https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1589700721121058817.html
"So I became known as the mobile logs guy. And that sets the stage for why I
was pulled into a Sales conversation. Twitter was on its death bed and was
desperate for money. A large telco wanted to pay us to log signal strength data
in N. America and send it to them.
My plan was to aggregate signal strength by carrier / by location. I worked
with Data Science to find a granularity – minimum area size and minimum
distinct users per area – that would preserve anonymity even when combined with
other sources of data (differential privacy).
When we sent this data to the telco they said the data was useless. They
switched their request and said they want to be able to tell how many of our
users are entering their competitors’ stores.
A bit sketchier, but maybe workable in a privacy respecting way?
We ran an alternative by the telco. They didn’t like it and were frustrated. So
was Sales. I was asked to go to telco’s HQ and figure out exactly what they
want.
The subsequent request was absurd.
I wound up meeting with a Director who came in huffing and puffing.
The Director said “We should know when users leave their house, their commute
to work, and everywhere they go throughout the day. Anything less is useless.
We get a lot more than that from other tech companies.”
I responded with some variant of “No fucking way”.
There was no universe where I was going to help sell granular identifiable user
location data."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
