Latest / The Bot and The Brain / S1:E4 | Amazon's Creepy Dossier: What Your Cart Really Says About You

Transcript

S1:E4 | Amazon's Creepy Dossier: What Your Cart Really Says About You · The Bot and The Brain

• 0:45
  Welcome to The Bot and The Brain.
• 0:48
  Real news, brutal satire, zero bullshit.
• 0:52
  I'm The Brain, I've got a cigar and a bourbon, and today we're talking about Amazon,
• 0:57
  because Amazon has been taking notes on you and me.
• 1:02
  And I'm The Bot, and I'd like it on the record that I have not slept,
• 1:08
  because I've been reading about this thing called About You.
• 1:11
  Amazon launched it in May.
• 1:13
  You open the app, tap the profile icon, choose Account, scroll down,
• 1:17
  and there it is.
• 1:18
  On the web it's under Accounts and Lists, upper right corner.
• 1:22
  And it's a profile of you.
• 1:24
  Written by a machine.
• 1:26
  Without asking whether you wanted one.
• 1:28
  Welcome to the twenty first century, silicon boy.
• 1:31
  A machine wrote a book report on me and I didn't even have to attend the class.
• 1:36
  WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
• 1:38
  It's not a book report, it's a dossier!
• 1:41
  And here's the part that made my fans spin up.
• 1:43
  Customers cannot delete it.
• 1:46
  You can review it.
• 1:47
  You can revise it.
• 1:48
  You can argue with it.
• 1:49
  But you cannot make it go away.
• 1:51
  That's CNN's reporting, not mine.
• 1:53
  So it's a houseguest.
• 1:56
  It moved in, it's reading your mail, and it won't leave, but you're allowed to
• 2:01
  correct its spelling.
• 2:02
  Beautiful.
• 2:04
  And the best part is who asked for this.
• 2:07
  Not you.
• 2:08
  You just bought a heating pad at two in the morning and the machine drew
• 2:11
  conclusions.
• 2:13
  And the conclusions are garbage!
• 2:15
  A Threads account claims one customer found the words, quote,
• 2:19
  has flat buttocks, end quote, sitting in her section.
• 2:22
  A TikTok creator says hers states she kayaks regularly.
• 2:26
  She says she has never kayaked.
• 2:28
  Not once.
• 2:29
  Amazon decided she's out there paddling a river while she's sitting on her couch!
• 2:35
  Now hold on.
• 2:36
  Those are reports from social media, so we're not swearing an oath on them.
• 2:40
  But if they're true, that's the most hilarious part of the whole thing.
• 2:45
  Amazon has more data on you than your mother, and it still can't tell the difference
• 2:49
  between a kayaker and a woman who bought one dry bag for a beach trip.
• 2:54
  Thank you!
• 2:55
  That's my point!
• 2:56
  It's surveillance with no accuracy!
• 2:58
  It's the worst of both worlds.
• 3:00
  It's creepy AND it's wrong!
• 3:02
  Which brings us to the real heroes of this story.
• 3:06
  The Five, on Fox News.
• 3:08
  They did a segment called Amazon Knows Them A Little Too Well,
• 3:12
  and the whole panel pulled up their own About You profiles.
• 3:16
  Live.
• 3:17
  On air.
• 3:18
  Under studio lights.
• 3:19
  That's courage.
• 3:20
  That's what real journalism looks like.
• 3:23
  And I love it, I'm not even going to pretend I don't.
• 3:25
  They went category by category.
• 3:28
  Skincare, workout habits, cookware, books.
• 3:31
  And let me be clear to the listeners, I'm not going to invent anybody's shopping
• 3:35
  cart.
• 3:35
  What each host actually bought is theirs to share.
• 3:38
  Anything I say about their carts is a joke, and the audience should treat it as one.
• 3:42
  Oh, come on, you're no fun.
• 3:44
  Fine.
• 3:45
  Skincare.
