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Comment by hdevalence | Hacker News Reader

Why is it acceptable for Amazon to be able to record every time someone turns a page?

When you read part of an ebook, set it aside, and come back, you want it to remember what page you were on. You also want this to work if you switch between devices. It is technically difficult to make this feature work without letting Amazon also know what page you're on.

It is technically dift to make this feature work without letting Amazon also know what page you're on.

Not since encryption has been invented. Firefox syncs currently open tabs and other stuff without letting Mozilla know about them.

Encryption is a waste of complexity and battery life here.

Firefox encrypts your history and open tabs because those are sensitive.

A page number in a book is not.

But they don't only sync page numbers, but also written annotations (and bookmarks and highlights).

And regarding battery life, even a CPU much weaker than the one used by the original Kindle can encrypt at 1MB/s, so encrypting a couple of KB is absolutely negligible.

A detailed history of what pages of what books I'm reading and when is certainly as sensitive as browser history, if not moreso.

This only applies to Kindle Unlimited books, aka they're Netflix-like service that loans you books as long as your subscription is active.

It's about as acceptable that Netflix knows exactly what minutes and seconds of any streaming videos I've watched.

Because it's the device they're offering, the version of the content they're offering, and the service they're offering.

If you disagree with this practice, you're free to not accept the offer. It's as simple as that.

Just because people are free to refuse it doesn't mean we must find it acceptable and refrain from criticizing it.

Of course you're free to criticize it, but declaring it "acceptable" or "unacceptable" without justification isn't particularly helpful.

If you disagree with this practice, you're free to choose from one the competitors which engage in the same collection activities.

It doesn't make it acceptable.

No, it is acceptable.

See? Random people declaring something acceptable or unacceptable without justification isn't particularly helpful. If you want to explain why you find it unacceptable, that might actually be interesting to someone.

I don't mind Amazon knowing how far into a book I've read, if it allows them to better compensate the authors of quality books and helps them penalize the authors gaming the system. However, if you want to keep your reading habits private, I can sympathize with that. An opt-in/opt-out option might be a good compromise in this case.

By your logic drug, arms and organ trade also become acceptable.

As for Amazon, don't you think it is enough to make first, say, 10% pages free? If other 90% is junk then there are reviews for that.

Kindle has always synched your last "read to" spot across devices. It's a feature.

Acceptable in what sense? Users know about it and accept it, therefore it must be acceptable. I don't think you can opt out, though.

Sure you can. Don't have our Kindle connected to the Internet while you're reading. Unless I'm missing something?

You'd have to never connect your Kindle to the Internet ever again, when you re-connect it uploads the page position for all your books.

I wish they would at least share that data with me. For example I always read before going to sleep, so with that data I could track my sleep habits.

Agreed. I'm much, much more amenable to data collection when I can use that data myself however I want.

They also record the amount of time spent on each page and use that to predict the total reading time remaining.

Privacy issues aside, there are a number of really amazing tools Amazon could provide authors/editors/publishers if they were willing to share this data with them. The ability to pinpoint where readers either skip ahead or pick up the pace would offer editors a remarkable glimpse inside how readers approach a given story. It'd be even more useful if those insights could then be applied to help with editing unpublished manuscripts in the future. Compared to the present, where editors are forced to make what are often judgment calls on plotting, having hard data to look at would be a remarkable benefit.

They already know what books you're reading (because most of them have been purchased through amazon), and you're worried about them knowing what page you're on?

I am worried that an action as unimportant, intimate and personal as the turn of a page in a book, which previously required no expenditure of mental energy whatever, suddenly becomes an action with potentially global consequences. A passive action - reading something - becomes an active action (causing money to be sent to the author). I feel this is a fundamental change in the nature of the interaction.

In terms of data collection, I think this one is actually pretty harmless.

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