How to poke your Smart TV in the eye

[Ale]

@Amateur_Barbarian

Maybe it’s easier to have this discussion now that there’s no debate that such close scrutiny is occurring, that a major facet of corporate-level marketing is to assemble as many details about groups and individuals as possible and that big data makes it easy to extract useful information from such gigantic data sets. Even I’ll concede prior exchanges descended into acrimonious namecalling, but primarily because the basis for the arguments was debated… and now, a year or so later, it should be evident that they are not debatable. We are continuously monitored in various ways that generates shit-tonnes of data that is in turn used to refine marketing efforts in ways that could only be dreamed of - if that - in years past.

I’ve had a lot of people say some variation of “so they watch me / know what I buy / know how I respond / etc. and I don’t care”… and on the net it’s fairly easy to keep the argument compartmentalized and thus absolute. All I know about you is what you choose to say and what little I can infer… which you are free to say is wrong.

However… I’ve had these conversations for years and years, face to face, with individuals, couples, families and groups, and when there’s no net avatar to hide behind (and I won’t say who’s doing the hiding), it’s almost childishly simple to frame a question that can’t be dismissed with, “Oh, I don’t care if they do that.”

That you say you don’t care, that “the reality of the world” means you have no way to resist being spied on, monitored, recorded and ultimately managed to the ends of those doing all these things… I think you (the generic you) can only say such things if you believe it’s all benign or even beneficial to some degree. (Such as: “Oh, it means they’ll always have my favorite soda in stock!”)

If you think being manipulated into managing your personal economics to benefit those seeking to divert as much of your wealth into their pockets is benign, I’d love to hear your reasoning, and you can send me $100 via PayPal to my profile email while we wait.

If you think this increasingly pervasive and invasive monitoring by an increasing number of entities (who in reality represent a very small number of mega-corporations) is benign, and that nobody really cares if the TV reports back what you watch, and when, and possibly such things as the number of people in the room, and samples of their conversation - all so that big data processing can fine-tune not just Vizio’s marketing, but that of whichever high-level marketing system they sell it to - if you choose to think that’s all “just the way it is”… you really don’t understand what’s going on. This stuff is not the same-old same-old from the 1950s and 1970s and even 2000s; it’s an evolution from flintlocks and bowie knives to tactical nukes, and you are the target - all of us “you’s.”

So yes, doing things like disabling the monitoring built into TVs, and tracking built into iPhones (and enabled by default), and resisting things like rewards cards and shopper programs - these things aren’t just pointless “resisting the way things are” but "keeping the increasingly powerful forces of marketing from overwhelming our personal economics and lives and choice even more than they have with the crude tools of yesteryear.

Let me point out one tiny thing that should be terrifying: Don’t you hate searching for an item, only to be followed across sites, platforms and devices by endless ads for that item? Do you think you haven’t been so targeted by things like Vizio’s data collection, whether you ever actively “searched” for the things it sends your way or not? Do you really think, “Oh, well, that’s the way life is…” ?

You shouldn’t. Nobody should. Any more than they should allow our home walls to be replaced with glass.

In addition to all of that there’s the issue that you never know who will end up using the snooping abilities of your TV and for what. There have been many instances of large corporations, banks, government agencies, etc, etc… being hacked and information taken under the premise that they’d never share it with anyone ends up in the hands of outright criminals.

Here’s a sobering interactive graphic of data breaches.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

@Ale

In addition to all of that there’s the issue that you never know who will end up using the snooping abilities of your TV and for what. There have been many instances of large corporations, banks, government agencies, etc, etc… being hacked and information taken under the premise that they’d never share it with anyone ends up in the hands of outright criminals.

Here’s a sobering interactive graphic of data breaches.

See the Talky Tina thread.

That Google and other data aggregations are all beneficent and pledged to do no evil is meaningless in the face of breaches, and even more so in the inevitable takeover or management change. Data’s forever, not just until the nice guys move on.

[swampspruce]

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

…as I’ve said, there’s presumably an “all for all” benefit to marketing companies when it comes to selling people on the idea that, y’know, marketing companies are as good as Amateur Barbarian thinks they are. Nothing any one company counts on, see; but just a campaign built to help portray marketing companies as good for business.

And, judging by Amateur Barbarian’s response – well, who am I to dispute the power of marketing? They’re apparently quite good at selling people like him on an idea like that, such that it’s impressive and remarkable and my thesaurus runneth over.

I was addressing you as a matter of fact, but in re-reading this discourse between you and AB I do have to ask what possible metric would satisfy you?

The companies that tend to spend the most on marketing also tend to be some of the world’s most successful (monetarily speaking). That speaks pretty well to the point that AB is making or at least shows some consonance between what an ad company says and the end result does it not? Coca-Cola has been a leader in spending on ads for well over 100 years now selling sugar water to the masses.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Amateur_Barbarian

Again you have turned a specific comment into a sweeping generalization. I never said this inability was general and universal; it applies only to the individual - that’s what “personal” means - and to a widely varying degree. A person who loathes horror movies or romcoms is not going to be swayed by a marketing campaign intended to reach as much of the movie’s potential - and likely - audience as possible. There have been cases of campaigns reaching out to non-obvious viewers, in movies and TV shows and even foods, but they are specific and rare.

