In the "good ol' days" (TM the shop-owners in a community knew quite a lot about their customers.
Oh Mary just gave birth, Henry is currently sick, Walter likes his coffee a little stronger, James a little weaker (something with his stomach). Danielle drinks only tee, has two kids and the marriage is not really happy. And so on. A lot bordered on gossip, a lot was very valid and relevant information. People talked.
So it was totally normal in a smallish community for the store owners to have an extensive profile on every customer. All in their head for sure, but non the less. And guess what - everybody benefitted. The clerk could recommend based on what he knew. People would be directed to relevant produce.
By the way this works even today. If I buy at my normal place I get personalized recommendations for cheese from the lady behind the counter. We talk, she knows a little bit about my tastes and I get to try new things.
I grew up in a town with <1000 year round residents. We had a general store like this. We avoided the general store as much as possible. Some families went as far as getting their mail through another town because the local post office was inside the store.
The reason is quite relevant to this thread. The shopkeeper, his wife, and all the regular customers who sat around to chat while they drank their coffee were gossip hounds.
People valued their private lives more than letting a social circle they weren't involved in know anything about them. Not who sent them mail, and not even what type of breakfast cereal they liked.
"Everyone benefitted"? Nah, I think you've just heard too much "small town community" bullshit from politicians.
Different strokes, different folks. Personally, I like that people in my town know me. Gossip goes around, sure, people know more about me than I might be comfortable with but in general that establishes in the long run a familiarity that works for me. It feels like a very large family, and I like that.
"Danielle drinks only tee, has two kids and the marriage is not really happy........ People would be directed to relevant produce."
What's the relevant produce for an unhappy marriage? Whiskey?
I'd actually talk to a few people before I'd say "everyone benefited" because many didn't and absolutely hate it. I've seen people rearrange their schedule and go way out of the way just so they can run an errand in peace and with some privacy and dignity. Myself? I know I've avoided places specifically because I'd be likely to see someone I know there.
Having a conversation once in a while with the person selling you cheese (which is choice!!) isn't the same thing as being tracked.
Not everyone wants personalized recommendations either. Or recommendations at all, most people know what they want and are creatures of habit.
I don't want recommendations at all from anyone who is selling me something! The incentives are misaligned to say the least. What if you found out the cheese salesman got commission from certain brands? You'd think she'd suddenly recommend them?
That's great, if you want personal recommendations.
But I do not. I want a choice, the choice to share my data and have personal recommendations, or not share anything and have generic ads. But no one give me that choice, so I have to take it by "hiring the bouncers"
This is the direction we should and, I predict, we will be headed. Personal recommendations and analytics should be optional and opt-in. The EU cookie law is a step in the right direction but the reason it's so clumsy is because cookies for now are opt-out.
The way to get there is to separate the browsing/shopping process from the tracking/recommendations. Instead of bouncers we should have personal shoppers. The majority of people I speak to have no problem with trackers so there is no reason not to make it more transparent where users can choose which data they want to share and for what purpose.
I've never seen a single site with the EU cookie warning saying "click here if you're ok with cookies, or click over there if you'd rather we didn't use them." It's always "click here to proceed with cookies, or fuck off."
As it should be. It's none of our "right" to visit any particular site. The person who sets up the site gets to identify the terms of use - since they're the one footing the bill for it.
If you don't like it, that's your prerogative - you can go somewhere else. If enough people do that, the person who owns the site loses out. But I can't see why it's not entirely within a provider's rights to say "if you use our service, you must agree to X. Otherwise, Y."
I think a better use of resources than the clunky EU cookie law would be to say "sites can analyze what visitors do on their site - but only there." Then it's truly opt-in (by virtue of using the site), and sandboxed. There's no "following you home" - the site owner would only have access to what you do on their site.
Opting out by not participating is approaching impossible, and doesn't send a visible signal to site owners. There will never be "enough people", but that doesn't mean the issues are not important. If the minorities who notice problems (missing wheelchair ramps, lack of braille on signs, ambiguous color indicators, gross violations of privacy) are silenced and ostracized, we all suffer.
The difference is the customers also knew the same amount about the store owner. Oh, Gerald started running the store when his father got too sick to do it and he's been at it ever since. He's been trying to convince his son to take it up when he retires, but the boy only wants to play guitar, and so on.
There was trust because they were all part of a community. That's not the case with anonymous trackers that people aren't even aware of.
I can't think of one website/company that I would like to have this small town clerk-customer relationship with.
Youtube's recommended videos are unfailingly terrible, and Amazon's recommended products just feel like annoying add-ons that might "accidentally" get bundled into my cart if I hover my mouse too near them. I generally already have something in mind if I want to buy/watch online.
I'll stick with recommendations from friends/actual people. That's why last.fm/spotify has been so great for music discovery relative to pandora/rdio - you can browse real people's collections instead of an algorithm's guess of what you might like.
You can optionally choose to share play lists for sure, I'm not sure if they still do but spotify by default shows everyone what you are listening unless you put it into some private mode (a tad less creepy)
For a single store, or family business, that's equitable and I'd opt in by shopping there or visiting the website. On the web the small business is often the artisanal butcher, small crafts or the one HN reader running their side project trying to compete with IBM. Happy to share some data. Happy to help and try and support by giving you my money.
The web is mostly not like this. The ad and tracker networks are on multiple sites and are so agressive and successful at retargeting that it almost induces paranoia. Sadly out of ignorance the innocent small business is using a network that's borg like in their assimilation of everywhere.
Tesco, Forbes and the agressively multi round funded startups can fuck off. Especially as they give no shits for apparently anything. Fuck that man, get bigger fast. Let me show you this ad for VisualThing++ for the 96th time, even though it's well over a week since you accidentally clicked on the maximise on rollover sound playing flash abortion.
Back when I was being persuaded that all advertising and tracking online was becoming evil I'd innocently visit somewhere work connected say SEOMoz, as was, then see ads for them EVERYWHERE, for ages. Like the bad commission only salesman who ruins parties and friendships with only one topic of conversation I'd go read something in the evening on sports and the ads would be having a conversation about Moz, or random startup service we looked at for work. WTF man fuck off and stop following me!
Even on the web the good ol days, as you describe them, wouldn't be so bad, but that's not what we have. Not even close.
Oh Mary just gave birth, Henry is currently sick, Walter likes his coffee a little stronger, James a little weaker (something with his stomach). Danielle drinks only tee, has two kids and the marriage is not really happy. And so on. A lot bordered on gossip, a lot was very valid and relevant information. People talked.
So it was totally normal in a smallish community for the store owners to have an extensive profile on every customer. All in their head for sure, but non the less. And guess what - everybody benefitted. The clerk could recommend based on what he knew. People would be directed to relevant produce.
By the way this works even today. If I buy at my normal place I get personalized recommendations for cheese from the lady behind the counter. We talk, she knows a little bit about my tastes and I get to try new things.