As you may have heard, Amazon is getting into the Pharmacy market and this scares the shit out of me. For anyone that knows me, they know that I tend to be freaky about the information that I share. I don’t even give my real name when I order at stores. It freaks me out when they yell my name out loud.
I was recently listening to the Pivot podcast (thank you Dara Treseder) and they were talking about Amazon getting into the pharmacy business. They were excited about it because now Amazon can look at what you eat (Whole Foods), what you purchase (their credit card) and what you take (Amazon Pharmacy) and make recommendations on your life. The scariest line “it knows you before you know yourself”.
The pharmacy companies have not innovated and are getting pushed out of their market and I won’t deny it, but the fact that this is coming at the price of my privacy is not worth it to me. I refuse to have an alexa, I refuse to make every purchase on my Amazon CC, and I refuse to make every purchase through Amazon. I don’t want incredibly large organizations to get me. Why would I want them to know me better than myself? I want to take the time to know myself, to learn how other people have learned about themselves and to take charge of my own life. Example… sure you could ask Alexa about a local dog trainer OR you could do what I did this AM and open my laptop, search (via DuckDuckGo) for dog trainers and ended up finding out about Wim Hof and now I am incredibly fascinated about breathing and cold water showers. See what happens when you take charge of what is happening around you verses letting a big company tell you what you should. Making them my north star in life is risky.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that I don’t use Amazon, I understand and appreciate the convenience. I want to benefit from their service but I don’t utilize them for all my life and I take notice of what I allow companies know about me… All I ask is to think about their privacy over convenience. What is your limit as to how much they know about you? Some of it we cannot escape but some of it needs to be separated.
“Anyone that doesn’t innovate their product, is finished” … now finally… truth
#1 by Joe Cupano on December 29, 2020 - 17:41
Privacy has been dying for a long time. At first it was credit agencies, then store discount cards, and then accelerated with the commercial Internet. Mobile data quickly erased the “gaps” between the static points of data capture in-between. “Privacy is Dead, get over it” to quote Steve Rambam. The darker concern is how much self-censorship of independent thought and fresh ideas is as a result of people trying to curate what privacy they have left.
#2 by Erin K. Banks on January 1, 2021 - 15:56
I don’t agree that privacy is dead, that is assuming that changes can not be made. I believe that there will be an event or occurrence that will make people rethink the convenience they have gained. It may not be in my lifetime but I do not think we have to continue down a dead path. We will someday learn from our “mistakes” and make the appropriate changes. It has already happened in some countries.