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I mean, I interviewed with a company last week for a software engineer role. I won't name names, but I was basically told a bit more about what they do, and the

I mean, I interviewed with a company last week for a software engineer role. I won't name names, but I was basically told a bit more about what they do, and the idea was "we track customers across shop websites to see what items they prefer, what types of items, how often, color, etc. etc., and build relations between all of these attributes to help surface more of what the customer wants to buy." And here I was thinking people the past month or so are putting FB at the forefront of the conversation about the use of what should be private data, when there are already companies doing this everywhere on the Internet. Any typical website with a storefront (Macy's, GAP, etc.) track what you buy, when, why, etc. It's definitely about more than Facebook. I don't blame FB PR for making sure to explain other companies are using your data and basically manipulating you with it.

bpchaps 9y ago
I had an interview once with a company that essentially wrote tracking libraries for Starbucks's app. Everything you mentioned in your post is pretty much exactly what the app did. Their nonchalance around their extent of tracking was chilling to say the least.
saganus 9y ago
I think the difference that is pointed-out most of the time is the scale at which FB operates. Even if other sites are doing (fundamentally) the same, they probably don't have such a clear and overarching picture as FB does. I don't disagree with you though. Having most sites track you sucks.
- spike021 9y ago
  I mostly agree that the scale of a system like FB makes its impact far greater. But on the other hand, any company that can admit to controlling (at least in part) a person's interests, choices of purchases, etc. control a significant more of a person than you'd think. Said person thinks they're making the decision themselves, but in reality they're being prodded in a certain direction. When they make a purchase and use the item, others see, and they might also be influenced as a third party, and so on. I'd say it's pretty dangerous, but it tends to be overlooked.
majormajor 9y ago
The particularly scary thing about Facebook and Google is that they can link it to your name/location/other PII easily. Your ISP is in this group, too. Joe's Ad Tech Shop has a tougher time of that, even though they do build exactly the same profile. Everyone wants to know what people do on their site, the big technological problem with all of the above is that the same companies do it across everybody's sites.
tomc1985 9y ago
I once showed up to one of those MIT Biz-Tech mixers a few years ago and one of the presentations we had to sit through was an almost appalling peek at one of these tracking systems through the eyes of its enthusiastic business owner. Afterwords we had time for open questions, and I joined the line. When it became my turn, I asked the owner about whether he had any ethical or moral qualms about what he was doing and he just laughed. He gathers data from hidden interactions with client websites (fashion brands, for this demo) to quite literally 'follow the customer around' and 'influence their purchasing decisions'. He was quite proud of just how deep into his shoppers' lives his product was integrated. When I looked around the room during the height of this exchange, most everyone seemed indifferent and only a few seemed to acknowledge or validate my arguments. It was a supremely disappointing and depressing experience.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > When I looked around the room during the height of this exchange, most everyone seemed indifferent and only a few seemed to acknowledge or validate my arguments It was the same thing, pre-crisis, in finance. "Of course I screwed him on pricing! He isn't my customer, he's a counterparty. He should have expected I'd screw him." When an industry is making money to society's detriment, it will not fix itself.
  - hermitdev 9y ago
    I work in finance, for a dark pool. Our "value add" is to provide the anonymity to both buyers and sellers (both in who they are, the side they're on and their limit) while doing minimal disturbance to the market. We only disseminate the symbol on an IOI, and we don't quote prices, at all. We facilitate moving large block trades with minimal information leakage to market et large while abiding by NMS rules. Effectively, we run blind auctions for large blocks of US traded equities.
    - bob_theslob646 9y ago
