7 ms·

Netflix tweet raises privacy questions

25 points by chatmasta 9y ago

schlechtnacht 9y ago
I don't understand how people seemed to be fine with spotify doing the same thing a while ago... http://www.adweek.com/creativity/spotify-crunches-user-data-fun-ways-new-global-outdoor-ad-campaign-174826/ http://www.adweek.com/creativity/spotify-crunches-user-data-...
- icebraining 9y ago
  Why do you say people were fine? It's kind of hard to get feedback from billboard viewers.
mikestew 9y ago
We know we’re all being analyzed eight ways to Sunday, but it’s in poor taste to remind us of that. A local bicycle club sent an email saying essentially “we know who’s been opening these club emails and who hasn’t. We’re watching you!” Guess who’s not a member of that club anymore?
- icebraining 9y ago
  Yeah, it's cat.jpg all over again, yet on an even more personal dataset. You'd think it would be obvious by now that this is a faux pas.
  - arama471 9y ago
    For anyone, like me, who is not familiar with the cat.jpg faux pas: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3078-trust-is-fragile https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3078-trust-is-fragile
    - icebraining 9y ago
      I think cperciva's post on the issue is also worth reading: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-with-cat-jpg.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w...
convery 9y ago
We all know that services like this relies on a tonne of statistics, we also know that very little to none is personally identifiable. So it feels like trying to manufacture outrage over it, that it's flaunting how much 'scary data' you have on the users to say that a file has been accessed 56 times when everyones grandma would be fine with a viewcounter on every video.
- noncoml 9y ago
  Unless this number is real and you are one of the 53 persons. I would definitely not be ok with the tweet if I was one of them.
  - doikor 9y ago
    My guess it is most likely some store/shop looping the same film(s) and at the same time breaking the contract as public showing of content from Netflix is not allowed.
    - fenomas 9y ago
      Call me cynical, but isn't it far more likely that whoever was running Netflix's twitter account that day made up the statistic trying to be funny?
      - remarkEon 9y ago
        Given the banter I’ve seen on some corporate Twitters (Wendy’s, Burger King) I wouldn’t be surprised if this was fake or only marginally true.
      - lucaspiller 9y ago
        It seems like a weird thing to purposely lookup, however I could imagine someone came across it, "This person watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past two weeks? That can't be right...", and then dug into it more, and mentioned it at the water cooler.
aw3c2 9y ago
Made-up "relatable, viral" ad campaign fires back.
divanvisagie 9y ago
Id'e be interested to see how many of the people complaining about this are also the same people that believe in the fundamentally flawed "Vote with your wallet" principle.
- icebraining 9y ago
  I get the schadenfreude of seeing people you disagree with being hypocrites, but complaining to the company is not incompatible with voting with your wallet, they're both market feedback mechanisms. If they were complaining to some regulator, then you'd have a point.
kuschku 9y ago
The most worrying part is that no one saw anything wrong with this. The data must have crossed the marketing and analytics department, and no one even stopped to consider what they're doing. And either they have no process for approval to release such statistics, or no one there saw anything wrong, either. One could make a snarky comment asking if these people ever get out of their filter bubble, but that's the general issue here, isn't it? The people developing, designing and running many of todays services have entirely different values and views on privatsphere compared to the rest of society.
- simonswords82 9y ago
  That's because there isn't anything wrong with this. It's anonymous, it's completely untraceable back to the 53 people. If this is seriously something people have time to freak out about, they have too much spare time on their hands.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    People hate surveillance. They accept it as trade off, but you shouldn't remind them of it. And I'd even say that even collecting this data is wrong.
    - simonswords82 9y ago
      I'm sure it's more a of case of needing the data for business purposes (such as paying copyright holders) than a matter of "surveillance".
      - kuschku 9y ago
        That's the same, though. Surveillance is only defined by collecting the data — not necessarily by how you use it. But the data still exists, and as in this case, can still be used. And apparently, Netflix rules on how to access or use it aren't particularly strict either.
    - mcphage 9y ago
vortico 9y ago
