# Are we being tracked? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 31, 2016, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561 "2016-08-31T13:52:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/81 "2016-09-09T17:18:22Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Missed edit, but the issue that’s immediately relevant is this: if someone continually observed your house from every available public angle - and wasn’t too picky about crossing neighbors’ territory - and wrote down everything they saw, every activity, every time, every word they could overhear, what time lights went on and off, what your utility meters read (telescope here)… would you feel your privacy was being invaded, regardless of what to purpose they intended to put that notebook? Possibly. But that’s not at all what is happening or remotely close. Might as well frame the question, _but what if they were Nazis!_ That has almost the same level of relevance. > [@](#): > > And a repeat: suppose the government did the same - specifically, completely legally, but very very intensely focused on your household and its activities? You good with that? Is it voluntary? Typically government action like this isn’t and the penalty for non-compliance is imprisonment or death so again, not even in the same ballpark. You’re alleging this great harm, something that the rest of the poor shlubs that aren’t you just can’t see. The problem is you’re doing a very poor job of illustrating those harms. Instead, you’ve persisted in saying these evil corporations will do very bad things, very bad, so totally bad. Like, they may track what a person buys, and then, make more of it. They may learn what you like, and try to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market and charge more for that item, taking advantage of isolated consumer surplus. Oh nos! Again - not seeing the actual harm. And even if there is some nefarious conspiracy, it’s so easily defeated that the sneering is incredibly misplaced. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/82 "2016-09-09T17:25:24Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I wouldn’t disagree, but I’ve chosen to focus on consumer issues. I find it more disturbing that corporate entities answering only to themselves choose to manipulate us to serve their ends than I do that government does. We have enough political pundits; I choose to pundit elsewhere. 🙂 Forgive me if I’m missing something basic here but how exactly is Proctor & Gamble gaining access to the knowledge of all these things about me? Are you still talking about supermarket discount cards or what? Whatever it is you’re saying about that, as noted above the government has the power to jail people, audit their taxes, take away their land, and exert controls and impose penalties on its citizens in many ways. Private companies only have the power to scheme up ways to separate me from my money by convincing me to willingly buy things that I want to buy. It isn’t clear to me why you keep using government surveillance as an example of what the companies are doing by collecting data about consumers and marketing with an eye to make more money. On Preview: what Bone said. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/83 "2016-09-09T17:35:52Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > Possibly. But that’s not at all what is happening or remotely close. It is almost exactly what is happening. Let’s make it simple: if I obtained _every single sales receipt your household generated_, what rather detailed portrait of your life and even mental makeup could I infer? As for the gummint-v-corporate argument, I just don’t care to go there. That there is one kind of evil doesn’t mean no other kinds warrant attention. God knows there are about 200 million people screaming at The Evil That Is Goverment; I have nothing to add there. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/84 "2016-09-09T17:57:15Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > As for the gummint-v-corporate argument, I just don’t care to go there. You’re the one who keeps making the comparison. “Say it was the state - your state - doing this; that for nebulously framed reasons about monitoring commerce and taxation and diet choices and the like, you had to use a state-issued ‘membership card’ to buy consumer goods.” “But let’s argue for it: the gummint should (be allowed to) track consumer purchasing on an individual basis, because it generates tons of useful social, civic and economic data that can be used to oversee and adjust the state economy. (Or the federal one.) It’s being done by public servants, openly, with the anonymized data being a matter of public record and the processes being open pretty much top to bottom.” “If the government sent you a $10 check every month for allowing them to collect all that data, would that make it worthwhile or okay or change the fundamental issues of privacy and control?” “And a repeat: suppose the government did the same - specifically, completely legally, but very very intensely focused on your household and its activities? You good with that?” > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Let’s make it simple: if I obtained _every single sales receipt your household generated_, what rather detailed portrait of your life and even mental makeup could I infer? [Wait a minute, AB! If what you’re saying is true… then, I still don’t care.](http://sendvid.com/3cj4xsyi)🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/85 "2016-09-09T18:08:04Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Let’s make it simple: if I obtained _every single sales receipt your household generated_, what rather detailed portrait of your life and even mental makeup could I infer? That Astroglide was for a friend, I swear. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/86 "2016-09-09T18:18:09Z")
We’re past the point where large numbers of people can effectively live off the grid. I’ve accepted I’m being tracked in ways I’ll never know, you should accept it too. Its not so bad, we’ll get used to it eventually. The few of us who will be adversely affected by this pales in comparison to the number of us who don’t care or who will benefit from it ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/87 "2016-09-09T18:28:18Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Let’s make it simple: if I obtained _every single sales receipt your household generated_, what rather detailed portrait of your life and even mental makeup could I infer? That’s not really of interest to me, I don’t find that threatening. What power do you have to do anything with that information? For that matter, what power does P&G have to _limit my choices as a consumer and direct to those that benefit only the chain of sellers_ based on gathering that profile information? That’s the question I’m looking for you to answer. Can you show me concrete examples of how a company like P&G limits my choices? And to be clear, I’m not saying they don’t. I’m genuinely interested in the information. I know a some of what online retailers can do with detailed profile information and it’s not really that threatening or interesting. It could change over time, but AFAIK it is an annoyance that it doesn’t significantly affect my choices or options. Besides, I pay in cash a lot, with no tracking information that I know of. I supposed someone could track my location via cell phone tower ping/GPS and identify those transactions and associate them to me. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/88 "2016-09-09T18:36:06Z")
Okay, if we’re down to “I don’t care,” then I don’t, really either. It’s just a discussion here to me. **TeleMark** , I will try to answer your questions in context and in time. The gist of the answers are already stated above; if you’re going to keep drilling down to more and more specific questions, this thread isn’t a productive place to chase that topic any more. It was about tracking; enough people seem to understand that “yes we are tracked” to /questionanswered /closethread. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/89 "2016-09-09T19:01:36Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > It is almost exactly what is happening. No, it’s not. It’s not remotely close and you’ve offered nothing to support the assertion that it is almost exactly what is happening. None. You’ve made ominous pronouncements based on feeble evidence. > [@](#): > > Let’s make it simple: if I obtained _every single sales receipt your household generated_, what rather detailed portrait of your life and even mental makeup could I infer? That I shop at Amazon a lot. And that may be simple, but it’s really irrelevant though. When asked about what harms you are referring to, or insinuating, you respond with these open ended questions that don’t actually provide any answer. What harms are occurring? Every thing you’ve offered thus far is easily defeated by a consumer who chooses to. Can you answer the question directly with something that isn’t a question? > [@](#): > > As for the gummint-v-corporate argument, I just don’t care to go there. That there is one kind of evil doesn’t mean no other kinds warrant attention. God knows there are about 200 million people screaming at The Evil That Is Goverment; I have nothing to add there. If you don’t care to go there, is that a new position you’re taking? Because you are the one who brought it up. It’s in a string of comparisons that are not on point. They are not only not on point, but they are so far apart it’s not apples and oranges, but more like apples and fictional Star Trek tribbles. You made a comparison - the comparison was facile, so then it’s, oh I don’t want to go there. Right. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/90 "2016-09-09T19:44:38Z")
[How could you know](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPYA9racfO4)? Those were my thoughts. ---
**Author:** ![Duke\_of\_Rat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Duke\_of\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke_of_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/91 "2016-09-09T20:42:53Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > I’m not \*\*AB \*\*but one thing that airlines have started doing (depending on who you listen to) is increase the price of a flight once they’ve discovered you have significant interest in it. Right now they adjust flight prices based on perceived demand from segmented groups (business vs vacation) but if they can get better information on specific individuals they could adjust their prices upwards to what the market will bear. Tracking cookies, too. We were looking at airfares at work and were skipping around different airlines and stuff, but I had jotted some of the fares down. Went back to a previous site to check different flights or times or something and the previous fare (same flight/date) was a lot more expensive. On a hunch, I closed the browser, flushed the cache, and the cheaper fare popped back up when we looked again. Not sure what the algorithm was, but it sure looked like “if they check a flight, leave, and come back later looking at the same flight, jack the fare 20%”. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/92 "2016-09-09T21:11:38Z")
> [@Bone](#): > > If you don’t care to go there, is that a new position you’re taking? Because you are the one who brought it up. No. I used it as a parallel specifically to push the gummint-hysteria button: if it was Uncle Sam doing this detailed tracking of consumer choices, would it be okay? Since the prevailing feeling is that the government couldn’t give away chocolates or blow jobs without it being evil, I’m pretty sure that no one would consider such close monitoring of private citizens’ actions to be benign. Which led back to the question of why corporations doing it was okay/benign/beneficial, which has been answered only by “It doesn’t bother me.” When it got twisted into “Well, it’s a lot \*more \*evil for government to blah blah” I stepped aside because I don’t care to get into a comparative argument; I think it would be/is inappropriate and “evil” for \*any \*self-serving body to do it. You think it would be worse for the feds to be doing it? That corporations doing it are somehow of no concern, either? Fine. However, the government isn’t doing anything like it and corporate America is. Which is where this thread runs into the terminus and I don’t care to morph it into a different line of argument. I’ve outlined why I think this tracking is a bad thing for the average consumer, to give context to my arguments; if you want to brush those arguments aside you’re welcome to. But I’m not bound to chase your arguments off any direction you care to take them. