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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.
Would be great if /. stopped linking to subscription only sites.
The need for opt-in laws about this kind of thing. Oh wait, the government wants to steal this info from the companies too, so I guess they'd never go for that kind of thing.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Think about it: the more we use the net, the more we discover and the more varied our interests become. I don't mean that we change our sexual orientation or nationality because of it, but merely that we like to take a look at a more varied set of issues.
At the same time these profiling technologies try to make you fit into a specific category which, by definition, is only interested in a single specific subject.
Who's mistaken?
The ENIAC Demo Competition
... if the submitter had read the article. From the submitter:
From the article:
Now even the submitters don't read the articles.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
I subscribe to WSJ, and every day middle-low on the front page, they have a "humor" story, I suppose for really uptight type-A people. That was today's, so I assume no anti-TiVo subtext.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The key thing is not to profile for things that will offend people unless there's an opt-in somewhere: sexuality, religious beliefs, etc. And the filters for language are obviously way off: it shouldn't start recording stuff in Korean unless you've watched at least two or three shows in Korean.
Though some users contend TiVo has sex on the brain
TiVo doesn't have sex on the brain. Television programming does.
I agree this is rather funny. But 3 quick points:
1. TiVo is not multi-user capable, at least as far as I've observed so far. So my friend watches NFL & South Park, his wife is hooked on Buffy, and they have Tivo record Teletubbies for their kid. Profile this! I'm quite frankly surprised the Tivo hasn't exploded yet.
2. Human "profiling" messes up the same way.
Last year I mentioned the leonoids to my in-laws. I promptly got a beginner's guide to stargazing for my birthday. Boring. I like looking at some shooting stars or the like, but I'm not up to reading books about it and becoming a full scaled backyard astronomer. Very nice and thoughtful gift though.
3. For the most part, profiling does work for me. There is a load of [Items on Amazon|Shows on TV|Goods at the Supermarket], way more than I can sort through manually. So if Amazon, based on my previous purchases, shows me some new R/C toy, I appreciate that. Better than randomly advertising some Barby Doll in the same space.
I've found Tivo recording some great shows for me. Some garbage, too, but I can say that it guesses correctly quite often.
Seriously, is profiling hurting us so much? I think it's quite acceptable, realizing that one of the cost saving aspects of more technically advanced infrastructure is improved advertising. Let them make a buck.
Yeah of course it's all about stereotypes. But next time you see a Tampon commercial during Monday night football, let me know.
From the article, it appears the man once ordered gay-themed material, and he later got recommendations for other gay material. Then he ordered a baby book for friends, and subsequently received recommendations for other baby/pregnancy related stuff. I don't see how this equals a computer "thinking" the subject is a gay pregnant man, or that it has any such category. And when the other guy ordered war movies and then started getting a lot of Third Reich stuff, he claims TiVo "thinks" he's a Nazi. People are reading way too much into this.
Really, this was the most interesting part of the article, the common perception that machines THINK.
Selected quotes:
It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy
"I'm just counterprogramming because TiVo thinks I'm gay."
He also orders cooking shows, which softens TiVo's view of him. "I don't want it thinking I'm an ax murderer," he says.
"...by inundating it with additional data. I searched for other stuff -- on politics, computers -- so it would stop throwing baby books at me. Now it thinks I've abandoned the baby and I'm preparing for a career in politics."
Her TiVo also thinks she's a sophomoric-humor-loving 12-year-old, she says
"I like the idea that someone cares," she says. "Even a machine."
"These are supposedly objective computers saying, 'This is what we think of you.' "
Nobody believed that a human was responsible for a bad implementation of a bad idea. Not one of them tried to avoid the profiling or contact the tech support. They tried to CONVINCE a machine. They were worried about what the machine would think of them.
It's funny, but at the same time it's frightening that on this day and age are people that use a piece of technology without a minimal idea of how it works and what it can and cannot do.
Kilroy was here!
Keeping track of the "flow of information" you're handing out is a fascinating thing. I once invented a company name to reserve a domain for. This was in the dark ages, when a popular top level domains was upkept by someone using a "vi" and who was rejecting domain names he disliked. As "fantasy" names were refused, i made up a company named like the domain i wanted to get. Unluckily i used my home address.
The name and address together was never used again by me. But this company still gets magazines, advertisement, business proposals (not only from Nigeria) and (during the .boom era) once even got an offer for a takeover.
Even if i should drop dead immediately, this name would continue to live and be responsible for the slaughter of complete forests.
So be carefull when you invent names. Like ghosts they may come when you call but not leave when not wellcome any more.
Yours, Martin
This isn't all that funny. I'd even say it's serious. While the consequences in this case are little more than a strange and perhaps unexpected selection of programming, consider the consequences if say, lyin' Johnny (Poindexter) and a huge government bureaucracy drew some equally bizarre conclusions based on what you've bought, what you've watched on TV, or how frequently you've visited a certain establishment, or where you've traveled. I hope the 'suspicious' person is still laughing as they're being carted off to a Q&A session with a couple of HomeSec droids. While coercing Tivo to modify it's behavior is but a minor annoyance, I can't help but think that we're about the see the very real danger in allowing others to acquire the means to draw completely inaccurate conclusions about who we are and what we're doing.
