A cura di @Perodatrent.

Hannah Fry, docente di matematica, propone un estratto del suo libro Hello World. Being human in the age of algorhytms per spiegare perché produttori, commercianti e stati sono interessati ai dati ottenibili con sistemi banali come le liste degli acquisti.

… Supermarkets were among the first to recognize the value of our data. Early in the days of online shopping, British supermarket Tesco introduced a feature known as “My Favourites,” in which any items that were bought using the store’s loyalty card would appear prominently when the customer logged on to the Tesco website. Shortly after the launch of the feature, one woman contacted Tesco to complain that her data was wrong. She’d been shopping online and saw condoms among her list of “My Favourites.” They couldn’t be her husband’s, she explained, because he didn’t use them. At her request, the Tesco analysts looked into the data and discovered that her list was accurate. Rather than be the cause of a marital rift, however, they took the diplomatic decision to apologize for “corrupted data” and remove the offending items from her favorites. It was an important lesson: Shopping isn’t just what we buy. Groceries are personal

In Cina esiste uno schema di sorveglianza denominato Sesame Credit, che funziona così:

Imagine every piece of information that a data broker might have on you collapsed down into a single score. Everything goes into it. Your credit history, your mobile phone number, your address — the usual stuff. But also all your day-to-day behavior. Your social media posts, the data from your ride-hailing app, even records from your online matchmaking service. The result is a single number between 350 and 950 points.

Immagine da pixhere.