Big Kindle is watching you

[ZeitgeistObserver]

Big Kindle is watching you
Amazon knows what readers are highlighting

As Amazon explains on its site, “The Amazon Kindle, Kindle for iPhone and Kindle for iPad each provide a very simple mechanism for adding highlights” and this information is available to Amazon, which, as the company says itself, it uses to “combine the highlights of all Kindle customers and identify the passages with the most highlights.” Why? To “help readers to focus on passages that are meaningful to the greatest number of people.” So what is the most popular passage highlighted by Kindle readers? It’s the following not-quite-a-full-sentence from Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, which was highlighted by 1,700 readers: “… three things–autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward–are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.” The next eleven places on the list are for passages from either William P. Young’s The Shack, or Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol. No other book enters the list until number 12, when Mitch Albom’s bon mots from Have a Little Faith start getting highlighted. Commentators are split on just how creepy this is. Rebekah Denn wrote, “I do find the idea that such information is being tracked post-purchase a little odd, almost as if the supermarkets tracking my food-buying habits were also measuring whether I made omelets or scrambles once I got my eggs home. But I also admit to being curious about just what the information means.” Others, however, have been a little less equivocal in their opinion—as a report at Gigaom.com notes, “Several users have expressed surprise at the move, calling it ’scary,’ as well as ‘nasty’ and ’spooky.’” At Bnet.com, Damon Brown agrees: “This bold, unnecessary move,” he says, “may erode consumer trust and hurt Kindle book sales, two things Amazon can’t afford as it wages war against Apple.” Brown notes that “Amazon is publishing what are, essentially, readers’ private thoughts.”


http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/?p=14862

[snagglepuss]

1. I don't like ebooks because I don't want the books I read to be tracked for

any purpose, tracking highlighted passages is downright creepy.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

2. Book stores note what you read.

Whether online or in the store. Libraries do so as well.

The highlighting part is new.

[fishwax]

5. libraries don't generally keep that data though

[ZeitgeistObserver]

6. The FBI asked libraries for it when Bush was in.

So they must have it on record somewhere.

Sorry, make that Homeland Security.

[fishwax]

7. that's exactly why they stopped keeping records

Well, I can't speak for all libraries, of course, but the ALA recommends not keeping records other than for items that are checked out or for items on which fines are owed.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

8. I'm sure they've come out of hiding again.

After all they knew about George Washington having 2 overdue books. ;)

[fishwax]

9. lol -- (but then again that involved fines)

:)

Anyway, librarians have tended to stand firm on the front lines in the battle to protect privacy. I give the profession props for that.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

10. True. Uncollectable, but true.

:)

Yes, I thought librarians made a wonderful stand for liberty on that occasion, and they've never really been appreciated for it. But it was a light in a dark time.

[Book Lover]

12. Oh c'mon - neither bookstores nor libraries have data warehouses

that collect and slice that information in the way Amazon does. Counting the number of titles sold as part of inventory control is nothing like gathering data regarding reader interaction with book content.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

13. They have hard drives, though.

A book store won't last very long if it doesn't notice what books people read.

[aquart]

11. Pretty sure the Gutenberg Project doesn't do that.

Or do you only read the work of this decade?

[ProgressiveProfessor]

14. That brings up and interesting question, does Amazon track what free books you read

I should also point out that the RF link on my Kindle has not been on in months

[kenny blankenship]

3. Apple is watching you. Comcast is watching you. AT&T is watching you. Microsoft is watching you.

Google is watching you. Oh yeah, the government is watching you, too, partly through all these other watchers.

These days, Big Brother is surrounded by a lot of sibling rivalry.

[ZeitgeistObserver]

4. Good point.

A society of watchers!

[Atman]

15. I'm so confused...yesterday DUers said Apple was supposed to be Big Brother.

"Evil," as one DUer put it, in typical DU hyberbolic fashion. Today it's Amazon. It's getting so that you can't tell your oppressors without a scorecard!