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Amazon, does this and it creates (for me) a better shopping experience. When I go to amazon it knows what things I want to buy and puts them right in front of m

• TheCraiggers 12y ago
  I think most people (including me) would probably agree that all this tracking creates a better shopping experience. Taken to its logical conclusion, eventually the stores will know what I want to buy before I even know I want it- they'll place it front and center in front of my face, said face will light up in sudden understanding that this is what I've been missing all my life, and money will exchange hands. Snark aside, I really do agree that this is a better shopping experience. But we're not just talking shopping experiences here- the data, algorithms, and extra tracking that fuels the (perhaps extreme) future I described above has costs, mostly in personal privacy. Maybe I don't want the conglomerates (and the government, since we all now know they've got their 'black boxes' in the datacenters) to know my penis size, how good my relationship with my father is, what medical conditions I have, and just about everything else one can think of. However, this is the future we're headed towards. Secondly, I think _greim_ said it very well in this post elsewhere in the thread: "Giving marketers deep psychological and behavioral insight increasingly enables them to circumvent rationality and "hack" consumers in various ways." There is a fine line, I think, between offering exceptional shopping experiences and manipulating your customers.