Museum Amazon Banners are WATCHING YOU

[Mikey]

Just noticed .....

If I click on a Six Million Dollar Man custom thread suddenly the above Amazon banners show all SMDM stuff.

If I click on a thread with "Star Trek" in the title the banner changes to Star Trek adds.

Heck, I just clicked on a generic Museum thread and suddenly the banner had an add for Night at the Museum DVD

Never noticed how much the banner is linked to what we look at.

[saildog]

It's scary. The more things get connected, the easier it it for whatever logarithm they are using to come to a correct conclusion.

GMail can read your emails and offers several links that are relative to the subjects discussed in the email. I joined Facebook for a bit and within hours, the suggested friends were all people I knew.

[HardyGirl]

I've noticed that too. George Orwell knew what he was talking about.

[saildog]

I've noticed that too. George Orwell knew what he was talking about.

He did, but even he didn't see the extent of just how voluntarily people would fall into it. That's not to say that in Winston Smith's world, they weren't happy to be a part (ignorance being bliss and all...yet, it was shocking to the reader), but the pervasiveness is beyond what he portrayed. It seems silly to us to see the fools in his world, but Facebook and social media of all sorts just roll along. The only difference is, as readers of 1984, we knew they were being manipulated and assume that since we aren't, we never will be.

And I don't want to introduce politics by refering to The Patriot Act, but if you think it was evil....well, you were only watching one hand and not the other. Any or all of this is fine in the sense that a benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government. Should a truly evil force gain control...well, then you would have an instantaneous, ready made by the voluntary masses, Orwellian Nightmare.

Of course people realized this way back. The National Security Act of 1947 (the Patriot Act of its time) was contemporary to 1947-1948, the year Orwell wrote "1984". BUT...the level of voluntarily giving out your vital information without a thought is pretty recent. Like the Patriot Act, they felt it was being shoved down their throats in an opportunistic manner.

I gave a talk on this in 1995, illustrated by drawing a bunch of disparate circles on a whiteboard and then pointing out developments that linked this to that. In the information age, if you link one to another, you tangentially lower the the rate of time it takes to connect to the other "islands". We are all but connected all away around the board.

[mego73]

Ehhh...

I am not too broken up about Amazon paying attention to the algorithms of the posts to suggest items that might appeal to a museum members. What we share here for the most part is frivolous pop culture banter.

I do agree that the potential exists for more nefarious uses than banner-ing items most likely to get a sale from this group of people.

[LonnieFisher]

use firefox and you can block the banners...

[vulcan2074]

I noticed that the other day. It's Kinda creepy.
Sammy

[Remco Monster]

Hahaha, I just looked up after entering this thread and it is advertising "Museum Watching".

[Captain]

I never paid any attention to the banner, so I never noticed this until now.....I'm real tempted to start a boobies thread just to see what the banner shows. ..............................what the heck....I'll do it.