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When Personalization Runs Amuck

Posted by Hemos on from the swf-or-not dept.

pamar writes "According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, your TiVo could definitely get the wrong impression about your interests, or even your sexual preferences. And what you need to do to get "a clean slate"? Most of the users who have been "targeted" by TiVo usually try to "correct" the profiling by showing an abnormal interest in something wildly different." Yep, it's a dupe.

4 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Duplicate story by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Slashdot covered this two days ago. The editors aren't reading their own output again.

    Remember, incompetent editors, you can be replaced by a program.

  2. Scary thought by JessLeah · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What if, in the future, companies start requesting the data collected by such "we can guess who and what you are" systems for demographic purposes?

    "Well, according to this data, 25% of our customers are pregnant gay men, and 14% are neo-Nazis with an interest in cooking..."

    But seriously. Something evil tells me that it's only a matter of time before this stuff is taken as the Word of Gord(TM)...

    --
    Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
  3. Re:Slashdot Personalization by Fweeky · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Is there a setting in preferences to filter out duplicates?

    Could do.

    Instead of editors (*cough*) just adding "yeah, it's a dupe" at the end of the article, they could set a "Dupe" flag on the story; you set your prefs to remove them, and you're sorted. Of course, there would be a short period where it would be displayed, but it's either that, some dupe detection on submit, or less incompetence.
  4. Accurate information is a rare thing. by Helpadingoatemybaby · · Score: 2, Insightful
    True story -- I filled out a bank form years ago with a business partner, Murray, for a bank account. I'm a male, and so is Murray.

    To this day on my credit report I'm married to Murray, along with a half dozen other major errors.

    I never bothered to correct this because being married got me more favorable loan terms.

    Now if these people can't get this basic information correct with forms that I directly fill in, how is Tivo going to get anything near correct when it's just guessing based on what I watch?

    --

    The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.