Amazon Knows How Many Times You Read that Sex Scene, You Pervert | Hacker News Reader

Amazon Knows How Many Times You Read that Sex Scene, You Pervert

betabeat.com

38 pointsiProject18 comments

Is it just me or should the title be "Amazon Knows How Many Times You Highlighted That Sex Scene"?

The article at BB and the WSJ never discusses Amazon tracking reading habits, however it does mention that the Nook collects this data. Betabeat should be ashamed of themselves, the title is much worse than harmless linkbaiting...

Well, which headline will get more views? That's the only explanation needed here.

Netflix knows how often I replayed the first 5 minutes of The Invisible Man, too. :) This is more concerning:

https://kindle.amazon.com/post/192I0Q7B1DRFJ

Apparently notes and highlights can be made public, with your name attached no less, and they are indexed by search engines. As soon as I saw that I rummaged through my Kindle settings (app on iPad, v 2.85) but couldn't find an option either way.

It looks like this page on their website allows you to control public-ness:

https://kindle.amazon.com/your_reading

It's not like Amazon is making any secret of this: https://kindle.amazon.com/most_popular/highlights_recently

Speaking of which, I wonder what to make of the fact that 23 of the top 25 highlighted passages are from the Hunger Games series. Are they that much more popular than everything else in the Kindle catalog? Or are their readers just more likely to use the highlighting feature?

I assume it's because they're both popular and free to borrow via the lending service if you're an Amazon Prime member.

IIRC, up until a few months ago, the free Jane Austen e-books dominated the top highlighted passages.

On the Kindle best-seller list (http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-eBooks/zgbs/...) the Hunger Games books are currently at #10, #12, and #13, but they've been in the top 100 consistently for over two years (674 to 775 days, depending on the book), so I wouldn't be surprised if they're even higher on the all-time sales list.

Calling me a pervert is redundant. All human beings are perverts. At the end of the day we just want to see attractive perfect human specimens naked.

You don't believe there are degrees of pervertedness?

I wonder if pervertedness means anything. Why is it seen as "bad"?

Perhaps there's an evolutionary motive, a basic biological reason for it. I suppose an obsession with sex is not always in nature's interests.

More importantly, why is being sexual perverted?

It's not, unless you're in the United States.

99% or so of humans experience sexual attraction. I have a couple friends who don't experience sexual attraction. If "pervert" insinuates "weird", then they're weird for not being weird... Isn't our sex-phobia funny.

Also, I/we needn't have just one fundamental motivation. I would also kind of die if my sense of curiosity was taken away from me. That doesn't make me better or worse than uncurious people, just different.

If "highlighting a sex paragraph" makes one a pervert, then "watching a movie on serial killer" makes one a murderer?

This title is pure link bait. I wish there are blogs/publications that present facts as facts, and analyze them rationally, without using these cheap tricks.

You know how sometimes you buy a second hand book and some jerk who owned it previously went through and underlined every second sentence, presumably for an assignment or some such?

The default behaviour on the kindle seems to be to show me underlined phrases from everybody on every book. I love the device, but was supremely happy to learn how to switch that junk off.

Combine this with the recently covered technology that determines user's pulse by using the camera.

Is there any way to disable this?

maybe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4184957

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