      What are you trying to say? You add tremendous value for large customers who have the ability to not let everyone on a lit exchange know what they are doing. Actually from what I've heard more than 54% of all stock transactions are on on unlit alternative trading venues.
arkh 9y ago
The difference is this: a website tracking you while you're there is just using their own data. FB, Google, twitter get data from all the websites which make the error of using their scripts: be it analytics, social buttons or "login with whatever". Everytime you use assets hosted by a third party they get free data about your users. Every time you use a third party service you're giving data about your users.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  I don't think that's the case. Facebook's ad/privacy page told me KLM had shared data with Facebook. I don't remember agreeing to that, I'm diligent at unticking the box or whatever, but in any case, I doubt it only goes one way. KLM's website includes at least 15 trackers. I'm looking forward to 25 May. I will write to all these companies, and demand that they stop sharing my data.
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    Does the GDPR give us the tools to do that?
    - christudor 9y ago
      I suspect most big companies will have teams set up whose only job is to respond to GDPR-related requests.
com2kid 9y ago
I've been to presentations of marketing teams that said they know how much is left on your mortgage when you hit their website, and they use that data, and a lot more, to figure out what price tier of items show up on the landing page. The level of tracking that happens that people aren't aware of is scary. What Facebook has been revealed to do is pretty low on the creepy scale compared to what is happening.
- rcraft 9y ago
  Care to name products/companies? It would be fun to play around with a VPN and see what variations in pricing would really happen.
- gaius 9y ago
  Person X works hard to get that raise, promotion, bonus, whatever to build a better life for themselves and their family. Not so it can be siphoned away by person Y sneakily charging them more. All dynamic pricing of this kind should be forced to be transparent. Display the real price alongside the custom one they want to charge you.
  - skookumchuck 9y ago
    Since before money was invented, salesmen would size you up and steer you towards what products you'd be most likely to buy, and would dynamically set the price based on sizing you up. Walk into a car dealership, and you'll see this blatantly in action.
    - rjbwork 9y ago
      Told my sis to put on her most raggedy clothes you can still wear. I put on some threadbare shorts, some worn sandals, and a t-shirt with the collar fraying. Then we went car shopping. 3k off a used car's listed price for her, lol.
      - skookumchuck 9y ago
        You can take that too far - they can think you're a bum and refuse to talk to you. (Happened to me!) But yeah, it's very plain that how you are treated by a salesman and what they offer and at what price is very strongly connected with how you dress, are groomed, speak, what car you drove up in, etc.
itronitron 9y ago
If these companies instead spent their time on improving the UX of their sites so that users (and not some creepy AI Clippy) could easily find stuff they cared about and in the sizes they needed then the companies would easily dominate their respective markets. Taking a cue from the physical world if I walk into my local grocery store I would be seriously creeped out and annoyed if I was greeted with a cart full of recommended items based on my previous purchases.
- aembleton 9y ago
  I'd like that. Saves me having to find everything.
2close4comfort 9y ago
It is about saying, "NO" and not creating this in the first place. That's the point. Until devs figure out they are responsible for this the quicker it will end. Would FB and Palantir be where they are today without people smarter than the founders enabling this?
- tjpnz 9y ago
  I suspect the majority of people implementing this stuff are either largely apathetic or are so thick they wouldn't ever see the bigger picture. Most wouldn't have a clue where to start with even the simplest of articles posted here.
sureaboutthis 9y ago
Showing me my favorite style clothing in my favorite color is manipulating me? This seems to be news to so many people but marketing and advertising has been tracking and advertising to you this way for centuries including sharing of data.
- lakechfoma 9y ago
