Volume 53: “The most invasive tech ever tested”

1. “You’re fat and angry.” Amazon makes bizarre play for even more of our data.

tl;dr: Amazon’s data hunger goes from creepy to farcical.

So, Amazon has finally entered the fitness tracking business, and being who they are and how they think, they’ve done it in the creepiest and most intrusive way possible.

The new Amazon Halo band doesn’t just track your vitals the way that say, a Fitbit or an Apple Watch might, it also leverages Amazon’s machine learning capabilities to really freak you out. You see, in addition to measuring things like your heart rate, the Halo also has a microphone it uses to listen to everything you say in order to “help strengthen your communication.” And if that weren’t enough, it also encourages you to let it scan you in your underwear using the associated app, which then attempts to decipher your body mass index (BMI), which is a measure of how fat you are.

So, they’re measuring your vitals, listening to everything you say and recording what you look like when you’re nearly naked. Not at all intrusive then.

Aside from the creepy factor, what’s morbidly amusing is how tone deaf the delivery is. Early reports are that the selfie scan/BMI decoding is inaccurate, consistently erring on the side of making us appear fatter than we actually are. Great, it’s kind of like that mirror you bought once that makes you look slimmer (so you religiously drag it with you every time you move no matter how awkward it is), but in reverse. Oh shit.

Equally, the tonal analysis judgmentally accuses the wearer of being things like angry, condescending, overbearing and irritated. But, what’s particularly odd is how random people report this analysis to be. And, even if it weren’t completely random, what are we supposed to do with this information, apart from developing an anxiety complex? “Must watch my tone, Jeff Bezos is listening.” Aaargh.

Overall, then, what we’re left with is the distinct feeling that rather than this being a device and associated set of services designed to actually help us get fitter and healthier, this is actually a rather brazen attempt by Amazon to gather even more of our personal information so they can then monetize it. And with Amazon’s recent push into the pharmacy business, it isn’t hard to imagine how.

But, it’s also a great example of the problem with data-driven business models. One of the great falsehoods we’ve all be suckered into is that data makes businesses uniquely efficient, that the companies who gather the data are making precise decisions based on it, and that the algorithms built to use the data somehow have an almost preternatural ability to predict our behaviors.

Yet, as the Halo demonstrates, none of this is really true. We’re targeted by ads for things we’ve already bought, have songs recommended to us that we can’t stand, and now we’re being told that we’re fat and angry when we aren’t. The truth of data-driven business models isn’t that they’re uniquely efficient; it’s that they’re spectacularly inefficient. This is why they require such vast amounts of data to work. It isn’t that Amazon is doing something incredible with every datapoint, it’s that they’re monetizing a huge number of tiny incremental gains of just fractions of a % that occur within the flows and pools of data they have access to. It only works because we so readily give this data away for free and the compute power to process it is so cheap as to be practically free.

2. “Speaking up for small business.” What a load of old bollocks.

tl;dr: Could THE FACEBOOK get more cynical?

There’s a fascinating example of competitive gatekeeping going on right now. Put simply, Apple is in the midst of flipping the switch on new privacy measures that will negatively impact ability of THE FACEBOOK to gather data from iOS users it needs to target advertising.

This is nothing less than an existential threat to THE FACEBOOK, as it cuts to the very cornerstone of its data hungry advertising business model. Senior executives admitting that it could potentially cost them billions in lost revenue. You see, the very basis of the way THE FACEBOOK makes money is via intrusive levels of user surveillance across the app ecosystem, not just on their own apps, but any app that uses any of the tools they provide for “free” to others (and that’s a lot of apps).

Anyway, privacy is popular with consumers, most of whom realize they’re being surveilled by the advertising-media complex and are smart enough not to like it. Speaking personally, I just switched to an iPhone from Android for only this reason. Yeah, the Galaxy phone is a better device than an iPhone, but privacy…

With so much on the line for them, it’s not surprising to see THE FACEBOOK fighting back, but what’s most jaw-dropping is the tone of the PR response from those shameless messaging cynics over in Menlo Park. Full page print ads in major newspapers claiming that by fighting this change, THE FACEBOOK is standing up for small businesses and protecting them from the ravages of Apple.

What a load of absolute and utter bollocks.

Here’s what’s really going on. This is a cynical act designed to protect THE FACEBOOK business model, and that’s it. Small business customers aren’t reading full-page ads in the NY Times and WSJ print editions, but the politicians in Washington are. This is nothing more than a hail Mary attempt at a lobbying war. THE FACEBOOK is attempting to stake out a position that isn’t about it (because it’s literally the most hated company in America on both sides of the aisle) that will give the politicians they’re paying off a smokescreen under which to defend them without appearing to have been bought off by them. And there’s traditionally no better smokescreen in the history of politics than the claim of standing up for the interests of small businesses.

Which, really leaves us with only one question. Will it work? Simple answer: Hell no, not a chance.

Now, this might have been a smart tactic if we were dealing with a traditionally terrible company, like say tobacco or big oil or lawn chemicals or something, but THE FACEBOOK truly stands alone in the levels of hatred it inspires, suffering reputationally as it has from years of illegally lying and cheating its way to the top, refusing to tackle toxic hate speech and disinformation, and (allegedly) abusing its market power in ways that have caught the attention of both State Attorney Generals and Federal competition authorities.

It’s also facing off against the world’s largest company on this topic, one that people quite like, which is as good at reputation management as THE FACEBOOK is terrible, over an issue where the weight of public opinion is very much in Apple’s favor. If it comes down to it, who are we going to trust, Tim Cook or Mark Zuckerberg? It’s not even close.

However, what we should all look out for in the coming months are politicians in Washington parroting the line that Apple’s policies are bad for small business and an abuse of its market power. I’m guessing there won’t be many of them, but every single one will be in Zuck’s pocket.

3. Hey 2020, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out!

tl;dr: Thank you for reading these missives for a whole year.

Thank you to everyone who receives this newsletter, especially those of you who read it, and double especially to all those who send me kind notes telling me you like it. It’s the thing that keeps me writing them. (And sure beats looking at my un-subscribe list to see if I touched a nerve that week.)

When I started almost exactly a year ago (give or take a month), it was mostly out of a deep sense of frustration at the spectacular volume of bullshit business commentary being thrown around. It got to the point where I couldn’t even open LinkedIn without a palpable sense of anxiety over the nonsensical drivel I’d be forced to scroll through. Worse, that this drivel would have such vast “engagement” with sometimes thousands of people saying “right on” to things that at best represented negligent incompetence and at worst represented ideas that would be downright destructive if used in practice.

There’s a catharsis that comes from metaphorically sticking your fingers in the dam and hoping to hold back the tide, but more importantly I take great joy in helping the people who’ve reached out.

I can only hope there’s more good news to talk about and successes to celebrate next year than this.

Here’s to vastly better 2021 than 2020.

Stay safe. Stay sane.
Catch you in the New Year.
Thank you for reading.

Paul.