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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.
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. . . .
"and even from the pattern of your mouse movements." Nope, just the mouse wheel data which is passed. Scrolling rates, speeds, etc. Not mouse movement. Much more ID'ing is getClientRects.
It's usually a better unique-ID than browser canvas which is fixed unless 3rd party spoofed.