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Comment by tbgvi | Hacker News Reader

Another case of lawsuits stifling innovation.

And I agree with one of the comments on that post - why doesn't Netflix have people opt-in to have their data anonymized and used for this purpose?

Edit: replaced bureaucracy with lawsuits

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I think bureaucracy had little to do with it. As I recall, the first Netflix contest did indeed expose private, and sometimes embarrassing, information.

This was a privacy issue, and something legitimate to address.

privacy issues dont necessarily need to be dealt with by lawsuits. Most lawsuits are about money.

Not to quibble, but lawsuits are also not bureaucracy.

Good point, was at a loss for the right word when I commented.

This kind of behavior by lawyers is just like patent trolling and I couldn't pinpoint a word for that. Maybe privacy trolling? The lawyers are the same ones that sued Facebook for Beacon.

Right, but I find it astonishing that it was necessary to cancel the competition altogether.

I find it surprising that there wasn't a middle-ground which anonymized or didn't include personally identifying information.

I feel the lack of a middle-ground is probably due to the lawsuit plaintiffs refusing to back down (presumably for financial gain) and thus causing Netflix to hedge their risk.

While it's not entirely the same situation, perhaps you should read up on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal.

why doesn't Netflix have people opt-in to have their data anonymized and used for this purpose?

Selection bias?

Selection bias would mean people who opt in get better recommendations... sounds like a good incentive and a virtuous circle to me.

selection bias would only be a concern if you were trying make inference on all netflix customers (not just the ones that opt-in).

It breaks simple random sampling meaning that you're optimizing purely for some unknown subset. That becomes a problem when someone someone realizes that Netflix is spending millions of dollars to have a recommendation engine that ends up being racist.

good idea...opt-in and we can improve our recommendations to you.

People worried that some geek will find out they watched Who's the Boss reruns will miss out.

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