PORN SITES COLLECT A LOT OF USER BEHAVIOR DATA, LIKE, A LOT
So what do you like to watch on TV? I’m old enough that I remember the idea of the first cable boxes that tracked user data for the big networks to figure out a lot of things. So now we all live with the reality of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and many others. But those are the safe ones to talk about. But porn is still a ginormous consumer good that we don’t really talk about much. And online porn viewing is a big, big deal. But it’s porn. And it’s porn you’re watching online. And the porn big brother is watching everything you do. Ok, not everything you do. Cover that computer cam, by the way. But user data? Oh, yes. Porn sites collect your user data, and how.
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PORN SITES KNOW WHAT YOU LIKE, MORE THAN YOU MAYBE EVEN DO, ACCORDING TO WHAT YOU WATCH
So do you like redheads? Do you line teens? Do you like romantic or female friendly porn? Those are fairly typical, “safe” categories. But there are many, many others when it comes to porn. So how long do you like to watch each vid? Do you tend to surf, or fast forward to the end? Porn sites are tracking all of those moves. But they’re tracking even more than that. Every porn video has an insane number of tags, or phrases associated with them. But so do the different scenes in each porn. If you tend to watch a few videos of people with tattoos, they know it. Socks on? They know it. And then they will try to present videos of what they think you like, up front. Um, so to speak.
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WE NEED TO KEEP ABREAST OF WHAT THEY KNOW TURNS US ON, AND HOW FAR IT GOES
But screw the NSA. Porn sites are getting a LOT of user data to mine and interpret. Pornhub’s network of sites get 125 million visits every single day. One measurement (ahem) is that in 2017, Pornhub viewers streamed more content than all 50 million books in the New York Public Library system. And they logged how everyone watched all of that content, in detail. So this is something we all need to keep… abreast of, um, moving forward. Our system currently works on oligopolies, if not outright monopolies. But knowledge is power. So maybe in a few years we will talk about the national election that was rigged from porn propaganda? But hey, that’s actually possible.