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/93 "2016-09-09T21:26:37Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I’ll skip a lengthy chain of quoting here to save space and patience; the posts are only a page-scroll above. > > Retail stores and their backers (resellers and wholesalers) quite simply don’t do anything for end-customer benefit, no matter how it’s dressed up or presented. Every form of sale, pricing reduction, deal, etc. benefits them, and may have fallout benefits for the customer as well. But not a one of them has an altruistic bone in their corporate charter that says, “Gosh, this cereal is too expensive for some people so let’s knock off a buck this week.” > > Whether it’s a one-time price cut, a coupon or a rolling discount tied to a card, it benefits them, not you, and any benefit you receive as a customer is entirely a secondary issue - the carrot, the come-on, the pat on the head for being so darned loyal. > > Think about for five whole seconds: what’s the point of tying discounts to a loyalty card? Why not just knock the same buck off for every customer, a good percentage of whom are already regulars anyway? It’s **not** to give a benefit to the card holders. There never used to be any such cards, and everyone who tossed Cap’n Crunch in the basket got the same feel-good sixty cents off. > > But the stores didn’t know who they were. > > The purpose of a club or loyalty or discount card is to allow the store to track all purchases by an individual, something they can’t do efficiently in any other way. Besides the fact that people tend to use different methods of payment over time, it’s illegal to use things like checking account and credit card numbers to tag individual customers, so they can’t do that. (The exception to that, which falls into this same general topic, is that store-issued cards can be used for such tracking. Home Depot wants to give you an HD card and have you use it because as their issue they can insert a specific clause to the agreement that lets them track your purchases with it. But that’s an aside. Grocery stores can’t.) > > The amount of data that can be extracted from close tracking of a majority of customers, even if otherwise anonymous and disconnected (which it may be, but these days it’s probably specifically correlated with larger marketing databases by identity) is almost incalculably valuable… to the store, to the resellers and above all to the manufacturing conglomerates. The data you generate with your member card does NOT stay with Big Whoop Groceries & Sundries; it’s passed/sold up the chain where it becomes even more valuable as part of a larger data set. (And not necessarily for cash, but as part of the overall hands-in-each-others-pockets deal by which the manufacturers and grocery stores have operated for decades.) > > Coupons and in-store pricing discounts are almost irrelevant to the function of the card except to be the carrot that gets people to use it, gladly, just as some of you above have smugly (that’s a good word) declared. Think about this for five seconds: if your store demanded an ID card for purchases and gave you nothing overt for the trouble of carrying and producing it, would you be so smug, happy or compliant? Nope. So they train you to have your Reward Card out in your damp little paw as your turn to check out approaches, because by gum and by gosh, they’re going to give you all kinds of discounts for doing so. > > Discounts they could MUCH more easily make universal, as it used to be. > > Even things like gas discounts and lower ticket prices at the park and such are just window dressing, carnival slum tacked on to benefit the tracking chain and store, and the participating slum providers, and make that carrot so much carrotty-er. > > So next time you pull out one of those cards, be aware that it’s because it’s good for the store, not you, no matter what largely sham benefits are attributed to it. > > That isn’t even the end of the story and problem. You above say things like “because it means the store gives me coupons on things I already buy” - but that’s not always quite true, is it? Sure, you’ll get a coupon on something regular, but coupons are typically for OTHER products - more expensive brand name cleaners, new gourmet frozen foods, fancy ice cream desserts, another brand of cat or dog food. Stores don’t give out coupons to lower their revenue on things they know they will already sell; manufacturers and stores issue coupons to get people to buy new and different things and hopefully add them to their regular purchases even when the price break is gone. > > That’s the purpose of all the tracking, and the increasingly deep and sophisticated analysis going on at the higher levels. Everyone doesn’t get a coupon for some standard store item… each targeted, tracked and analyzed individual card holder gets coupons for things that behavioral and marketing analysis show they will be likely to buy (and switch to), given that little push. > > None of this - none of it - is for your benefit any more than a local car dealer giving away free test drives or free “100-point vehicle checkups.” But you’ve been told, and conditioned to think that it’s all about giving precious you fifty cents off