  To your question: yes it is. You may find it convenient, but it is definitely manipulating as well. And it really depends on where you see that clothing. Is it on the "buy" page? Ok maybe not so bad. Is it on an advertisement in a flashlight app on your phone after you last googled for something similar on your laptop? Is that still just a convenience, or have we entered territory that is creepy for you yet? Marketing and advertising has not been tracking all of us _as individuals_ for more than the last couple of decades. How could they possibly have done this in the previous eras of dumb broadcasting and dumb print media? Newspapers can't follow you around in department stores to see what you like and target future ads to _you_ as an individual. They can advertise in places that make more sense, e.g. kids toys on a kids TV channel. So yes this is new and yes this is manipulation, and this isn't the only way it has to be. We can still have convenience and better advertising without the mass tracking of individuals. But as long as we have people defending the current status quo as you have here, then nothing will change.
  - sureaboutthis 9y ago
    No, this is not new, as ad agencies would gather information on where you shopped and what you bought and sold that information to others. Then you might receive a flyer in the mail advertising something complimentary to your purchase. National retail chains paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for such information going well into the early 1900s.
AznHisoka 9y ago
Playing devil’s advocate but if a company “wants to help surface more of what the customer wants to buy”, why is that a bad thing? Would you want to step into a store filled with stuff you would never buy?
- csydas 9y ago
  Many reasons: - It assumes this is all that the data is used for and that the data doesn't get a second life with companies that can use the information to punish you. - It assumes that the data is never stolen by malicious entities and put to use against you - It assumes that all the data collected is required to provide the information promised - It assumes you want to buy things from theses stores in the first place (think ideological reasons for not shopping at a place) - It assumes you knowingly consented to these terms with understanding of the cost Basically no matter how you shape it, it's the advertisers trying to avoid saying they've entered you into a system and contract without your consent, but it's okay because "you get to see things you want to buy", neverminding that this rarely is the case and the algorithms are hyped up beyond belief, often offering advertisements for items you have already purchased and need to rarely purchase. (e.g., you just bought a water heater, here are some other water heaters you might like) I'm not really convinced by lengthy Terms of Services and FAQs like Facebook's that they honestly care about people being upset as they miss the point entirely. You still don't know what was collected specifically, you cannot opt out of it from their side (must use blocking tools which companies constantly change their code to avoid), there's no way to verify about any of the information they've collected or whether they've stopped collecting it if you opt out, there's no way to confirm that your data is deleted if you request it, etc. All this for slightly targeted ads?
- spike021 9y ago
  It's 50/50, honestly. In some cases doing that is incredibly useful for the customer. The problem is when the business decides to start promoting similar, yet different items, knockoffs, etc. that "match" your profile, yet aren't what you would've wanted to originally buy. So you wind up getting steered to something that may be of lesser quality, etc. This might be the result of the company making a larger profit on the alternate item or something else.
skywhopper 9y ago
All true, but Facebook is unique in its reach. It has tracking bugs on far more websites than almost any of these other ad services. It has specific personal information about billions of people, including their social network, their private messages to friends, their exact relationship status history, photos, videos, voice recordings, location information, including lots of such information for hundreds of millions of other people who have never consented or even been given the opportunity to consent. It's the biggest, most intrusive database of personal information in the world, and it sells access to that data in order to serve poorly targeted ads (which honestly are a scam on their actual customers as well). And their entire business model is premised on this leaky bucket--in order to allow sales of tightly targeted ads, they also are knowingly revealing personal information to malicious parties who can and have and will continue to take full advantage. So sure, there's an entire industry built for this, but Facebook has some truly unique properties that make it light-years more dangerous than your typical ad network.