I don't think that the privacy concerns are anything out of the ordinary. It's simply a reminder that Netflix employees can see users' watch data. Everyone knows that. Revealing private data is a bit weirder, but it is common for companies to release occassional anonymized data. They sell much of this data to advertisers who get to see all of it, so it serves as a reminder of that. But again, nothing out of the ordinary. The attitude of the post is the big WTF. If I went up to anyone I knew, and said "you do <X>, who hurt you?", I'd be smacked, a fight would start, or I'd not see that person again. The post is basically saying "To one of our users (you know who you are!): Fuck you!" Why would any PR employee think this is okay?
- gpmcadam 9y ago
  > To one of our users (you know who you are!): Fuck you! I'm a bit out of the loop. What Tweet have Netflix said this in?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - vortico 9y ago
    The tweet says "To the 53 people who've watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?" So there are 53 users they are directly addressing, and then mocking "You've been damaged mentally by someone in your past."
    - imdsm 9y ago
      I don't quite see it as offensive as that, but perhaps my skin is a bit thicker than most. I think it's easy to see it how you want to see it, so we should be careful of that.
      - vortico 9y ago
        What you are saying is correct. It might not offend many, and it surely doesn't offend me, but the #1 rule of PR is that if you have the slightest thought that there's a hidden meaning of your statement, or if someone could conceivably take your statement the wrong way, it will be taken the wrong way, perhaps by thousands. Example: "Come in for a spa and get a free steak rib at a local restaurant" sounds 100% innocent, but there is a small fraction of a percent chance that someone might think "But what about an offer for me, since I don't eat meat?!" In public relations, probability values get converted to a number of real humans, so PR staff has to be aware of this probability of everything they post (which is always nonzero). That of course doesn't mean it shouldn't be posted, but they shouldn't be surprised when they get 20 negative comments if 100,000 people see their statement. It's a tradeoff considering the gain of making a statement. Twitter's post easily breaks this rule without much subtlety.
vesinisa 9y ago
I am a strong advocate of PII privacy, but this does not demonstrate a privacy violation. Services need to gather data about their user's behaviour, but as long as that collection is done in an anonymized fashion and the behaviour data is not shared with third parties, I am alright with it. Queries like this are easy to do with completely anonymized data, and are actually habitually performed by service providers to understand how users use the service.
- quattrofan 9y ago
  Exactly, this a storm in a teacup.
- zuppy 9y ago
  I don’t get why people are getting offended so much by this, it’s just a random fun fact. Nothing private here and it shows they have humor. That’s so much better than lawyer driven PR.
spike021 9y ago
To me I thought it was just a joke, but I can see how it'd be taken offensively by others. As for privacy, I'm not sure it's a big deal. Maybe the watch data that the tweeter (?) used is anonymized?
- quattrofan 9y ago
  Everyone is offended these days, it's really become quite ridiculous, I think that sooner or later PC's will be sold with their own safe space.
cortexio 9y ago
How is this a privacy issue? Netflix must know what you watched, how else is it going to show u a history of your last watched movies/shows. I mean, i have a website myself and i need to know which users ordered what because else i can't give them a order history.
tatoalo 9y ago
IMHO this is clearly a joke...if a tweet like this is enough to be a "privacy" concern I don't see the difference with, for example, Amazon SEO associating with your account whatever related product to your search. You search for a Blu-ray movie once and then you're stuck with all the related garbage for at least 2 weeks or so. As far as we know, the data behind that tweet could also be not backed by real data, if it was, it most probably would be anonymized. I don't know if it's just me but I cannot really see the concern here.
noir_lord 9y ago
> Netflix not only admitted that the company can determine with accuracy how many of its over 100 million customers watch a certain show over a period of time, but also that some employees have access to that viewing data. Totally expected how else would they determine if a show is worth making..
thisisit 9y ago
No doubt this is a PR nightmare and a poor joke but the whole privacy angle is a bit of leap. I can't imagine the online marketing team emailing engineers and saying - Can you pull us data about "x" condition so that we can write a tweet about it? That doesn't happen and surely someone in some form of legal/audit will remind the online marketing that they are not supposed to be privileged with this information so they have to spin a story. Now what they do? Take a random number and bad movie and create a story. But it backfires. Not only the poor joke angle but with people questioning their privacy policies.

