Slashdot Mirror
Google Profiling Social Network Users
David Harry writes "Google is looking deeper into behavioral targeting of social network users with three more patents. A while back, one patent came to light in the poorly termed ‘friendrank’; Google could be profiling social network users. These three patents now bring the series to five in total."
If people think that Google is the only advertiser who's profiling people, they're daft. Any and every advertiser with a hint of intelligence studies their target audience and does everything within their power to know them better than they know themselves. Google just has more tools at their disposal than most advertising firms but they all do it.
To be fair, by far the majority of companies do not act in this fashion. They respect the privacy of their staff, they respect the privacy of their customers and of course they respect the privacy of total strangers. Only one very narrow segment of the industry continuously and very perversely invades the privacy of every one they can upon a massively and previously unheralded basis and think it is appropriate to attempt to psychologically manipulate people based upon their personal information in order to generate a profit at all costs.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Someone has to tell them what they want to buy.
Fixed that for you.