Yep. Part of the problem is the set of incentives surrounding these huge centralized databases of consumer preference - the folks holding the reins have no reason to fix the situation because they make money off the circumstances as well.
This was effectively the situation with the internet when the Goog came in and wrecked everyone's cash cow - because it was valuable enough to take the hit and prospect for future value to undermine the status quo.
I see two ways to break the current stalemate:
- Some 'new google' comes by and does to google what google did to Yahoo et al.
- Somebody creates a system that does the same job, but distributed. You control your recommendation algorithm, so you can prune it as you want.
I really really want the second one, but I haven't yet figured out how one would get the necessary data. There's a bootstrapping problem here - in order for recommendation algorithms to work, you need a ton of folks creating data for them. In order to get those folks, you would need to have a good enough recommendation algorithm to attract them.
I'm wondering now, though, if data on user preferences is for sale somewhere. Like, if I wanted to bootstrap such a system, is there some adtech business somewhere that has information on what books / music / etc people like, and how much would it cost to get that in there?
But now, of course, because you're looking at spending a bunch of money to bootstrap - you're hobbled by the need to be profitable to make that back. Stuck in Trapitalism.
This was effectively the situation with the internet when the Goog came in and wrecked everyone's cash cow - because it was valuable enough to take the hit and prospect for future value to undermine the status quo.
I see two ways to break the current stalemate:
- Some 'new google' comes by and does to google what google did to Yahoo et al.
- Somebody creates a system that does the same job, but distributed. You control your recommendation algorithm, so you can prune it as you want.
I really really want the second one, but I haven't yet figured out how one would get the necessary data. There's a bootstrapping problem here - in order for recommendation algorithms to work, you need a ton of folks creating data for them. In order to get those folks, you would need to have a good enough recommendation algorithm to attract them.
I'm wondering now, though, if data on user preferences is for sale somewhere. Like, if I wanted to bootstrap such a system, is there some adtech business somewhere that has information on what books / music / etc people like, and how much would it cost to get that in there?
But now, of course, because you're looking at spending a bunch of money to bootstrap - you're hobbled by the need to be profitable to make that back. Stuck in Trapitalism.