25 points by chatmasta 9y ago

I don't understand how people seemed to be fine with spotify doing the same thing a while ago... http://www.adweek.com/creativity/spotify-crunches-user-data-fun-ways-new-global-outdoor-ad-campaign-174826/ http://www.adweek.com/creativity/spotify-crunches-user-data-...

icebraining 9y ago
Why do you say people were fine? It's kind of hard to get feedback from billboard viewers.

mikestew 9y ago

We know we’re all being analyzed eight ways to Sunday, but it’s in poor taste to remind us of that. A local bicycle club sent an email saying essentially “we know who’s been opening these club emails and who hasn’t. We’re watching you!” Guess who’s not a member of that club anymore?

icebraining 9y ago
Yeah, it's cat.jpg all over again, yet on an even more personal dataset. You'd think it would be obvious by now that this is a faux pas.
- arama471 9y ago
  For anyone, like me, who is not familiar with the cat.jpg faux pas: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3078-trust-is-fragile https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3078-trust-is-fragile
  - icebraining 9y ago
    I think cperciva's post on the issue is also worth reading: http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-with-cat-jpg.html http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-w...

convery 9y ago

We all know that services like this relies on a tonne of statistics, we also know that very little to none is personally identifiable. So it feels like trying to manufacture outrage over it, that it's flaunting how much 'scary data' you have on the users to say that a file has been accessed 56 times when everyones grandma would be fine with a viewcounter on every video.

noncoml 9y ago
Unless this number is real and you are one of the 53 persons. I would definitely not be ok with the tweet if I was one of them.
- doikor 9y ago
  My guess it is most likely some store/shop looping the same film(s) and at the same time breaking the contract as public showing of content from Netflix is not allowed.
  - fenomas 9y ago
    Call me cynical, but isn't it far more likely that whoever was running Netflix's twitter account that day made up the statistic trying to be funny?
    - remarkEon 9y ago
      Given the banter I’ve seen on some corporate Twitters (Wendy’s, Burger King) I wouldn’t be surprised if this was fake or only marginally true.
    - lucaspiller 9y ago
      It seems like a weird thing to purposely lookup, however I could imagine someone came across it, "This person watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past two weeks? That can't be right...", and then dug into it more, and mentioned it at the water cooler.

aw3c2 9y ago

Made-up "relatable, viral" ad campaign fires back.

divanvisagie 9y ago

Id'e be interested to see how many of the people complaining about this are also the same people that believe in the fundamentally flawed "Vote with your wallet" principle.

icebraining 9y ago
I get the schadenfreude of seeing people you disagree with being hypocrites, but complaining to the company is not incompatible with voting with your wallet, they're both market feedback mechanisms. If they were complaining to some regulator, then you'd have a point.

kuschku 9y ago

The most worrying part is that no one saw anything wrong with this. The data must have crossed the marketing and analytics department, and no one even stopped to consider what they're doing. And either they have no process for approval to release such statistics, or no one there saw anything wrong, either. One could make a snarky comment asking if these people ever get out of their filter bubble, but that's the general issue here, isn't it? The people developing, designing and running many of todays services have entirely different values and views on privatsphere compared to the rest of society.

simonswords82 9y ago
That's because there isn't anything wrong with this. It's anonymous, it's completely untraceable back to the 53 people. If this is seriously something people have time to freak out about, they have too much spare time on their hands.
- kuschku 9y ago
  People hate surveillance. They accept it as trade off, but you shouldn't remind them of it. And I'd even say that even collecting this data is wrong.
  - simonswords82 9y ago
    I'm sure it's more a of case of needing the data for business purposes (such as paying copyright holders) than a matter of "surveillance".
    - kuschku 9y ago
      That's the same, though. Surveillance is only defined by collecting the data — not necessarily by how you use it. But the data still exists, and as in this case, can still be used. And apparently, Netflix rules on how to access or use it aren't particularly strict either.
  - mcphage 9y ago

vortico 9y ago

I don't think that the privacy concerns are anything out of the ordinary. It's simply a reminder that Netflix employees can see users' watch data. Everyone knows that. Revealing private data is a bit weirder, but it is common for companies to release occassional anonymized data. They sell much of this data to advertisers who get to see all of it, so it serves as a reminder of that. But again, nothing out of the ordinary. The attitude of the post is the big WTF. If I went up to anyone I knew, and said "you do <X>, who hurt you?", I'd be smacked, a fight would start, or I'd not see that person again. The post is basically saying "To one of our users (you know who you are!): Fuck you!" Why would any PR employee think this is okay?

