Barry Diller on Netflix, Facebook’s Latest Data Kerfuffle – TMO Daily Observations 2019-02-22
Andrew Orr and John Martellaro join host Kelly Guimont to talk about Barry Diller’s backward stance on Netflix, and (say it with me) Facebook’s latest user data kerfuffle.
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Show Notes
- How Shall The Success of Apple's Original TV Content be Measured?
- You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook
- TMO Daily Observations Twitter feed
Points to the Journal for picking an app that (might) deliver realtime mood information for half the population to Facebook to target advertising. That’s as creepy as it gets. What’s next? Apps that track a couple’s sex life or financial life (looking at you Goldman Sachs)? The realtime nature of the mechanism depicted (if true) is mind-blowing.
I have lots of comments at ACM and the article quoted above about Netflix’s future and the loss of its back-catalogue changing the streaming business forever, negating most current commentary.
Let’s look at Facebook. If the data exists anywhere, even if the app developer doesn’t “share” it with Facebook directly, Facebook will buy it from one of the app’s partners, as it did with credit card data to help target advertising. There’s no checks and balances that can control this. An app partner company may combine the app’s data with other data and develop an entirely different data set, and that will be completely out of the control of an app and any user agreement or even App Store rules that Apple could implement.
If it can be done, it will be done. And Facebook has the money to buy up whatever data it deems necessary. There’s really nothing that can be done about that – unless you don’t give up that data in the first place. Apps may offer to keep your data private (if that’s really possible, given the use of contractors for everything these days), but I’m willing to bet app profits and pricing are linked to how much the developer can get selling the data gathered. Just as televisions allegedly got cheaper because manufacturers sell your after-purchase (usage) data – Apps that truly keep data private may cost more than consumers are willing to pay for that privacy.
A whole cultural shift is required here, settling for lower profits to preserve user privacy. That’s a big ask, but privacy is becoming ‘a thing’ and we may see it happen – at a cost.