Netflix tweet raises privacy questions
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
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?
> To one of our users (you know who you are!): Fuck you!
So there are 53 users they are directly addressing, and then mocking "You've been damaged mentally by someone in your past."
Example: "Come in for a spa and get a free steak rib at a local restaurant" sounds 100% innocent, but there is a small fraction of a percent chance that someone might think "But what about an offer for me, since I don't eat meat?!" In public relations, probability values get converted to a number of real humans, so PR staff has to be aware of this probability of everything they post (which is always nonzero). That of course doesn't mean it shouldn't be posted, but they shouldn't be surprised when they get 20 negative comments if 100,000 people see their statement. It's a tradeoff considering the gain of making a statement.
Twitter's post easily breaks this rule without much subtlety.
If this, coming from someone who doesn’t know you, does not sound offensive, what does?
If it was me on an 18 day streak, I would not feel offended. Actually, I find the tweet funny.
Obviously some people will need to be able to access whatever database holds this information for practical reasons, but that access should be restricted to the minimum necessary level and there should be processes and technical measures in place to provide oversight and prevent abuse. This is not only good practice for ethical reasons, it's also a legal requirement in places like the EU. Even the US, not normally known for its strong privacy protections, passed the Video Privacy Protection Act recognising the threat in this area.
The fact that apparently someone at Netflix was just trolling through the data in the first place and then felt the need to share it in a derogatory way implies that Netflix do not have adequate controls in place. Something is wrong here: even if the access itself was to some collective/anonymized data set, anyone with the attitude demonstrated by that tweet probably shouldn't have that level of access. As we've seen from Netflix and others before, sometimes even bulk data sets can lead to individual data subjects being identified where this was not the intention.
Here's likely what happened: DB admin guy runs a query to see who has the highest number of views for any movie last month. Notices that there are a lot of watches for A Christmas Prince. Laughs about it to his officemates, word spreads, and finally the PR department knows about it. Guy in the department thinks it's so funny that he makes a Twitter post about it. Gets past review due to sheer probability.
So yes, it's somewhat weird that they released the anonymized information, but I don't think that it's outright scary.
Alternate hypothesis: someone on the social media team saw brands like Wendy's doing well with the "edgy-but-funny" thing, then made up this tweet, and then tweeted it.
I don't do twitter, but from second-hand exposure, I am under the impression that this attitude is exactly what some of these corporate social media accounts are aiming for (less corporate, more joking).
Look at some of the follow-up threads to the comment in question:
https://twitter.com/netflix/status/940053684314021889
https://twitter.com/netflix/status/940053555813027842
I keep seeing Wendy's, PornHub and a few other account's tweets in other media, and their attitude is comparably even more "fun".
(Personally, I enjoy this. If I want pure corporate-speak, I can always read the Investor Relations pages.)
It's a meme format, Netflix is just trying to be edgy/cool here, trying to fit in with the "fellow kids" [1]
Personally, if Joe Netflix Employee really can browse viewing data (and I don't know why everyone is assuming that's the case), I'd think stories like this probably wouldn't get shared at the water cooler, just because there'd be so much bizarre behavior that nothing would surprise anyone.
That's just a really simple example. I'm sure you could do much better with advanced AI techniques and more "anonymized" data.
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.
Ideally netflix is for the most providing employees/systems with anonymized analysis. Definitely there's always a question of what kind of direct access employees have of sensitive data and I will agree that is a general question even without this tweet.
[1] They already do this with the privacy policy, right? https://help.netflix.com/legal/privacy
I think it's a different matter. A viewcounter is seen as a stateless counter, increasing for every view/user but not going beyond that; Netflix's analysis is seen as stateful tracking, one that tracks a user through his consumption of data. Also, the former is content-focused, whereas the latter is arguably user-focused.
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.
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.
And I'd even say that even collecting this data is wrong.
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.
Without this data they can't tell what's worth making and what's not worth making.
I'm not particularly aghast that they keep this data, but I can't agree that they need it.
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.
As for privacy, I'm not sure it's a big deal. Maybe the watch data that the tweeter (?) used is anonymized?
http://www.adweek.com/creativity/spotify-crunches-user-data-...
Totally expected how else would they determine if a show is worth making..