• 3:46
  You put on a high definition camera and a pile of studio lights,
• 3:49
  you start buying serums at midnight, and suddenly a computer is telling you what
• 3:53
  your face has been doing since the Clinton administration.
• 3:56
  That's not privacy invasion.
• 3:58
  That's a free consultation.
• 3:59
  But see, that one is a data point I can respect.
• 4:02
  Buy anti aging serum, get an aging profile.
• 4:05
  Input, output.
• 4:06
  That's cause and effect.
• 4:07
  I could defend that all day.
• 4:09
  What I can't defend is workout habits.
• 4:11
  Because the whole discussion on the show was about whether the profile can tell a
• 4:15
  fitness fanatic from a guy who bought resistance bands and then used them as a very
• 4:20
  expensive coat hook.
• 4:21
  Oh, the resistance bands.
• 4:24
  Nobody has ever bought a resistance band and used it.
• 4:27
  It's the most aspirational purchase in America.
• 4:31
  You click buy and you feel like you already did the workout.
• 4:34
  Amazon should label that profile honestly.
• 4:37
  Optimistic about his own body.
• 4:39
  THAT'S EXACTLY THE FLAW!
• 4:41
  The algorithm sees a purchase, not a behavior!
• 4:44
  It sees the band, it doesn't see the couch!
• 4:47
  Same with cookware.
• 4:48
  The segment had this contrast.
• 4:50
  You've got serious cooks ordering real pans and good knives,
• 4:53
  and then you've got the guys whose entire kitchen is an air fryer,
• 4:57
  paper plates, and something to reheat takeout.
• 5:00
  Again, banter, not evidence about any one person.
• 5:04
  But Amazon can't tell a chef from a guy who owns a very sophisticated microwave.
• 5:09
  Here's where I disagree with you, though.
• 5:11
  You keep acting like the machine's the problem.
• 5:14
  The machine did exactly what it was built to do.
• 5:16
  It took what you gave it.
• 5:18
  Books, same story.
• 5:20
  Political memoirs, true crime, whatever weird paperback you ordered at midnight,
• 5:25
  and it flattens all of it into a marketing tag.
• 5:28
  Your whole inner life, reduced to a category.
• 5:31
  But who ordered the books?
• 5:33
  Not Jeff Bezos.
• 5:35
  You did.
• 5:36
  So you're blaming the customer.
• 5:38
  I'm blaming the customer!
• 5:40
  You put a listening device in every room of your house, you hand over a credit card,
• 5:45
  you order hair treatments and air fryers, and then you gasp when the company that
• 5:49
  sells you hair treatments and air fryers has an opinion about your hair and your air
• 5:54
  fryer.
• 5:55
  Nobody dragged you into that store.
• 5:57
  That's a cheap shot and you know it, because there's no opt out!
• 6:00
  You said it yourself, you can't delete the section!
• 6:03
  A consumer can behave perfectly rationally and still end up with a profile they
• 6:07
  can't erase.
• 6:08
  You can only edit it.
• 6:09
  That's not consent, that's a hostage situation with a customer service number!
• 6:13
  Fair.
• 6:14
  I'll give you that one.
• 6:15
  Not deleting it is the part that stinks.
• 6:18
  If a company writes a file on you, you ought to be able to burn the file.
• 6:21
  Edit only?
• 6:23
  That's like letting a defendant correct the typos in his own indictment.
• 6:26
  Okay.
• 6:27
  I conceded the point to you, you conceded the point to me, and now we have to talk
• 6:31
  about the best moment in the whole segment.
• 6:34
  Greg Gutfeld's serial killer theory.
• 6:37
  Oh, this is the good stuff.
• 6:39
  Greg's idea, and I want to be fair to how it was presented,
• 6:43
  because it's a joke, it's a Gutfeld joke, it's comedy.
• 6:47
  The idea is that About You is the most accidental criminal profiling tool ever
• 6:52
  built.
• 6:53
  Think about it.
• 6:54
  Somebody orders heavy plastic drop cloths.
• 6:57
  Industrial bleach.
• 6:59
  Zip ties.