bpchaps 9y ago

I had an interview once with a company that essentially wrote tracking libraries for Starbucks's app. Everything you mentioned in your post is pretty much exactly what the app did. Their nonchalance around their extent of tracking was chilling to say the least.

saganus 9y ago

I think the difference that is pointed-out most of the time is the scale at which FB operates. Even if other sites are doing (fundamentally) the same, they probably don't have such a clear and overarching picture as FB does. I don't disagree with you though. Having most sites track you sucks.

spike021 9y ago
I mostly agree that the scale of a system like FB makes its impact far greater. But on the other hand, any company that can admit to controlling (at least in part) a person's interests, choices of purchases, etc. control a significant more of a person than you'd think. Said person thinks they're making the decision themselves, but in reality they're being prodded in a certain direction. When they make a purchase and use the item, others see, and they might also be influenced as a third party, and so on. I'd say it's pretty dangerous, but it tends to be overlooked.

majormajor 9y ago

The particularly scary thing about Facebook and Google is that they can link it to your name/location/other PII easily. Your ISP is in this group, too. Joe's Ad Tech Shop has a tougher time of that, even though they do build exactly the same profile. Everyone wants to know what people do on their site, the big technological problem with all of the above is that the same companies do it across everybody's sites.

tomc1985 9y ago

I once showed up to one of those MIT Biz-Tech mixers a few years ago and one of the presentations we had to sit through was an almost appalling peek at one of these tracking systems through the eyes of its enthusiastic business owner. Afterwords we had time for open questions, and I joined the line. When it became my turn, I asked the owner about whether he had any ethical or moral qualms about what he was doing and he just laughed. He gathers data from hidden interactions with client websites (fashion brands, for this demo) to quite literally 'follow the customer around' and 'influence their purchasing decisions'. He was quite proud of just how deep into his shoppers' lives his product was integrated. When I looked around the room during the height of this exchange, most everyone seemed indifferent and only a few seemed to acknowledge or validate my arguments. It was a supremely disappointing and depressing experience.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> When I looked around the room during the height of this exchange, most everyone seemed indifferent and only a few seemed to acknowledge or validate my arguments It was the same thing, pre-crisis, in finance. "Of course I screwed him on pricing! He isn't my customer, he's a counterparty. He should have expected I'd screw him." When an industry is making money to society's detriment, it will not fix itself.
- hermitdev 9y ago
  I work in finance, for a dark pool. Our "value add" is to provide the anonymity to both buyers and sellers (both in who they are, the side they're on and their limit) while doing minimal disturbance to the market. We only disseminate the symbol on an IOI, and we don't quote prices, at all. We facilitate moving large block trades with minimal information leakage to market et large while abiding by NMS rules. Effectively, we run blind auctions for large blocks of US traded equities.
  - bob_theslob646 9y ago
    What are you trying to say? You add tremendous value for large customers who have the ability to not let everyone on a lit exchange know what they are doing. Actually from what I've heard more than 54% of all stock transactions are on on unlit alternative trading venues.

arkh 9y ago

The difference is this: a website tracking you while you're there is just using their own data. FB, Google, twitter get data from all the websites which make the error of using their scripts: be it analytics, social buttons or "login with whatever". Everytime you use assets hosted by a third party they get free data about your users. Every time you use a third party service you're giving data about your users.

Symbiote 9y ago
I don't think that's the case. Facebook's ad/privacy page told me KLM had shared data with Facebook. I don't remember agreeing to that, I'm diligent at unticking the box or whatever, but in any case, I doubt it only goes one way. KLM's website includes at least 15 trackers. I'm looking forward to 25 May. I will write to all these companies, and demand that they stop sharing my data.
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  Does the GDPR give us the tools to do that?
  - christudor 9y ago
    I suspect most big companies will have teams set up whose only job is to respond to GDPR-related requests.

com2kid 9y ago

I've been to presentations of marketing teams that said they know how much is left on your mortgage when you hit their website, and they use that data, and a lot more, to figure out what price tier of items show up on the landing page. The level of tracking that happens that people aren't aware of is scary. What Facebook has been revealed to do is pretty low on the creepy scale compared to what is happening.

rcraft 9y ago
Care to name products/companies? It would be fun to play around with a VPN and see what variations in pricing would really happen.
gaius 9y ago
Person X works hard to get that raise, promotion, bonus, whatever to build a better life for themselves and their family. Not so it can be siphoned away by person Y sneakily charging them more. All dynamic pricing of this kind should be forced to be transparent. Display the real price alongside the custom one they want to charge you.
- skookumchuck 9y ago
  Since before money was invented, salesmen would size you up and steer you towards what products you'd be most likely to buy, and would dynamically set the price based on sizing you up. Walk into a car dealership, and you'll see this blatantly in action.
  - rjbwork 9y ago
    Told my sis to put on her most raggedy clothes you can still wear. I put on some threadbare shorts, some worn sandals, and a t-shirt with the collar fraying. Then we went car shopping. 3k off a used car's listed price for her, lol.
    - skookumchuck 9y ago
      You can take that too far - they can think you're a bum and refuse to talk to you. (Happened to me!) But yeah, it's very plain that how you are treated by a salesman and what they offer and at what price is very strongly connected with how you dress, are groomed, speak, what car you drove up in, etc.

itronitron 9y ago

If these companies instead spent their time on improving the UX of their sites so that users (and not some creepy AI Clippy) could easily find stuff they cared about and in the sizes they needed then the companies would easily dominate their respective markets. Taking a cue from the physical world if I walk into my local grocery store I would be seriously creeped out and annoyed if I was greeted with a cart full of recommended items based on my previous purchases.

aembleton 9y ago
I'd like that. Saves me having to find everything.

