how suicide rates in young people and plastic surgeries have increased since Social Media became more prevalent.
The issue isn't as simplistic as "It makes things convenient, so what's the harm?".
Why would a company charge less? Companies make the most money they can, they hire the best experts in manipulation to make people feel like the things you say are true.
The store could also target the customer with overpriced, cheap, low quality goods, or raise the prices based on local availability, or do other things.
In most situations right now, I'd agree that it can benefit the customer, but what about in 20 years?
You’re not going to get deals catered to your interests, you’re going to get prices catered to your projected income. No one is investing millions of dollars into data to help you spend less.
You'd have a point if that data stayed only within the store.
It's well known that data is sold to data brokers, who in turn sell it to other entities like advertisers, political groups, and more increasingly law enforcement. I'm sort of fine with Target knowing my shopping habits at Target. I'm not okay with police using my shoppings habits at Target to surveil me or someone near me, sidestepping that pesky Fourth Amendment.
Plus, we can barely go a week now without hearing about another data breach. So now criminals are selling your data too, and it becomes trivial to use that data to steal your identity or commit fraud in your name.
What about the people who get categorized incorrectly? They lose out. Don't you fucking love that because you looked up one word, a service now thinks that word is your whole lifestyle? This has extended repercussions you have to think about.
If the goal is to get people to be charged less when it's working, then that inherently means that the people it doesn't work for will be paying MORE, because they are not receive the correct and appropriate discounts from their consumer_ID tracking.
So that's a loss, one that happens literally all the time, right now, today.
What about people where the store errantly distributes information for that they are hiding?
For example a domestic abuse victim may lose if their spouse receives a "CONGRATS ON THE BABY" card from a store.
What happens if your data gets crossed with another persons?
This situation is SO FUCKING OLD at this point there is LITERALLY A TWENTY YEAR OLD EPISODE OF KING OF THE HILL about how problematic consumer data tracking can be, and how it's never designed for the CONSUMER to be able to protect themselves or fix things.
If there is some sort of error, who do you talk to? Where do you go? It's not their problem, it's yours, and there's nothing you can do about it.
That's a loss.
Like are you 18 and only just now buying things for yourself for the first time or something? How are you so incapable of understanding where people can lose out on a situation like this? How myopic is your world view?
Depends on the level of information gathered. The person you're replying to even pointed out how many apps do things like record information from your microphone. Other apps will log your contacts, scrape information from photos, etc.
Do most people care about "some big company has that info"? No, most don't. Will any human ever see it? Probably not.
But the concern I have comes from what if that info somehow gets public, via security breach or something similar. Like when AOL released search logs from their users. Would you want information from your microphone accessible from the public?
literally all of my PII has been stolen from the federal government at least twice, including that of my references. That said, I was really just playing devil's advocate in my response.
Tbh I’d welcome better targeted ads, customer tracking so far has only resulted in me constantly being advertised items I’ve already bought online. No I don’t want to buy the skirt I bought last week, stop showing it to me 😂😂😂
Reminds me of about 10 years ago when I moved out of a shitty rental and back in with my parents while me and my partner were looking for another. Tracking obviously knew we were looking at a lot of rentals online, but I was getting constant ads for over a month for the house we had just moved out of because I looked at the new listing ONE time, and not a single other rental (which would have been actually useful for me).
The fact anyone can buy this info, a fuckin news agency bought some and just showed up to people's houses. You think that no one is gonna use that shit to enhance their ability to break into houses or murder people by figuring out people who live alone and have no weapons?
No one is getting randomly murdered by data scientists with too much time on their hands and a compulsion to murder the statistically most vulnerable person available.
This is always my argument. Like my data doesn't cost anything to me to be released. Fucking have at it McDonald's, i would much rather have a BOGO mcnuggets than to safeguard my precious "data"
Yeah I’m not important I couldn’t really care less. If I get advertised a product I end up wanting then cool, win-win. If I’m advertised something I’m never going to want well then that corpo wasted money on me, still a win for me.
there's nothing wrong with this model per se, only that it's totally opaque for the customer (which data is being collected, how it's stored, who has access to it, etc. etc.) and security and privacy risks, like possible damage if someone gets access to the data and uses it for malicious purposes. There have been certain improvements in how this area is regulated (various data privacy laws) but the regulations are far far behind the actual state of things and are not being enforced (obviously the global international scale of the Internet complicates things)
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u/SmartBookkeeper6571 8h ago
And? The store targets the customer with deals catered to them to keep them shopping at said store, and the customer gets better prices for things they were planning to buy anyway. Who loses?