27 Data-Slurping Facts BuzzFeed Doesn't Want You To Know! When Buzzfeed first began to offer the world a constant free stream of inane listicles, cat pics and funny fail GIFs, it seemed too good to be true. Yet it turns out that the world's biggest content aggregator isn't just shiny and happy – it's curious too. In fact, according to a digital marketer, Big Buzzfeed is watching us …
They provide a quiz which asks lots of personal questions and then you're surprised they hang onto your answers and link it your usage? I personally can't think of anything more obvious.
Imagine the scenario
Marketing bloke: How do we find out who our core demographic is?
Consultant: How about we ask them?
Marketing bloke: Great idea lets do that then! Oh and see that cookie we drop on everyone's machines can we link it to that in case we want to analyse the data deeper?
Consultant: Sure that's easy.
People do not answer these quizes to provide marketeers with accurate data, they do so to hopefully get to the funny bits at the end of the questions. I bet some people go back through the quizzes 2 or 3 times providing different answers.
The problem is not that sites like this are "harvesting" this data, its that there are people stupid enough to pay for it thinking it is in any way meaningful.
That's my concern... stupid people misinterpreting "data". Stupid people come in all shapes and sizes and appear to gravitate towards positions of powerful decision making responsibilities.
Luckily I, although stupid enough to be president of the us of a, am powerless.
King Of Foo never said "People are stupid". He said that there are stupid people, which is pretty much indisputable - but never generalised as to numbers or percentages. Given that he also went on to say that he considers himself stupid, I fail to see what relevance today's XKCD (the moral of which is, don't say "People are stupid" if what you really mean is "I am smart") comic has here.
I think a much, much better way of saying it is that Common sense isn't very common.
I think the statistics gurus would laugh! After all, the statistics would just make accommodation if everyone 'got stupid'. We would then have the smartest stupid person, IQ 40, and the stupidest, 20 (barely able to put his pants on) and somewhere in the middle would be "normal". How does it feel being included into a group with a bunch of chimps?!
That's what's bothered me about all these quizzes you see the links for being posted about all over the place, the questions seem silly enough but when you sit down and actually analyze some of them they are quite intrusive.
Given enough mugs answering them, plus the background data they can fetch it's not difficult to see how valuable some of this info could be to someone with a cheque book big enough.
There's lots of things like this. The one I dislike is the 'telephone survey' that is 'anonymous', but they've called you (so know your telephone number), and start with the question "What brand is your television". From this one question, they attempt to identify what income demographic you're in (you know, Sony or Panasonic=high earner, Samsung or LG=cost and quality conscious, Technika or Bush=real cheapskate) , and then change the survey questions accordingly.
You can pretty much guess that if you complete the 'survey', you will get bombarded with cold calls trying to sell you appropriate insurance for your demographic. I was amused one time because I was misheard, and when I said my main telly was a "Digihome", they filled in DGM, and I didn't bother to correct them. Imagine my surprise when a few days later I got an offer for an extended warranty for my DGM television! They could not even check that it was a real brand!
I screw all of these surveys up, because although I am considered a high earner, I don't generally buy high value brands. But if I engage with the survey, I generally bail at the point that I feel they're too intrusive, which is normally not very far in.
What really bugs me is this. I bought an item on Amazon. Now most web pages come up with an ad trying to sell me the same item! How useless can they get? I already have what I wanted! Seems like the advertisers are making money off the retailers by selling them worthless data! The customer ultimately ends up paying for it.
I'm referring to all those "$number $noun $relative_clause $connector $another_relative_clause" so-called "articles", which I really hope are computer generated, for no human should have to stoop that low in the non-creativity scales.
I guess I'll try adding that to my AdBlock filter see if my browsing experience improves.
assuming stupid is defined as being lower than average intelligent.
unless extremely thick or extremely intelligent people are over represented in the world (and I was always taught it was a bell curve), then pretty much exactly 50% of 'people' are stupid
Or just keep it simple, and simply define the thickest 50% of people in the world as stupid.
I'd go for about 90% of the world being stupid personally though.. certainly that's my experience.
Have an up vote for two reasons.
1) Its is a good move having most of Googles services in ones hosts file.
I don't just stop at analytics ;-)
2) To counteract the down votes.
Anyone one with a care for their privacy should have up voted you.
I have never visited Buzzfeed, never will.
The Registers target demographic is intelligent IT types.
So perhaps Buzzfeed gets a few people out of its demographic too?
> Its is a good move having most of Googles services in ones hosts file.
As the ancients said:
« Thou shalt not misuse Thy hosts file. »
That's what firewalls, routes, transparent proxies, or iptables are for. Or just tweak AdBlock to taste¹.
> The Registers target demographic is intelligent IT types.
HAR!!! HAR!!! HAR!!! Good one!
¹ Not to go all X378 on you but *real* IT types filter unwanted Googleness by carefully timed and accurate manipulation of the Ethernet plug at your router or similar device. With some practice you can do this even with HTTP pipelining enabled. Real pros transcode gzip into xz compression on the fly using this technique.
As the ancients said:
« Thou shalt not misuse Thy hosts file. »
But the apprentice replied, sir, I have but one server and cannot afford for it to be a single-purpose host and my only way to mystical Grate In Ternet. For transparent proxies needeth redundancy or She Who Is Indoors may bring Wrath upon my head and remove it and use parts of my alimentary canal to maintain the height of her leg warmers.
Therefore, I choose the way of simplicity, not per-application configuration, neither the way of absolute effectiveness, preferring to trade-off a little security for the maintenance of the present place of my skull.
Forsooth, tis not the end of the world if Twitface knoweth whether I have or have not a TV and I have educated my immediate familial group in the ways of not telling people stuff they don't need to know. Even the mighty Facebook waneth. And that is very good.
"We are only interested in data in the aggregate form"
Sure, you can say so. Maybe you even are.
Unfortunately, you work hand in hand with The Google, which is very much interested in data in every form, aggregate or not. Whatever data you get, Google most likely gets as well, and you cannot vouch for what happens after.
And, concerning anonymized strings, I seem to recall a very large customer data file that had those as well get nicked and be put online, where someone obviously more intelligent than average demonstrated how to reverse-engineer said anonymization with the application of deep analysis of the data. In other words, you might have anonymized your data line per line, but as a whole there's a good chance that recoupments may be made and your anonymization is moot.
Have you thought of that, Mr Buzzfeed ?
Somehow, I doubt it.
A great example being the NYC data that was released - Drivers for > 173 million trips identified from 'anonymised' NYC Cab data
When Buzzfeed first began to offer the world a constant free stream of inane listicles, cat pics and funny fail GIFs, it seemed too good to be true.
1) catalog.neet.tv (the catalog of 4chan.org)
2) Choose appropriate SFW board
3) ???
4) Constant stream of ... err .... QUALITY Internet content
Why Buzzfeed, why?
If you complain about T Mobile they later send you an invitation to contribute to improving their service. Thinking this might actually be helpful, I started completing the questionnaire. After a number of questions I realised it was just a market research tool and sent them a snotty reply.
From their pricing, one might guess that the telcos think we are idiots and this rather confirmed it.
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