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I pirate because I don't want to be tracked. I don't want Amazon, AppleTV, Netflix, building a profile on me based on my viewing history.


I feel the opposite, actually. I'm a pretty staunch privacy advocate, but the biggest thing I feel when, say, "obtaining" "through unspecified means" the latest season of Star Trek Discovery is: the studios who made this have no idea I'm watching this, and if enough people did that, it'd look like no one was watching it, so they're less likely to make a season 4.

The secondary argument is, they use that viewing history to influence the production of new shows ("people like shows set in space, lets make more space shows"). I also don't feel this is unreasonable. Ultimately this isn't tracking journalists' movements in an authoritarian regime; its entertainment. If my viewing history leads to the production of more shows I enjoy, who is losing?

Not all tracking is bad. Pragmatically, its not an open-and-shut thing, for me.


If that's what's actually happening on the back end, they're doing a pretty bad job with my recommendations. What I suspect is really happening, though, is that the data collection and analytics are being used to optimize revenue, whether it be from advertising, minimizing production costs or ascertaining just how much bullshit users will put up with, and not to build or release higher quality products. That, or the data is sold.


The same way Mozilla is removing features based on metrics? No, thanks.




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