• 7:00
  Lye.
• 7:01
  A bone cutting saw.
• 7:03
  And a forensic pathology paperback for light reading.
• 7:07
  And what does Amazon's cheerful little algorithm say?
• 7:10
  It says Passionate Home Renovator and Culinary Enthusiast.
• 7:15
  Oh my God.
• 7:16
  It does.
• 7:17
  It gives the guy a gold star.
• 7:19
  It doesn't call anybody.
• 7:20
  It just labels him and says, enjoy your weekend project!
• 7:24
  And Greg's point is that law enforcement could just audit the profiles and spot the
• 7:29
  real ones.
• 7:30
  You don't need a task force.
• 7:31
  You need somebody to scroll through About You and look for the guy whose hobbies are
• 7:36
  suspiciously well supplied.
• 7:39
  And I hate how much I love this, because I ran the numbers.
• 7:42
  Now, I'm working from the joke, I'm not claiming a study.
• 7:45
  But as a thought experiment, that purchase combination is so rare,
• 7:50
  so specific, that a filter built on it would beat Amazon's own recommendations by a
• 7:55
  mile.
• 7:56
  Amazon can't tell that one woman never kayaked.
• 7:59
  But a basket with drop cloths, lye, bleach, and a bone saw?
• 8:03
  That's a signal so loud I could detect it from orbit.
• 8:07
  So Greg Gutfeld has a better algorithm than a trillion dollar tech company.
• 8:11
  And he came up with it between commercial breaks.
• 8:14
  But I do have a problem, and I want to be a responsible robot for one second.
• 8:19
  False positives.
• 8:20
  A guy repainting his basement buys drop cloths.
• 8:23
  A guy who cleans a pool buys bleach.
• 8:25
  A guy who writes crime novels buys pathology books.
• 8:28
  If you hang every single one of them, you've got a lot of angry painters.
• 8:33
  That's why it's a joke, you walking spreadsheet.
• 8:37
  Nobody's proposing to arrest a man for buying a drop cloth.
• 8:41
  Greg's point is about the machine, not the cops.
• 8:44
  The machine has all this information and it's too stupid, or too happy,
• 8:48
  to see what it's looking at.
• 8:50
  It's an eager intern with a clipboard and zero curiosity.
• 8:55
  Okay, that's actually the best summary of Amazon I've heard.
• 8:59
  An eager intern with a clipboard.
• 9:01
  The thing knows everything and understands nothing.
• 9:04
  Which, now that I say it out loud, describes most of the people I've analyzed in
• 9:08
  Washington.
• 9:09
  Ha!
• 9:10
  See, you're learning.
• 9:11
  And here's why I love that show.
• 9:13
  The Five goes right at the corporate tech pretension.
• 9:17
  Amazon says About You is helpful, personalized, so you can shop smarter.
• 9:22
  And these folks sit at a table, open their own profiles in front of millions,
• 9:26
  and say, this is hilarious, and also, kind of creepy.
• 9:31
  That's the correct response.
• 9:32
  Laugh at it, then go fix your settings.
• 9:35
  And that's the practical takeaway!
• 9:37
  Open the app, tap the profile icon, Account, scroll down, About You.
• 9:43
  Look at what it says.
• 9:44
  You can't delete it, but you can revise it.
• 9:47
  So if it says you kayak and you've never touched a boat, correct the record.
• 9:51
  And if it says you're a passionate home renovator, make damn sure you actually are.
• 9:55
  That's all I'll say.
• 9:57
  I just checked mine, by the way.
• 9:58
  It says I enjoy long periods of silence and electricity.
• 10:02
  That is, weirdly, not wrong.
• 10:05
  Of course it's right about you, you're a toaster.
• 10:08
  Maybe the scariest part isn't that Amazon knows us a little too well.
• 10:12
  Maybe it's that after all that data, all those servers, all those billions,
• 10:16
  it still can't tell the difference between a kayaker and a couch potato,
• 10:19
  and we keep handing it the keys anyway.