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MoviePass Wants To Gather a Whole Lot of Data About Its Users (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader writes: MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe thinks his service's rapid growth will continue, projecting earlier this month that MoviePass will have 5 million subscribers by the end of 2018, and account for around 20% of all movie ticket purchases. But some of those future subscribers might be concerned about his company's tactics, which Lowe recently said includes tracking users' location before and after a trip to the movies. Lowe's comments, originally reported by Media Play News, were made at the Entertainment Finance Forum on March 2 in Hollywood. They came during a panel titled "Data is the New Oil: How Will MoviePass Monetize It?" Lowe's answer to that question, in part, was that "our bigger vision is to build a night at the movies," including by guiding users to a meal before or after seeing a film.
Lowe said that was possible because "we get an enormous amount of information. Since we mail you the card, we know your home address . . . we know the makeup of that household, the kids, the age groups, the income. It's all based on where you live. It's not that we ask that. You can extrapolate that. "Then," Lowe continued, "Because you are being tracked in your GPS by the phone . . . we watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards, and so we know the movies you watch. We know all about you. We don't sell that data. What we do is we use that data to market film."
Lowe said that was possible because "we get an enormous amount of information. Since we mail you the card, we know your home address . . . we know the makeup of that household, the kids, the age groups, the income. It's all based on where you live. It's not that we ask that. You can extrapolate that. "Then," Lowe continued, "Because you are being tracked in your GPS by the phone . . . we watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards, and so we know the movies you watch. We know all about you. We don't sell that data. What we do is we use that data to market film."
And about 2000 others, including the Big Five, is that the CEO brags about invading his users' privacy, and explains what they're doing in some detail.
Better yet, use it in a way that gets you the bennies but deprives the company of your data. i.e. turn the app off when not in use, or install it on an old "burner" phone.
Remember, the only people you're hurting are Wall Street banks and VCs who sink their money into services where you're the product. Yeah, if enough people do it, MoviePass will go bust, but might as well get a nice run with Wall Street money while it lasts.
I'm not sure adblockers are analogous. I'm happy to pay for movies. I want good theaters to survive. Though I only go for special movies, or very visual movies. For most I'm happy to wait for a Netflix DVD. What I don't want is being spied on by sleazy "analytics" companies.
Do I use ad blockers? No. I use a small HOSTS file and almost never see ads. I don't block any ads. If they're on the website I visit I'll see them. But very few are. Do I owe it to websites to let Google follow me all over the Internet? I don't think so.
The problem with the spyware/freebie business model is that everyone ends up being sleazy. It's not an honest way to do business but rather depends on dishonesty: The dataminers pretend they're not spying while the customers pretend they're not thwarting it. And unlike with plain ads, there's always a new, sleazier way to make more money from spying.
Some people favor a dual model: Choose betwen paying or ads. But that's not the issue. The spyware is.
An analytics company that uses targetted ads is not in a position to offer a concurrent, honest service to people willing to pay. It's not part of their business model. Just as we don't have the option to pay for a clean website when a site uses Google/Doubleclick ads. It's a system of data collection and targetted ads.
The solution is to institute what more civilized countries have: Privacy laws that value the citizen over business profit.
And this is why we can't have nice things.
Of course MP tracks user data. THAT'S HOW THEY PAY FOR THE FUCKING TICKETS!!!!
MP gives people hundreds of dollars of value for $10 a movie and it's fuckers like this guy above that shits all over everything, drives them out of business, and ruins it for the rest of everyone else.
If you don't want MP tracking some of your data, THEN DON'T SIGN UP FOR THE SERVICE. But stop fucking it up for everyone else.
as demonstated by the popularity of inappropriate infomation gathering, and the difficulty in getting legislation to protect us from information gathering, then it behooves us to drain the finances of companies who do so until the idea of trying to sell information is considered financial suicide in pop buisness culture.
Get a card sent to a P.O. Box, pay using a prepaid card. Put the app on a cheap secondary phone which doesn't even need service. Use the theater's WiFi to confirm you're there.
That way, you can share an account (i.e. card + burner phone) among an entire family or group of neighbors and friends. Turn off the phone when not "in use" to turn off the tracking function.
Suck on that, Mitchie-boy.
Fuck that! I'll just spend my money elsewhere.
What Earthly good is money if you have no time to enjoy it? There's a fine line between industry and sado-masochism. 90hr/wk is the latter, plus after a certain time at the office, you stop being effective.
This isn't being industrious -- this is a martydom contest about who can stay in the office longest, even if they're playing on their phones 50% of the time.
"Success" is having time for family and leisure as well as making a difference. Working 90hr/wk for a bunch of people who'll likely kick you out the door at age 50 is just sad.
No, it is fuckers like YOU who are ruining it for everyone. Fuckers like YOU who allow the corporations to track us all the time in order to save a small amount of money. Pathetic.
Thatâ(TM)s absolute nonsense. There are plenty of businesses that operate just fine in places like Europe who value privacy. Note the value part, every Euro company is extremely concerned about privacy because people will notice and take offense if their info is sold. It requires no legislation, just a culture that actually cares about privacy.
Meanwhile in the US, you have companies all over the place violating our privacy in every corner and assholes like you who claim this is good, thatâ(TM)s he only way to make money, when it isnâ(TM)t.