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The Price of You
Project Syndicate: “…The breadth and granularity of what companies now know about their customers is astonishing. When San Francisco-based WIRED reporter Reece Rogers asked McDonald’s for a copy of the data the company keeps on him—a right he enjoys as a California resident under the state’s privacy law—he expected to get a log of all the burgers he has purchased over the years. Instead, he received a 515-page dossier:
McDonald’s predicted how many times he would visit a restaurant in the next six weeks (2.16, to be exact) and labeled his behaviors (he tends toward a “Food-Led Afternoon Snack”). He was assigned an attrition score of zero. Rogers, it seems, is a McDonald’s lifer. While the invasiveness of the dossier came as a bit of a shock to Rogers, it’s not surprising for economists who study pricing. In 2004, Duke University economist Curtis Taylor asked what would happen once firms could buy and sell records of what shoppers purchased. Gone were the days of Box Top coupons on Betty Crocker boxes; by that point, loyalty programs had gone mainstream and were cataloging every dollar customers spent at the grocery store and on flights.
Taylor predicted that companies would use these records to identify their most eager customers and charge them more. Loyal customers, he said, would pay the price, especially if they had no idea that their data was changing hands. Taylor’s warning stayed buried in the academic literature while the practice crept, largely unnoticed, into our shopping carts. Or, in Rogers’s case, Big Mac orders.
- Purchase history is now the least of it. As shopping is increasingly conducted online, companies also collect customers’ location, demographics, behavior, and biometric data. A recent Federal Trade Commission studyuncovered systems created by the likes of Mastercard and Accenture that log whether your cursor hovers over a “buy” button, lingers on a product name, or drifts toward “close tab.” Delivery platform DoorDash recently filed a patent for a technology that tracks 16 different signals, including phone battery level, how quickly and jerkily users scroll, and how long it’s been since a consumer last ordered a meal.
- Consumers are often unaware of how much of their personal data is being collected. Car companies like General Motors have amassed millions of drivers’ precise location and driving-behavior data through technologies like OnStar, and then sold this information to insurance companies to feed into car-insurance rates. When Walmart bought the television maker Vizio, the retail behemoth had littleinterest in televisions. By linking Vizio TVs to Walmart accounts, Walmart could merge data on the ads consumers watch with what they buy in the company’s stores and on its website…”
Trump’s Unlikely Strategy to Control History: Footnotes
The Atlantic, no paywall: “Most of Donald Trump’s efforts to control the nation’s largest museum complex have been loud.
Congressman Calls on Smithsonian to Document Trump’s “Narcissistic Self-Worship”
Hyperallerrgic: “Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland has proposed a bill calling on the Smithsonian to preserve and permanently exhibit artifacts related to the Trump administration’s escalating aggressionagainst the institution’s museums and research centers, which Trump accused of “extreme political activism.”
Introduced yesterday, October 7, the “Preserving and Remembering the History of Trump and other Tyrants Act” directs Smithsonian officials to collect “artifacts reflecting the rise of governmental propaganda, corruption, and authoritarianism” under both of Trump’s presidential terms to create a permanent display at the National Museum of American History (NMAH).
Among the examples outlined in Raskin’s bill are artifacts and ephemera related to Executive Order 14416, which called for erecting content warning signs outside NMAH; banners with Trump’s portrait installed on federal buildings and other artifacts depicting his “narcissistic self-worship and propagandistic assault on American history and American democracy”; and other related objects, communications, and testimonials that the Smithsonian deems historically relevant to this time period. “To avoid repeating this descent into authoritarianism, we must study this corrupt President’s actions and allow the public to learn about the numerous tools he deployed while attempting to remake American history in his own image and according to his own autocratic and white nationalist beliefs,” the representative said in a press statement regarding the bill..
To avoid repeating this descent into authoritarianism, we must study this corrupt President’s actions and allow the public to learn about the numerous tools he deployed while attempting to remake American history in his own image and according to his own autocratic and white nationalist beliefs,” the representative said in a press statement regarding the bill…”