We live, as I’m sure someone’s chief growth officer has recently boasted on an earnings call, in a golden age for data capture. Jeff Bezos knows what I buy, read and watch; Mark Zuckerberg will be aware that I recently sold a car transport box for a medium-sized dog. I’ve been ruthlessly conditioned into clicking Accept All Cookies every time I want to check how much cumin my favourite chilli needs, and I simply accept that my washing machine is probably spying on me.
All of which raises the obvious question: with all of these terabytes of personal information available, why can’t advertisers try to sell me something I might actually like? Every time I swipe open my Kindle, for instance, I dismiss an advert for a bestselling trilogy called something like Ruthless Faerie Werewolves or Evil Mafia Hunk, even though I have never once – in my life – read a book where the main character could be described as a “morally grey shadow daddy”. I stopped watching Stranger Things after one season, and yet Netflix, which should know this better than anyone, has suggested the stage-play version to me so many times that I can recite its ad from memory. Amazon seems to have given up on predicting my needs and advertises the same one-off purchases that I’ve just bought, while Reddit and X want me to buy software products that I genuinely don’t understand.