on ice cream. And you love 'em for it… but not nearly as much as they love you for playing their game, their way, for their benefit. > > And the next level of it all is that yes, to some degree you are “matched with products and discounts you can use” - because the real purpose of all the tracking is to shape products, shelf content and store content to maximize revenue for all concerned. It’s NOT serve the most customers. NOT to maximize choice. NOT to maximize quality or selection. It’s all to make sure each store contains that center-weighted selection, arranged just so, to result in the biggest bottom line. And that’s often contrary to having the product selection and choices and “freedom” we are used to from bigger stores, where you can find obscure things even if they collect a little dust on a bottom shelf from slow sales. Or a flavor of something that only 1% of shoppers like. All those things are disappearing - I’ve watched sections of my grocery store shrink in brands and choices - and will continue to homogenize in the big-data driven crush to use customer tracking to shape the store’s offerings. Shape them - once again - not for customer benefit, but for the profit chain’s. > > As for smug and passive-aggressive etc., my answers above were short because there have been any number of threads on this topic that can be looked up and re-read. I think there’s some reasonable assumption that long-timers here know the background reading, whichever side they might be on. > > But there, long form. Again. For those who have managed to miss this information, which is less and less any kind of secret, especially here. My comments and others aren’t referring to some obscure illuminati secret - it’s completely open and known information, discussed widely in the trades just outside of most consumer notice, and in any large number of “airplane” books (those aren’t-we-all-clever books sold in airports for executives to read in between stops). > > So, if you want to think it’s all about serving you and lavishing you with daily and special discounts - sleep tight, feel comfy, smile smugly, shop well. No, sir, we don’t carry Blueberry Ripple gelato any more. You were the only one who bought it. Can I give you a coupon for some Breyer’s Nine-Fruit Creamy GelatoBars instead? I was gonna snip everything from the second sentence to the last paragraph, but decided that doing so would be antithetical to the praise I was going to lavish, so I left the entire post intact. **Amateur Barbarian** , that was an excellent post. It should be held up as a textbook example of what the Straight Dope Message Board aspires to be like. ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2016, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/94 "2016-09-09T21:31:14Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > No. I used it as a parallel specifically to push the gummint-hysteria button: if it was Uncle Sam doing this detailed tracking of consumer choices, would it be okay? Since the prevailing feeling is that the government couldn’t give away chocolates or blow jobs without it being evil, I’m pretty sure that no one would consider such close monitoring of private citizens’ actions to be benign. Well now this is unclear - do you want to discuss the comparisons to government, or not? Because if you do, it’s a really terrible comparison and worthless. I could see how you’d want to avoid it even though you brought it up, but then here again you brought it up. So which is it? > [@](#): > > Which led back to the question of why corporations doing it was okay/benign/beneficial, which has been answered only by “It doesn’t bother me.” Not bothering someone is the end result. The reason it doesn’t bother people is because there is no actual harm, and the fact that it’s completely voluntary and easily sidestepped. You seem to be missing that explanation, like you’ve missed articulating actual harm, again. You’ve continued however, with the unsupported innuendo about some conspiracy but without support that’s just as laughable as your comparisons to government, wait, take that back, wait, let’s do it again routine. > [@](#): > > Which is where this thread runs into the terminus and I don’t care to morph it into a different line of argument. I’ve outlined why I think this tracking is a bad thing for the average consumer, to give context to my arguments; if you want to brush those arguments aside you’re welcome to. But I’m not bound to chase your arguments off any direction you care to take them. You may think you have outlined why it’s a bad thing, but you’ve done a terrible job of it. What is the actual harm? ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/95 "2016-09-10T13:06:17Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > No. I used it as a parallel specifically to push the gummint-hysteria button: if it was Uncle Sam doing this detailed tracking of consumer choices, would it be okay? Since the prevailing feeling is that the government couldn’t give away chocolates or blow jobs without it being evil, I’m pretty sure that no one would consider such close monitoring of private citizens’ actions to be benign. But again, the government has a lot of power over us. That is why a “gummint-hysteria” button exists. Our right to privacy from the government protects us from very real harms that could occur without them. So, no, nobody would consider close monitoring of private citizens actions by the government to be benign. That still doesn’t explain why you think that principle applies to private companies marketing to us based on our consumer preferences with information we willingly provide them. When someone says they don’t care or that they see it as a benefit you say things like “sleep tight believing that…” as though you are privy to some sinister information about the Real Situation that the rest of us just don’t know. But when asked to provide an example of these sinister uses of “big data” all you can come up with is that if the government did it we sure wouldn’t like it very much. That’s like arguing that bumper cars pose an immediate threat to public health because if people did the same thing in real cars on the highway it would be really dangerous. “But go ahead… drive your little bumper cars and see how it goes…” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/96 "2016-09-10T13:44:42Z")
