[HN Gopher] CEO Reminds Everyone His Company Collects Customers'...
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CEO Reminds Everyone His Company Collects Customers' Sleep Data
Author : c5karl
Score : 41 points
Date : 2023-11-21 19:33 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.404media.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.404media.co)
| upwardbound wrote:
| Lol
| pinewurst wrote:
| How soon before Google buys them?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I will never understand why people care or pretend to care about
| this. "Oh no, someone queried my sleep data to report aggregated
| metrics! How horrible." Even the more "invasive" forms of this
| stuff seem completely untroubling to me. If I sleep too little
| I'll start seeing ads for melatonin or warm milk or something?
| Good, I want to see offers that are tailored to what I actually
| experience. How is this supposed to be bad?
| 33a wrote:
| There is a duality between observation and control. The more
| precisely you can measure and predict a system, then the easier
| it gets to drive the system to whatever state you'd like.
|
| Desiring privacy and resisting control are reasonable things
| people who enjoy their freedom and autonomy would want to do.
| Ccecil wrote:
| "Getting poor sleep I see. Sounds like this person is higher
| risk than the average population. After review it seems we
| should increase all insurance plans by 20%"
|
| I guess that is mostly only applicable in the US with our for
| profit healthcare system though.
| Clamchop wrote:
| It's applicable in the US in the sense that it's illegal to
| do.
| Ccecil wrote:
| Insurance companies have no issue adjusting car insurance
| rates based on the "safe driving monitor" that they provide
| you put in your car. Even if you drive safe they adjust by
| mileage. Not sure how this is any different...just another
| line in the TOS.
|
| It isn't just health insurance you need to think about.
| COM9 wrote:
| Illegally applicable. The best kind of applicable.
| crimsontech wrote:
| Imagine the data showing you only went to bed at 2am being used
| to argue a car accident was your fault, when it wasn't.
|
| There are plenty of ways your data can be used against you and
| used to make incorrect assumptions about you.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Ah, so the danger of this technology comes from imagining
| unrelated bad things happening to people. What if your phone
| activity revealed that you were awake at 2 am and then courts
| incorrectly blamed you for an accident? Well, the bad part is
| courts incorrectly blaming you for an accident, same as with
| the sleep data.
| Ccecil wrote:
| I personally think it is more important to remember that
| this info is not necessarily limited to "only courts".
| Typically, this info is available to anyone with the right
| amount of cash. Not that I think my sleep data is
| interesting or valuable...someone seems to think it
| is...and that should be concerning.
| function_seven wrote:
| Yes, which is why I also don't want my phone data to be
| hoovered up by data brokers and appearing in evidence
| exhibits.
| goalonetwo wrote:
| There is a lot of literature in this area of philosophy.
| This is the famous "You have nothing to hide if you do
| nothing wrong" which has been proven 1000 times to be a
| fallacy.
| itishappy wrote:
| I think the danger in both scenarios is the fact that this
| data is available for abuse in the first place. It doesn't
| have to be. You're opening yourself up to the potential
| that unrelated bad things might happen in return for
| personalized ads.
|
| Note, this isn't illegal or (in my opinion) even unethical,
| it just makes me and many others uncomfortable. If that's a
| tradeoff happy with, then more power to ya!
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's totally fair if you aren't bothered by it. It's also
| totally fair that others are.
| zlg_codes wrote:
| Who do you want to live your life? Is it really your life if
| all your choices are being taken from you and other entities
| pretend to know your needs better than you?
|
| This is about autonomy and protecting civil liberties.
| Surveillance should be viewed through the lens of "would this
| be okay if a person was in place of the machine?"
|
| I do _not_ want someone watching my sleep so they can tell all
| their friends.
| ratg13 wrote:
| Minor nitpick.
|
| The author says the company doesn't know where you live, just
| where they shipped the blanket.
|
| Presumably though the data is getting to them somehow, either
| through an app or your wireless network and because of this, they
| likely do have a way to track users by location.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| IP Geolocation is good enough to get to the city level ("uptick
| in SF sleeplessness").
| itishappy wrote:
| > The company notes that "data about your sleep activity is
| transferred from your Device to our servers" every time the
| Pod's app syncs with the Pod. Certain features on the device
| also require location data "including GPS signals, device
| sensors, Wi-Fi access points, and cell tower IDs."
|
| Oh, they know where you live.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| 27% of their customers work at OpenAI? Other than a very small
| number of people directly involved, a handful of Reddit mods and
| Twitterati with a parasocial obsession with the company
| specifically, and people who can only sleep when they ask ChatGPT
| if it's time for bed, who's really going to be losing actual
| sleep over this?
| lucubratory wrote:
| Every single person working at OpenAI is going to have
| disturbed sleep right now, they're uncertain if their job or
| the projects they're currently working on are safe. Every
| recruiter in SV is probably losing sleep trying to poach
| people, getting anyone from OpenAI is striking oil but right
| now even high level employees who would normally never leave
| are in flux. There are a lot of startups in SV, including a
| huge number of startups based on OpenAI's APIs. If you're
| working for a startup based on the OpenAI API while this is
| happening you are working long nights to try and find
| alternatives and figure out whether you have a product tomorrow
| morning.
|
| This is a huge event like the suddenly bankruptcy of a large
| company, it's 778 people in flux. Their families won't be
| sleeping well.
| goalonetwo wrote:
| Also don't understand why would anyone buy a Cloud subscription
| for a MATTRESS. Is that where we are at in the tech cycle? I need
| to pay 25$/month for... sleeping?
|
| Why does this need to even be connected to internet? Why not keep
| it local?
|
| (I know why, they had to push for a subscription model for that
| sweet recurring revenue. That was the incentive, then they add to
| figure a reason to get there).
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Also don't understand why would anyone buy a Cloud
| subscription for a MATTRESS.
|
| Coincidentally enough, I bought a new mattress last weekend.
| When I was shopping for it, fully 1/3rd of the ones they had
| included bluetooth & app control.
|
| It truly blew my mind. I can't even begin to wrap my mind
| around the idea that people find these things desirable in a
| freaking mattress of all things.
|
| I didn't notice if any were cloud-connected (I wasn't exactly
| looking closely at those mattresses), but if I had seen that,
| I'm pretty sure my head would have just exploded on the spot.
| rabbits_2002 wrote:
| Does anyone actually find it desirable? Or is it just an easy
| way to squeeze more money out of a mattress sale, considering
| they probably sell your data.
| JohnFen wrote:
| In that mattress store, those mattresses were more
| expensive than otherwise equivalent ones lacking the
| electronics. I have to assume that somebody is buying them
| even with the added premium.
| fragmede wrote:
| Sleep is paramount. Without it, everything else turns to
| shit. So it makes sense to spend money and time and effort
| on making it the best it can be. That companies are around
| to monetize that is just capitalism. There are alternate
| systems out there but we decided against them.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| conspicuous consumption is a human need.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This appears to be a cultural thing, not a basic human thing.
| There have been many cultures where conspicuous consumption
| has not been a thing.
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(page generated 2023-11-21 23:04 UTC)