Hi Pete, I'm the Executive Director of AttentionTrust--thanks for the mention. I think you're right that it's easy to get overly paranoid very quickly in this space. Left to their own devices, most (but not all) of these companies would probably use this data to improve our collective user experience. But there are still some good reasons why there's a need for AttentionTrust.
First, our individual user experience will be much, much better if we're able to capture and transport our data across all the platforms we visit--from website to website, and ultimately online and off. That requires a user-centric approach--not an ask-each-vendor-for-our-data approach--and that's what AttentionTrust is advocating.
And I don't think it's paranoid to assume that, left to their own devices, some companies won't have users' best interests at heart. Even if they're not acting maliciously, some of them will act thoughtlessly, and our experience won't be improved, it'll be degraded. We'll have more leverage to insure that this doesn't happen if we work through an entity like AttentionTrust to both develop the ability to gather our own data AND encourage anyone gathering users' attention data to respect users' right to own and manage that data.
Thanks again--I look forward to hearing more from you on all this.
All Comments
I'm the Executive Director of AttentionTrust--thanks for the mention. I think you're right that it's easy to get overly paranoid very quickly in this space. Left to their own devices, most (but not all) of these companies would probably use this data to improve our collective user experience. But there are still some good reasons why there's a need for AttentionTrust.
First, our individual user experience will be much, much better if we're able to capture and transport our data across all the platforms we visit--from website to website, and ultimately online and off. That requires a user-centric approach--not an ask-each-vendor-for-our-data approach--and that's what AttentionTrust is advocating.
And I don't think it's paranoid to assume that, left to their own devices, some companies won't have users' best interests at heart. Even if they're not acting maliciously, some of them will act thoughtlessly, and our experience won't be improved, it'll be degraded. We'll have more leverage to insure that this doesn't happen if we work through an entity like AttentionTrust to both develop the ability to gather our own data AND encourage anyone gathering users' attention data to respect users' right to own and manage that data.
Thanks again--I look forward to hearing more from you on all this.
Ed