You missed a critical phrase: Since it is the entire article.
Fair use considers how much of the text is used, and using the whole thing all at once is almost certainly to be found a violation by the judge.
Additionally, fair use considers "monetary damages" caused by the use. Since the Post has a subscription system and not just the standard advertisements, "monetary damages" could be very significant; people who might have subscribed instead just read it here.
IANAL either but most people extremely seriously overestimate the power of fair use. Posting the article was a copyright violation, to a high enough degree of certainty I don't feel the need to qualify that with any variation of "probably".
Remember... the law is not what you think it is, it is what the the law says and how a judge interprets it. The Slashdot community as a whole is very incorrect in its interpretation of "fair use".
There aren't hundreds of posts bashing TiVo for profiling. Oh wait, that's because people can't even pretend to read the article because it requires a SUBSCRIPTION! heh.
Thing is, we're dealing with two separate issues here.. The "profiling" Tivo does is periodically it phones in stats on everything you recorded and/or watched, which Tivo (the company) compiles and sells as anonymous viewer data to the networks (i.e. 5,000 of our subscribers recorded Dawson's creek this week, of those 4,000 watched it within 48 hours, and 1,000 deleted it after watching the first 10 minutes").
The second issue is Tivo's suggestions.. *As far as I know* (and I could totally be wrong here), your Tivo computes suggestions on the box itself, not by consulting with some master Tivo database somewhere. It's really quite braindead... All shows are assigned categories, so Tivo computes a "probability" of whether you may or may not like a given category based on your thumb-data. For example, if you thumb up the Simpsons (category Animation, Comedy), you're likely to see stuff like Futurama, and lots of stuff on the cartoon network which fit those categories. Some lines are a little blurry, I thumbed-up Politically Incorrect (when it was on the air) which was categorized as News, Talk, and got crap like the O'Reilley factor, CNN's crossfire, etc. Some things are a lot easier, I thumbed up a couple of motorcycle races, and from then on it would catch motorcycle races I didn't even realize were being broadcast.
Contrary to the anecdotal evidence in the article, in my experience approving one category will NOT lower your "approval" of another. I think only thumbs-down will do that (i.e. thumbing up Emeril Live - Howto, Cooking - shouldn't dimish its afinity for Movies, Horror if you have thumbed up Texas Chainsaw Massacre).
My theory I have after owning a couple of Tivos is at first when you haven't rated much it tries to throw a wide variety of EVERYTHING at you to get you to rate stuff and get it pointed in the right direction. During the first three months I got some strange suggestions (my Tivo thought I was a kid for a while, and recorded just about everything on HBO Family, presumably because of my favorable ratings for simpsons, futurama, king of the hill, and family guy. But I have to say after three months it got REALLY good and finding stuff I'd want to see.
There has been talk that in future releases some of the suggestion tweaking will be done on the in-house Tivo servers and pushed out to the boxes (i.e. people who record MST3K on commedy central also record Monty Python on BBCA most of the time). But to my knowledge right now all of your suggestions happen in the Tivo box itself based on input from you, and are not neccessarily shared back to Tivo corporate or influenced from the suggestions of other subscribers.
Shayne
Today I didn't even have to use my AK; I got to say it was a good day -- Icecube
..because information has a habit to wander about.
* You are erronously classified as `gay'. You have a few laughs. Some months later your application to the US marine corps is mysteriously turned down.
* You are in the middle of a divorce procedure. Suddenly the opposing counsel produces your `personal profile' in court.
* A new craze falls over America: concerned parents demand that Tivo etc hand over the names and adresses of all people whose profile indicates `pedofile interests'. You wander what it takes to be classified as such. You are a 50 year old single man. What movies are still save to tape?
* You order a book about the islam. Then the Statue of Liberty gets to be blown up. Next you are dragged out of your home, flown to a military base near Cuba and put in solitary confinement, all because a subtle combination of factors made your profile look like that of a crazed, militant moslem, and the FBI took notice.
To the programmers of this profiling software it's just a nice gig. To the company employing it, it's just a way to make more money. To everyone else this profile seems a little peek into your head. If the profile is wrong about you, then you should NOT pass it of as a harmless bit of fun.
Besides, if you like the Simpsons, the Soprano's and Iron Chef you probably WOULD like Dextor's Laboratory, and possibly the Powerpuff Girls.
Never confuse volume with power.
That will never happen because people could post something funny, get it up to +5, then edit it to something horrible like goatse.cx ASCII art. It would then take FIVE moderators to get them back down below my 1 threshold instead of the normal one.
This is also known as "Preview"
:)
just preview your comments before you post them and you will not forget
I love this feature. I'm a gloriously happy consumer.
I've found more cool books using this feature than I've ever found wandering around a bookstore (do it intelligently... you have to use the "friend of a friend" method and look for books related to books they recommend).
Occasionally it gets a little weird, because the various people in my family order books on wildly different topics, but if I don't like a suggestion there's nothing forcing me to do anything about it.
Why should I care what some dumb machine "thinks" (ha) about me? When people start using it for nefarious purposes (and it will happen, if it hasn't already), then is the time to squash that dead.