"Interests from partners", eh?

[jducoeur]

Just got the announcement of a new TOS from Twitter today. Nothing dramatically surprising, although I'm mildly annoyed that they are apparently dropping support for Do Not Track.

On the bright side, they are exposing their profile of your "interests", based on whatever data mining and tracking they are doing, including your "interests from partners", "based on your profile and activity".

I'm looking at that now, and it's one of those comforting moments of realizing that at least some of these companies haven't yet gotten so good at the psych profiling. It's almost comically inaccurate, seemingly far worse than random chance -- not only are most of them uninteresting, many of them are active dislikes. (I mean, seriously: can you see me driving a RAM 1500?) Even some of the ones that seem like they should be easy to discern from conventional data are wrong -- I think "Proximity: Giant Eagle" being checked means that they literally have no idea where I am. (Which is a bit weird, because that is not hard to figure out.)

Nor are the "Interests from Twitter" much better. Okay, yes, "Open Source" is accurate, but how they get "NBA Basketball" as an interest of mine is a pure mystery.

There's a sneaking part of me that suspects that this page is not at all what it claims to be; that it's actually starting from "this is every category we can possibly imagine", and it's trying to get me to trim it down to the non-ridiculous stuff. I think I'll take a pass on that, and let myself continue to be apparently confusing to them...

Comments

[mneme]

They just had me with all the interests turned on (and no "interests from partners", which I think may mean I turned something off).

[lauradi7dw]

I agree that it seems to be starting from many saleable options, so that you'll narrow it down and tell them exactly what they can sell you. I like the idea of living in an affluent area near a 7-11. That probably exists in San Francisco, for example.

[cellio]

Yeah, according to them my household income is under $100k and over $250k, and my house is worth over $500k (remember, Pittsburgh is not expensive like some places) but near a 7-11 and a Walmart. And I take international luxury cruises, and am a single head of household, and am both a baby boomer and a millennial.

[fitzw]

I basically just unchecked all of the "interests" and "interests from partners" yesterday. Today, it had set an interest for "skateboarding"...