gpmcadam 9y ago
> To one of our users (you know who you are!): Fuck you! I'm a bit out of the loop. What Tweet have Netflix said this in?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- vortico 9y ago
  The tweet says "To the 53 people who've watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?" So there are 53 users they are directly addressing, and then mocking "You've been damaged mentally by someone in your past."
  - imdsm 9y ago
    I don't quite see it as offensive as that, but perhaps my skin is a bit thicker than most. I think it's easy to see it how you want to see it, so we should be careful of that.
    - vortico 9y ago
      What you are saying is correct. It might not offend many, and it surely doesn't offend me, but the #1 rule of PR is that if you have the slightest thought that there's a hidden meaning of your statement, or if someone could conceivably take your statement the wrong way, it will be taken the wrong way, perhaps by thousands. Example: "Come in for a spa and get a free steak rib at a local restaurant" sounds 100% innocent, but there is a small fraction of a percent chance that someone might think "But what about an offer for me, since I don't eat meat?!" In public relations, probability values get converted to a number of real humans, so PR staff has to be aware of this probability of everything they post (which is always nonzero). That of course doesn't mean it shouldn't be posted, but they shouldn't be surprised when they get 20 negative comments if 100,000 people see their statement. It's a tradeoff considering the gain of making a statement. Twitter's post easily breaks this rule without much subtlety.

vesinisa 9y ago

I am a strong advocate of PII privacy, but this does not demonstrate a privacy violation. Services need to gather data about their user's behaviour, but as long as that collection is done in an anonymized fashion and the behaviour data is not shared with third parties, I am alright with it. Queries like this are easy to do with completely anonymized data, and are actually habitually performed by service providers to understand how users use the service.

quattrofan 9y ago
Exactly, this a storm in a teacup.
zuppy 9y ago
I don’t get why people are getting offended so much by this, it’s just a random fun fact. Nothing private here and it shows they have humor. That’s so much better than lawyer driven PR.

spike021 9y ago

To me I thought it was just a joke, but I can see how it'd be taken offensively by others. As for privacy, I'm not sure it's a big deal. Maybe the watch data that the tweeter (?) used is anonymized?

quattrofan 9y ago
Everyone is offended these days, it's really become quite ridiculous, I think that sooner or later PC's will be sold with their own safe space.

cortexio 9y ago

How is this a privacy issue? Netflix must know what you watched, how else is it going to show u a history of your last watched movies/shows. I mean, i have a website myself and i need to know which users ordered what because else i can't give them a order history.

tatoalo 9y ago

IMHO this is clearly a joke...if a tweet like this is enough to be a "privacy" concern I don't see the difference with, for example, Amazon SEO associating with your account whatever related product to your search. You search for a Blu-ray movie once and then you're stuck with all the related garbage for at least 2 weeks or so. As far as we know, the data behind that tweet could also be not backed by real data, if it was, it most probably would be anonymized. I don't know if it's just me but I cannot really see the concern here.

noir_lord 9y ago

> Netflix not only admitted that the company can determine with accuracy how many of its over 100 million customers watch a certain show over a period of time, but also that some employees have access to that viewing data. Totally expected how else would they determine if a show is worth making..

thisisit 9y ago

No doubt this is a PR nightmare and a poor joke but the whole privacy angle is a bit of leap. I can't imagine the online marketing team emailing engineers and saying - Can you pull us data about "x" condition so that we can write a tweet about it? That doesn't happen and surely someone in some form of legal/audit will remind the online marketing that they are not supposed to be privileged with this information so they have to spin a story. Now what they do? Take a random number and bad movie and create a story. But it backfires. Not only the poor joke angle but with people questioning their privacy policies.