Slashdot Mirror
Porn Sites Collect More User Data Than Netflix Or Hulu (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: The biggest and perhaps best source of data about what people like to watch on the internet and what they would pay for doesn't come from streaming giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, or Hulu. It comes from porn. While consuming porn is typically a private and personal affair, porn sites still track your every move: What content you choose, which moments you pause, which parts you repeat. By mining this data to a deeper degree than other streaming services, many porn sites are able to give internet users exactly what they want -- and they want a lot of it. [...] MindGeek is the world's biggest porn company -- more specifically, it's a holding company that owns numerous adult entertainment sites and production companies, including the Pornhub Network. Like other streaming giants, MindGeek's sites analyze user data, but the company has an edge when it comes to producing tailor-made content in-house. With at least 125 million daily visits, MindGeek has a massive range of users to draw data from and create content for.
The average user can watch as much porn as they'd like without so much as making an account, let alone paying, but in exchange for meeting desires that can't always be met elsewhere, companies like MindGeek access user data because the user more willingly lets them. And it eventually pays off, when users decide to pay for premium content and the habits of paying subscribers become even clearer. What's more, Pornhub, in particular, operates one of the most sophisticated digital data analysis operations that caters primarily to users and not advertisers. Pornhub Insights provides transparency into its data collection -- on the most intimate of subjects -- by making research and analysis from billions of data points about viewership patterns, often tied to events from politics to pop culture, available to the public. It offers more than many other tech giants do.
The average user can watch as much porn as they'd like without so much as making an account, let alone paying, but in exchange for meeting desires that can't always be met elsewhere, companies like MindGeek access user data because the user more willingly lets them. And it eventually pays off, when users decide to pay for premium content and the habits of paying subscribers become even clearer. What's more, Pornhub, in particular, operates one of the most sophisticated digital data analysis operations that caters primarily to users and not advertisers. Pornhub Insights provides transparency into its data collection -- on the most intimate of subjects -- by making research and analysis from billions of data points about viewership patterns, often tied to events from politics to pop culture, available to the public. It offers more than many other tech giants do.
at any porn company than at Google and Facebook combined.
I always figured that most people use Incognito mode when they visit porn sites to keep spouses and partners from seeing their history. Though maybe people with spouses and partners are not the biggest porn users.
All the more reason to get this content via bit torrent. Let's see the bastards track when I pause then.
What content you choose, which moments you pause, which parts you repeat.
A few years ago, before TV went digital only, you could piggyback off someone's on-demand viewing in your neighborhood by knowing the channel ranges your provider (Cox, in my case) used for that and tuning to one of the channels -- it was either blank/static or showing something. Sure, *you* had no control and were only along for the ride, but a free movie it was. Sometimes, someone would be watching porn and you could see them pause, rewind and replay the movie -- sometimes over and over again. A few times, I wanted to go outside and yell, "Get on with it!" but discretion prevailed. Nice glimpse into what your neighbors are into though.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
We must take down these faceless corporations, people!
1. Facebook
2. Google
3. Cable companies
Challenge accepted
Q. What about Mindgeek?
A. Let's go over this again...pay attention
So, is all that analysis why Pornhub downloads are so much slower than the ones from Xvideos, or is that a reaction to my script blocker?
They haven't been able to figure out my naked salad making fetish.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Ban cyberstalking-based businesses. Shut down Creepy Facebook, Big Brother Google, and the rest. Jail Zuckerberg, Pichai, and similar villains.
BAN CYBERSTALKING NOW!
Someone needs to probe deep into this digging to the bottom, checking the proper crevices and getting the hard facts no matter how long they may be or who gets stiffed in the end.
With a bit of effort you could write a similar piece about drug dealers as well.
My own data analysis shows that top porn sites' data analysis has inadvertently induced a feedback loop promoting titles that imply incest. However innocuous these notoriously irrepresentative titles (everyone's a teen in pornland) may seem, I wouldn't be surprised if this has been of consequence to the rate of actual incest irl. Could be a coordinated campaign to normalize incestuousness, especially if a profit motive could be tied in.
Mine that data to determine what women (really) want!
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I'd blame the CDN because my experience is the dead opposite. Xvideos is painfully slow in comparison.
If they F**K on the screen, than privacy is not much of an issue for them. Right?
Probably pornhub is just more competent and thrilled to something approximating the bitrate. They aren't clever enough to detect multiple YouTube-dl sessions, thankfully.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Once again proving that all technological advances are porn driven! :)
And watch it offline. You can't download Netflix or Hulu in quite the same fashion. Seriously, though: if you are doing anything online without taking precautions, you are a fool. It's the tech companies millennials should be rebelling against, but c'est la vie.
So... Porn sites are analyzing my viewing habits so they can make new porn that I'll enjoy more? Um... Damn them? How dare they? Somebody help me out, I'm having a really hard time getting outraged here.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
YouTube is part of Google.
For example:
FPS (faps per second) ...
TPS (threesomes per second)
BPS (bisexuals per second)