When Profiling Goes Wrong

huskymo writes "This morning's Wall Street Journal is carrying a funny story on TiVo and Amazon's automatic customer profiling. As most Slashdot readers probably know, TiVo keeps track of which programs you record and--if you haven't told it not to--records other programs it thinks you'd like. The article describes users that TiVo's mistaken for Korean, for gay, even for "a pregnant gay man."" Funny as hell.

Comments

Re:Article text, here ya go.

[ScuzzMonkey]

So, either Taco's original description of the article was pretty far off the mark (not unheard of), or this is not the text of the article in question, but rather some subtle and clever karma whoring (which seems to have worked nicely, incidentally--congratulations, sir!). Where is the pregnant Korean guy, is what I want to know?

Sorry, I Take That Back

[Snork Asaurus]

But the WSJ is like the NYT

Just to save you the trouble of flaming me, I'll flame myself:

Hey asshole, it's not the same. You gotta PAY!

Sorry, my mistake. I was thinking of another paper. I wish Slashdot had an unsubmit button.

I have one more comment:

Would be great if /. stopped linking to PAY only sites

Re:error checking?

[leuk_he]

. On the label, it instructed me to call my doctor if I became pregnant.......I'd call the Enquirer first

YOU INSENSITIVE PRICK, DON'T YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR KID's HEALTH!