> In a company that knows more about you than you can possibly imagine, Maybe the problem is that they don't actually know that much about us. Since one of th

> In a company that knows more about you than you can possibly imagine, Maybe the problem is that they don't actually know that much about us. Since one of the other threads (which one, I cannot remember right now -- one of the adtech ones I think) brought up how much supremely accurate location data Google or FB etc knows about any given user, I have been thinking about how much the megacorps actually know, you know, about us. If someone knows that I go to the grocery store two or three times per week, do they also know that I detest going to the grocery store? I do it for a reason, of course, but e.g. showing me ads for grocery stores is likely to create negative feelings in me. So, someone might know I go there a lot, but that doesn't mean they know enough about me to make my world better in any useful way. I don't doubt that some companies know a lot of objective facts about me -- where I go, what I spend money on, with whom I associate -- but I would be surprised if any of them know much about me, about who I am, about what I really like and dislike, about what motivates me, about what I care about, et cetera. Maybe they know more than I can possibly imagine; maybe they know less. Maybe that's not at all why moderating comments programmatically is so difficult. I certainly have no idea. But it makes me wonder.