When Tivo thinks you're gay
2002-11-26 17:17:08+00 by
Dan Lyke
2 comments
/. had a link to a Wall Street Journal article on consumer profiling gone bad, or what happens when Amazon thinks you're "a pregnant gay man." And what happens when users try to outsmart the systems. I've long espoused that the best interfaces are the ones that aren't, the ones where the system can work in the background and just do the right thing. But when users become aware of them, they become interfaces again, and having good overrides is a necessity.
[ related topics:
User Interface Consumerism and advertising
]
comments in ascending chronological order (reverse):
#Comment made: 2002-11-26 19:32:03+00 by:
shmuel
Thing is, it's actually very easy to tell Amazon.Com to ignore any given purchase you've made when making future recommendations; the link to do so is fairly prominent, in the top corner of the recommendations page. The kinds of reactions by the people in the article are just silly. Amusing, but silly.
#Comment made: 2002-11-27 06:43:23+00 by:
dws
[edit history]
The instructions for ignoring purchases are on the recommendations page? That's right where I'd think of looking for them. It is an amusing problem. It takes 2 months or so for Amazon recommendations to settle out after buying books for my wife, sister, mother, etc. ("Are you about to order anything from Amazon? My bookclub just picked an Oprah book...")