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> If you’re not interested in a tailored experience you can adjust your preferences at any time I don't mean to nitpick language, but does this sound incredibl
by overgard 11y ago
> If you’re not interested in a tailored experience you can adjust your preferences at any time
I don't mean to nitpick language, but does this sound incredibly condescending to anyone else? They might as well have written "If you're a paranoid loser I guess you can have the shitty experience where we don't try to ham-fistedly guess at your interests"
The funny thing is I think if they just didn't speak in idiotic PR-speak people probably wouldn't care. Sometimes I'm more annoyed that companies aren't just direct. The direct case isn't even that bad: "Hey, so we have to sell ads to make our business work and feed our families. It's better for you and the advertiser if we can try to give you ads that you might like so we can waste less of your time and the advertisers bandwidth. There's nothing in it for us to mess with your important private info, and a world of legal and PR downside. We're just asking to take a peek at your interests so we can guess at what you might like."
You'd still be justified in saying "nope", but at least you'd feel like you were treated like not an idiot.
- userbinator 11y agoIt sounds like pretty typical obfuscatory doublespeak to me. "tailored" really means "targeted" and "experience" is a word used so often that it has lost almost all meaning. The other words that evoke an almost visceral reaction of disgust for me are "offers" and "deals".
- FlaceBook 11y agoIt's a disruptive synergistic cloud experience!
- TheOtherHobbes 11y agoYou mean it's a disruptive synergistic cloud experience offer! There seems to be some kind of institutional mental illness that forces corps to think of users as exploitable prey who can be herded down a value-extracting marketing funnel, and not as people who want a service. It's disturbingly common, IME.
- eps 11y agoThey also avoid to say that this doesn't stop collection of the app lists, but just the "tailoring". They still snoop and you can't stop it.
- dlitz 11y agoEvery time I see stuff like this, it reminds me of Betsy Haibel's article, "The Fantasy and Abuse of the Manipulable User: When mistreating users becomes competitive advantage."[1]. Once I started to see how much a lot of current tech tries to softly coerce us without our consent, it's been hard to unsee and hard to be okay with it. [1] https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-fantasy-and-abuse-of-the-manipulable-user https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-fantasy-and-abuse-of...
- nothrabannosir 11y ago100% agree, but I can't help but make note: if a company the size of Twitter ever had the audacity to talk about "feeding families" I would go ballistic. Who is your family---the entire state of Nevada? If your family is eating that much, you don't need targeted ads but a doctor. Twitter just wants to maximize profits. Fine, but if you're gonna be honest: be honest.
- habitue 11y agoExactly, this kind plain speaking talk works well with tiny startups, but it becomes blatant manipulation when written by a marketing department