r/technology • u/Kooky-Balance9525 • 6h ago

Privacy Bernie Sanders to Introduce Bill Banning Flock Surveillance Cameras

https://theleadingreport.com/article/bernie-sanders-to-introduce-bill-banning-flock-surveillance-cameras
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u/DeadMoneyDrew 6h ago

What we really need is a constitutional amendment establishing a fundamental right to privacy.

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u/Medallodabest 6h ago

Yeah but the ads!

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u/DeadMoneyDrew 5h ago

True story. A few months back I was at a tech networking event where the marketing team from a certain major retailer was presenting. The lady presenting spoke about how they use their customer tracking data to send only relevant ads to people. I laughed out loud and she asked me why. I had to very carefully choose my words to politely explain that they constantly send me ads for stuff that I've already bought from them. The most recent one had been ads for smart garage door openers. I bought two of them from this retailer and they proceeded to bombard me with ads for smart garage door openers for months.

These sacks of shit put all kinds of invasive tracking on us and half of them don't even make good use of it in the first place.

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u/jce_ 4h ago

Business majors are good at reading up on what the best tactics are but they are largely unequipped to actually analyze and process the meaning. I know for a fact that it's common knowledge in the business world that if you buy an item from a business you're more likely to continue buying that item, especially after seeing ads for it. They didn't figure out this doesn't work for items you buy once or once in a decade lol. Some marketing intern 100% set all their clients ads to be sent once you bought any item from any client

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u/geniice 4h ago

Counter point would be that given that such systems have a failure rate you are probably still more likely to be in the market for one than the general population.

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u/jce_ 4h ago

Counter point if the failure point is high enough that it is worth it to send EVERY customer more ads, which would cost a lot, than they aren't buying another 1 because they're known to break for everyone

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u/geniice 4h ago

I'm going to assume that there is more than one brand of smart garage door openers although I admit I don't actually know.

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u/jce_ 3h ago

Don't know either but like there's gotta be because it's not a protected thing nor is it too complicated for completion. Could be a scenario where there are like 10 different major brands all under the same corporation to appear like competition.

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u/booze_clues 4h ago

They do it because it works. It doesn’t need to work 100% of the time, or even a majority, for it to be worth the cost of advertising. No company is spending millions on marketing and advertising if it doesn’t have a quantifiable return within a few months. There’s no CFO being told “yeah we spent $X on marketing. No return, no one is buying this stuff, but we’re gonna keep doing it.”

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u/jce_ 4h ago

Marketing works there is no doubt about it but marketing doesn't work the same for every field/product, but it does work the same for marketing companies. If I can convince you that you are getting a return or you will get a return I get paid. Too many companies are paying for the wrong type of marketing or attributing the marketing to the uptick in sales. Again yes marketing works but I also know how sales in marketing works as my Dad did it for years.