
Netflix tweet raises privacy questions - chatmasta
http://www.zdnet.com/article/that-creepy-netflix-tweet-raises-serious-privacy-questions/
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vortico
I don't think that the privacy concerns are anything out of the ordinary. It's
simply a reminder that Netflix employees can see users' watch data. Everyone
knows that.

 _Revealing_ private data is a bit weirder, but it is common for companies to
release occassional anonymized data. They sell much of this data to
advertisers who get to see _all_ of it, so it serves as a reminder of that.
But again, nothing out of the ordinary.

The _attitude_ of the post is the big WTF. If I went up to anyone I knew, and
said "you do <X>, who hurt you?", I'd be smacked, a fight would start, or I'd
not see that person again. The post is basically saying "To one of our users
(you know who you are!): Fuck you!" Why would any PR employee think this is
okay?

~~~
gpmcadam

        > To one of our users (you know who you are!): Fuck you!
    

I'm a bit out of the loop. What Tweet have Netflix said this in?

~~~
vortico
The tweet says "To the 53 people who've watched A Christmas Prince every day
for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?"

So there are 53 users they are directly addressing, and then mocking "You've
been damaged mentally by someone in your past."

~~~
imdsm
I don't quite see it as offensive as that, but perhaps my skin is a bit
thicker than most. I think it's easy to see it how you want to see it, so we
should be careful of that.

~~~
simonswords82
Totally agree, it's a tweet, it's not profane, it's supposed to be a joke.
People need to lighten up.

~~~
kindfellow92
Are you saying black people can’t take a joke? Holy crap dude.

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convery
We all know that services like this relies on a tonne of statistics, we also
know that very little to none is personally identifiable. So it feels like
trying to manufacture outrage over it, that it's flaunting how much 'scary
data' you have on the users to say that a file has been accessed 56 times when
everyones grandma would be fine with a viewcounter on every video.

~~~
pmoriarty
Even when data is "anonymized", it's sometimes possible to recover identifying
information anyway. For example, knowing a person's age, zip code, and gender
is often enough to identify people, even if their name is not explicitly part
of the available data.

That's just a really simple example. I'm sure you could do much better with
advanced AI techniques and more "anonymized" data.

~~~
icebraining
In fact, this was demonstrated on Netflix's own dataset:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0610105](https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0610105)

~~~
arkh
I think one of the best and chilling example is still:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_leak)

Just some anonymous search strings can give you people. And that was in 2006
so nowadays with the quantity of informations people make public you'd get a
lot more results.

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vesinisa
I am a strong advocate of PII privacy, but this does _not_ demonstrate a
privacy violation. Services need to gather data about their user's behaviour,
but as long as that collection is done in an anonymized fashion and the
behaviour data is not shared with third parties, I am alright with it. Queries
like this are easy to do with completely anonymized data, and are actually
habitually performed by service providers to understand how users use the
service.

~~~
zuppy
I don’t get why people are getting offended so much by this, it’s just a
random fun fact. Nothing private here and it shows they have humor. That’s so
much better than lawyer driven PR.

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mikestew
We know we’re all being analyzed eight ways to Sunday, but it’s in poor taste
to remind us of that. A local bicycle club sent an email saying essentially
“we know who’s been opening these club emails and who hasn’t. We’re watching
you!” Guess who’s not a member of _that_ club anymore?

~~~
icebraining
Yeah, it's cat.jpg all over again, yet on an even more personal dataset. You'd
think it would be obvious by now that this is a faux pas.

~~~
arama471
For anyone, like me, who is not familiar with the cat.jpg faux pas:

[https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3078-trust-is-
fragile](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3078-trust-is-fragile)

~~~
icebraining
I think cperciva's post on the issue is also worth reading:
[http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-
chicken-w...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-01-19-playing-chicken-with-
cat-jpg.html)

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aw3c2
Made-up "relatable, viral" ad campaign fires back.

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thisisit
No doubt this is a PR nightmare and a poor joke but the whole privacy angle is
a bit of leap. I can't imagine the online marketing team emailing engineers
and saying - Can you pull us data about "x" condition so that we can write a
tweet about it? That doesn't happen and surely someone in some form of
legal/audit will remind the online marketing that they are not supposed to be
privileged with this information so they have to spin a story.

Now what they do? Take a random number and bad movie and create a story. But
it backfires. Not only the poor joke angle but with people questioning their
privacy policies.

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kuschku
The most worrying part is that no one saw anything wrong with this. The data
must have crossed the marketing and analytics department, and no one even
stopped to consider what they're doing. And either they have no process for
approval to release such statistics, or no one there saw anything wrong,
either.

One could make a snarky comment asking if these people ever get out of their
filter bubble, but that's the general issue here, isn't it?

The people developing, designing and running many of todays services have
entirely different values and views on privatsphere compared to the rest of
society.

~~~
simonswords82
That's because there isn't anything wrong with this. It's anonymous, it's
completely untraceable back to the 53 people. If this is seriously something
people have time to freak out about, they have too much spare time on their
hands.

~~~
kuschku
People hate surveillance. They accept it as trade off, but you shouldn't
remind them of it.

And I'd even say that even collecting this data is wrong.

~~~
simonswords82
I'm sure it's more a of case of needing the data for business purposes (such
as paying copyright holders) than a matter of "surveillance".

~~~
kuschku
That's the same, though.

Surveillance is only defined by collecting the data — not necessarily by how
you use it.

But the data still exists, and as in this case, can still be used.

And apparently, Netflix rules on how to access or use it aren't particularly
strict either.

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tatoalo
IMHO this is clearly a joke...if a tweet like this is enough to be a "privacy"
concern I don't see the difference with, for example, Amazon SEO associating
with your account whatever related product to your search. You search for a
Blu-ray movie once and then you're stuck with all the related garbage for at
least 2 weeks or so.

As far as we know, the data behind that tweet could also be not backed by real
data, if it was, it most probably would be anonymized. I don't know if it's
just me but I cannot really see the concern here.

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spike021
To me I thought it was just a joke, but I can see how it'd be taken
offensively by others.

As for privacy, I'm not sure it's a big deal. Maybe the watch data that the
tweeter (?) used is anonymized?

~~~
quattrofan
Everyone is offended these days, it's really become quite ridiculous, I think
that sooner or later PC's will be sold with their own safe space.

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schlechtnacht
I don't understand how people seemed to be fine with spotify doing the same
thing a while ago...

[http://www.adweek.com/creativity/spotify-crunches-user-
data-...](http://www.adweek.com/creativity/spotify-crunches-user-data-fun-
ways-new-global-outdoor-ad-campaign-174826/)

~~~
icebraining
Why do you say people were fine? It's kind of hard to get feedback from
billboard viewers.

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noir_lord
> Netflix not only admitted that the company can determine with accuracy how
> many of its over 100 million customers watch a certain show over a period of
> time, but also that some employees have access to that viewing data.

Totally expected how else would they determine if a show is worth making..

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divanvisagie
Id'e be interested to see how many of the people complaining about this are
also the same people that believe in the fundamentally flawed "Vote with your
wallet" principle.

~~~
icebraining
I get the schadenfreude of seeing people you disagree with being hypocrites,
but complaining to the company is not incompatible with voting with your
wallet, they're both market feedback mechanisms. If they were complaining to
some regulator, then you'd have a point.