2close4comfort 9y ago

It is about saying, "NO" and not creating this in the first place. That's the point. Until devs figure out they are responsible for this the quicker it will end. Would FB and Palantir be where they are today without people smarter than the founders enabling this?

tjpnz 9y ago
I suspect the majority of people implementing this stuff are either largely apathetic or are so thick they wouldn't ever see the bigger picture. Most wouldn't have a clue where to start with even the simplest of articles posted here.

sureaboutthis 9y ago

Showing me my favorite style clothing in my favorite color is manipulating me? This seems to be news to so many people but marketing and advertising has been tracking and advertising to you this way for centuries including sharing of data.

lakechfoma 9y ago
To your question: yes it is. You may find it convenient, but it is definitely manipulating as well. And it really depends on where you see that clothing. Is it on the "buy" page? Ok maybe not so bad. Is it on an advertisement in a flashlight app on your phone after you last googled for something similar on your laptop? Is that still just a convenience, or have we entered territory that is creepy for you yet? Marketing and advertising has not been tracking all of us _as individuals_ for more than the last couple of decades. How could they possibly have done this in the previous eras of dumb broadcasting and dumb print media? Newspapers can't follow you around in department stores to see what you like and target future ads to _you_ as an individual. They can advertise in places that make more sense, e.g. kids toys on a kids TV channel. So yes this is new and yes this is manipulation, and this isn't the only way it has to be. We can still have convenience and better advertising without the mass tracking of individuals. But as long as we have people defending the current status quo as you have here, then nothing will change.
- sureaboutthis 9y ago
  No, this is not new, as ad agencies would gather information on where you shopped and what you bought and sold that information to others. Then you might receive a flyer in the mail advertising something complimentary to your purchase. National retail chains paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for such information going well into the early 1900s.

AznHisoka 9y ago

Playing devil’s advocate but if a company “wants to help surface more of what the customer wants to buy”, why is that a bad thing? Would you want to step into a store filled with stuff you would never buy?

csydas 9y ago
Many reasons: - It assumes this is all that the data is used for and that the data doesn't get a second life with companies that can use the information to punish you. - It assumes that the data is never stolen by malicious entities and put to use against you - It assumes that all the data collected is required to provide the information promised - It assumes you want to buy things from theses stores in the first place (think ideological reasons for not shopping at a place) - It assumes you knowingly consented to these terms with understanding of the cost Basically no matter how you shape it, it's the advertisers trying to avoid saying they've entered you into a system and contract without your consent, but it's okay because "you get to see things you want to buy", neverminding that this rarely is the case and the algorithms are hyped up beyond belief, often offering advertisements for items you have already purchased and need to rarely purchase. (e.g., you just bought a water heater, here are some other water heaters you might like) I'm not really convinced by lengthy Terms of Services and FAQs like Facebook's that they honestly care about people being upset as they miss the point entirely. You still don't know what was collected specifically, you cannot opt out of it from their side (must use blocking tools which companies constantly change their code to avoid), there's no way to verify about any of the information they've collected or whether they've stopped collecting it if you opt out, there's no way to confirm that your data is deleted if you request it, etc. All this for slightly targeted ads?
spike021 9y ago
It's 50/50, honestly. In some cases doing that is incredibly useful for the customer. The problem is when the business decides to start promoting similar, yet different items, knockoffs, etc. that "match" your profile, yet aren't what you would've wanted to originally buy. So you wind up getting steered to something that may be of lesser quality, etc. This might be the result of the company making a larger profit on the alternate item or something else.

skywhopper 9y ago

All true, but Facebook is unique in its reach. It has tracking bugs on far more websites than almost any of these other ad services. It has specific personal information about billions of people, including their social network, their private messages to friends, their exact relationship status history, photos, videos, voice recordings, location information, including lots of such information for hundreds of millions of other people who have never consented or even been given the opportunity to consent. It's the biggest, most intrusive database of personal information in the world, and it sells access to that data in order to serve poorly targeted ads (which honestly are a scam on their actual customers as well). And their entire business model is premised on this leaky bucket--in order to allow sales of tightly targeted ads, they also are knowingly revealing personal information to malicious parties who can and have and will continue to take full advantage. So sure, there's an entire industry built for this, but Facebook has some truly unique properties that make it light-years more dangerous than your typical ad network.