Well, so far we’re in mere agreement…

To re-reiterate, “personal taste” is only one axis of marketing analysis, effect and focus. It matters a great deal more for subjective things like entertainment and perfume preference, and a great deal less for products and markets more strongly driven by other factors.

And that’s why I ask: since personal taste is one axis that you mentioned – one you believe can’t be overcome even by billions in marketing – please be just as quick to mention Axis #2 and Axis #3 and Axis #4 and so on and so on and so on.

In fact, you already mentioned an Axis #2, when you talked up ‘fixed preferences’:

But that’s largely your dichotomy, and I’ve done my best to explain that these are two axes of marketing focus among many-many, and only loosely related to each other. I can’t think of a way to structure a list with two columns that divide these things in the way you persist in seeing them.

…and here you’ve lost me.

After all, you’re the one who mentioned two axes – which is to say, personal taste and fixed preferences – and I’m just replying, okay, go on; you listed two axes; you say there are more; I’d sure appreciate you listing them the way you listed those, it’d help me understand your position.

Like, by analogy, your username brings to mind how Arnold Schwarzenegger famously played a barbarian on-screen – and, I can add, he also played a robot on screen; and, I can add, those are just two of the roles he’s played on screen; he’s played many other roles on screen, too.

And if you replied by asking me to name other roles he’s played on screen – well, I’d, uh, do so, because I have others in mind: “cop working undercover as a teacher,” say, and “pregnant geneticist,” and so on, and so on. It’d be a totally reasonable request, in response to my statement; and answering you would be no trouble at all.

You spoke of two axes. You added that there are more axes. I asked you to mention the other axes. You’re acting like this is an odd request.

Again: these things are axes, a spectrum, a spectrum of spectra, a matrix that all interact and affect every individual differently. To think of them as linear variables is Don Draper territory.

You say they’re axes; I ask you to mention the other axes. You say they’re a spectrum of spectra; I ask you to name them. You say “matrix” and I say “go on.”

But you won’t do it with any of the simplistic verities taught in Marketing 101.

I’m not saying otherwise. I’m not saying they’re “linear variables”, either. I’m simply asking you to name the other axes that you – on your own initiative – for some reason mentioned; you say they exist, and I reply with an “okay, please, go on.”

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@swampspruce

I was addressing you as a matter of fact, but in re-reading this discourse between you and AB I do have to ask what possible metric would satisfy you?

What do you mean? I already am satisfied that marketing can get impressive results. I’m not asking for a metric, and saying I’m unsatisfied until I get one; I’m simply asking Amateur Barbarian a different question – given his remarks about how even billions in marketing cannot overcome personal taste, and how fixed preferences also exist, and how those are two axes, and how yet other axes exist.

I don’t require anything further when it comes to the first part, the part about what he thinks it can do; that’s, uh, satisfactory. It’s the other part that intrigues me.

[Amateur_Barbarian]

Pepper, when you recognize that you contradict yourself in the first two responses of post 64 - you say you agree, then repeat the exact same misstatement you just agreed I corrected - it might be possible for me to be convinced you’re not just dicking around to argue.

I’ve answered every one of your questions, and you just pile on. Now you’re going in circles.

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Amateur_Barbarian

Pepper, when you recognize that you contradict yourself in the first two responses of post 64 - you say you agree, then repeat the exact same misstatement you just agreed I corrected - it might be possible for me to be convinced you’re not just dicking around to argue.

Well, look, your primary correction was noting that personal taste is “personal”.

But you then helpfully went on to speak – not of one kindly old lady who wouldn’t be all that interested in a biker movie – but of kindly old ladies, plural.

Because of course you did; a group can be made up of individuals – each of whom would turn down a movie as a matter of personal taste – and that group would, as a matter of taste, turn down that movie. Seemed like your whole point, really.

So when a movie flops and fails to break even – well, yes, it can be because one lady turned it down as a matter of personal taste, and another lady turned it down as a matter of personal taste, and so on. But breaking a flop down that way seems triivially true for the same reason that you spoke of old kindly ladies in the plural.

That’s not me dicking around; I figured it was me noting your point in stride.

I’ve answered every one of your questions, and you just pile on. Now you’re going in circles.

Hey, anyone else reading this thread is free to note that you’ve said ‘personal taste’ and ‘fixed preferences’ are two axes among others; and that, when I’ve asked you to name the others, you’ve – refused.

They can also note I then went in circles to the extent that I keep asking, look, you say there are other axes than those two; would you please name them?

If that’s where you’d like to leave it, I can but shrug.