**Amateur Barbarian** , you say that a company wants to shrink down to about a half-dozen different products, which have as much overlap as possible with what the customers can be induced to buy. OK, that sounds reasonable: I’ll accept that. But how does data tracking make that situation any worse? With data tracking, I might have to buy dulce de leche ice cream when all I really wanted was butterscotch. But without data tracking, those six flavors might not include any sort of caramel at all. Data tracking does not lead to a perfect consumer experience for me, but I’d have been a fool if I ever claimed that it did. All I care about is that it makes for a better consumer experience for me than I would have without it. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2016, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/97 "2016-09-10T18:02:19Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **Amateur Barbarian** , you say that a company wants to shrink down to about a half-dozen different products, which have as much overlap as possible with what the customers can be induced to buy. OK, that sounds reasonable: I’ll accept that. But how does data tracking make that situation any worse? With data tracking, I might have to buy dulce de leche ice cream when all I really wanted was butterscotch. But without data tracking, those six flavors might not include any sort of caramel at all. Data tracking does not lead to a perfect consumer experience for me, but I’d have been a fool if I ever claimed that it did. All I care about is that it makes for a better consumer experience for me than I would have without it. Besides that it’s not like they wouldn’t know how much butterscotch ice cream they are selling, and where, without any kind of customer cards. Who is buying has no bearing on any decisions they make with regard to making a product available, only how much they are buying. That entire line of argument is invalid anyway. The basic laws of supply and demand dictate that if there are people who want butterscotch, and only butterscotch, someone will sell it. Their sales will grow to whatever the market demands. The customer cards don’t have anything to do with product availability in the general marketplace. There isn’t a conspiracy to limit our choices based on any data they get from them, and even if there were, someone independent would come in and steal their customers with the gift Big Data gave them; a license to print free money selling butterscotch to a neglected portion of the market with no competition. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2016, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/98 "2016-09-11T13:58:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **Amateur Barbarian** , you say that a company wants to shrink down to about a half-dozen different products, which have as much overlap as possible with what the customers can be induced to buy. OK, that sounds reasonable: I’ll accept that. But how does data tracking make that situation any worse? With data tracking, I might have to buy dulce de leche ice cream when all I really wanted was butterscotch. But without data tracking, those six flavors might not include any sort of caramel at all. Data tracking does not lead to a perfect consumer experience for me, but I’d have been a fool if I ever claimed that it did. All I care about is that it makes for a better consumer experience for me than I would have without it. It’s very strange because I swear there was another thread recently where AB insisted that the giant variety of, say, potato chips is bad very bad and no one really wants that many choices but the giant corporations insist we do and makes them anyway and that somehow is harmful to us as consumers and citizens. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2016, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/99 "2016-09-11T14:09:05Z")
[QUOTE=Amateur Barbarian] And frankly, having dozens of effectively identical products on every grocery shelf, differentiated only by their marketing programs, is both a symptom and result of the (marketing, megacorp profit-driven) idea that “freedom” and “choice” and “right to choose” is worth having 37 different brands of bottled water in a row. Or plain potato chips. You know, to hell with the planet if I have to eat Lay’s instead of Utz chips. I’m entitled… Big Daddy told me so. [/QUOTE] It’s in [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19572945&highlight=potato#post19572945) thread. There’s quite a lot more he has to say, naturally, but that’s the main thrust. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2016, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561/100 "2016-09-11T15:03:55Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > The gist of the answers are already stated above; if you’re going to keep drilling down to more and more specific questions, this thread isn’t a productive place to chase that topic any more. It was about tracking; enough people seem to understand that “yes we are tracked” to /questionanswered /closethread. I agree that we are being tracked. I agree that it’s possible to use that tracking to the determent of consumers, but it can also be used to benefit consumers. Providing a better fit of product offerings to consumers benefits both sides. What I question is your assertion that companies are using this data to nefariously manipulate the market and consumers so as to unfairly restrict trade and choice. I’ve seen nothing in this thread that supports that argument. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-we-being-tracked/764561.md?page=6)