The carrier on Friday said it launched a media platform to serve travelers personalized advertisements on seat-back screens and in its app, among other platforms, as it seeks to leverage customer data.
Ads themselves are an insult considering the cost of travel. But they’re insulting us all over the place on shit we pay for.
But personalized ads in view of strangers is full-on absurdly an insult to privacy. Get bent, I hope someone finds a way to display the guitar video and song for the whole plane.
I was just pumping gas the other day, and while I’m at it there’s this cellphone speaker music that starts really loudly, like the phone is at 400% audio.
Motherfucking screen started playing an ad I couldn’t skip. Soon theyre just going to loop audible ads everywhere we go, in public spaces.
Since then I’ve avoided this brand of gas station and affiliates, but I won’t be able to hide for long.
you can press one of the buttons, if it’s one of those with the eight buttons (4 on each side of the screen. for me it was the second button down from the top on the right side. i only had to press it once to mute, but i heard u might have to press up to 4 times
doesn’t always work unfortunately
Or worse, how about some horny singles in my area with moans for the whole plane to hear
As you traverse the continent, the same “single” appears looking for love in every town you fly over.
Edit: then you’re over Nevada and ads switch to “Welcome back! We missed you at Bobs Brothel and Budget Backrubs, swing on by for our returning members discount.”
Yeah that would suck. Also how much is that discount?
6.9%
Ni.ce
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Oh good. Because if there’s a profile of my advertising preferences out there, it knows that when I am forced to view an ad, I look away from the screen, turn off the volume, sigh dramatically, and say “Fuck <this product> right in the ass.”
Personalize away.
You & me both, friend.
I work for a company that does marketing, and they are seriously struggling right now because TV and Social media ads are getting more expensive, while at the same time becoming less effective.
Yes. This is true.
Because ads suck and people hate them. Whats the new way? Be good at what you do so people talk about your brand. Show up in searches when I’m looking for you. That’s it.
Astonishing! Who would have thought that be the case? Actually doing the work instead of paying your way to success? That cant be correct! /s
God forbid the enormous amount of money be poured into the actual product rather than spamming an inferior one.
Naw, they’ll find some way to “incentivize” (punish you for not) viewing ads and enforce it with eye tracking.
This is why you bring tape and a few pieces of paper in your carry-on
This article is short on details but what I really want to know is WHERE is that data coming from and how the fuck does United have access to it?! Also, a follow-up question would be how does one ensure they don’t get access to that data? Is that even possible anymore?
The “media network” is https://kinectivemedia.com/ and they have a link for US customers to opt out that leads to here https://uniteddigital.iad1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_88OQmAbr20oeHn8 but of course you’re going to want to also read Qualtrics privacy policy before using their services https://www.qualtrics.com/privacy-statement/
Clicking https://kinectivemedia.com/ privacy policy links to https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/customer-data-privacy-policy.html
They collect the usual stuff you use for travel like name, address, payment details, biometrics, I.D etc and also
Information collected in your use of our mobile application(s) includes, but is not limited to:
- With your consent, your pinpointed physical location information from technologies like GPS, Wi-Fi, or cell tower proximity (geo-location tracking)
- With your consent, while at or near certain airports in the U.S., your pinpointed physical location will be tracked continuously to provide you location-based offers, services and other information. For more information, see the Location Services FAQ located on the side menu of the United App;
- Your domain name;
- Device ID or alternative ID where required by the platform provider;
- Electronic data concerning operating systems and computing devices/browser, including types;
- Features you use and links you click;
- Amount of time spent in the application;
- Installs and uninstalls;
- Transaction details and history.
We may combine this information with information that we already have collected about you.
We collect information about you from third parties. If you make a reservation through a travel agent, we will obtain your travel information from that agent. We may also obtain information about you from our marketing partners, advertisers and other third parties.
We primarily use your information, including personal information, to provide our services to you and to fulfill your requests. In certain circumstances, such as for advertising purposes, we combine your information with other information that we have about you, that is publicly available and/or that we have obtained from third parties (either individually or in the aggregate)
We also use your information for the following purposes:
For marketing and advertising. United uses your information, consistent with applicable law, individually, in the aggregate, and/or combined with demographic information that we maintain or collect from third parties, for marketing and advertising purposes (via email, direct mail, telephone, web or other electronic advertising) and to send you news and newsletters. Specifically, information that we collect about you may be used to send you email, direct mail, or telephone communications about offers from United, its partners or other third parties, that might be of interest to you (please see the section on Disclosing your information below and the section on Changing your marketing preferences below). We also use your information to determine appropriate advertising channels and venues and to place ads on such channels and venues, including placing advertising on social networking sites.
I’m sure the money they make from this will subsidies flight costs that will be passed on to the end user for cheaper flight!
no I heard that they will increase salaries!
I think they can retain customers’ past flight records and maybe list of media played in flights. That said it’s almost guaranteed some ad marketing corpo is behind, and EULA is always vague enough to allow sharing external party…
Data brokers sell the info. Its hardly private
You seriously can’t understand how they would have personal data on you that every other company already has?
My hope is that there wouldn’t be anything more personal about it than age, sex, and location… But I am sure there’s a lot more that even an airline (businesses that tend to be decades behind in systems they run) can get
Probably when you book from browser cookies?
You could get around this but 99% of people won’t.
We need augmented reality glasses with uBlock Origin now more them ever. Fuck United Airlines and the ad-riddled plane they flew in on.
You mean a piece of cardboard and duct tape
XReal glasses shut everything off and mirrors your phone already.
So we can see ads 24/7 in every space?
Yes, perfect, you get it.
A couple years ago I paid what I felt was quite a bit of money for good seats on a plane. Then they started playing ads on the screen in front of me during take off. There was no way to turn off the screen and it literally felt like this screen was being thrust my face that I had no co trol over. Airline is the worst way to travel and they are only going to get more predatory.
Post-it notes. One pack is enough for like a third of the plane.
Which airline?
Air Canada
I flew Icelandic air recently and they had A 4 minute long ad playing with no way to skip or mute that had to play before the entertainment system was available. It played a soon as you turned it on!
I had to unplug and look away for 4+ minutes
I highly doubt you actually couldn’t turn it off if it was during flight. Also you could just not look at the screen, same as with any other ads you see in your daily life constantly.
k
That sort of thing’s not my bag, baby!
WTF man, I pay for the tickets and now I have to watch ads???
Afaik it’s a thin margin sector. I’ve even heard of pilots paying to fly during bad periods.
We paid for cable and streaming services too. They’ll milk us to dust, then run ads on the remaining pile.
I guess the best way now is to download a 4K movies onto a laptop and bring it with you on your trip
ability to reach engaged customers
Not sure that being stuck to a spot in a tube you can’t just escape (and easily live) from is the same as “engaged”.
not flying united anymore, thanks for the tip
“unfortunately your In-Flight Engagement Actions ™️ did not meet the requirements to qualify you for in flight perks such as entertainment and meals”
“Please ensure you are looking directly at the screen while ads are playing to accumulate In-Flight Engagement Actions ™️”
Coming soon to an airline near you.
FUCK THAT
But how can they access a passenger’s digital profile?
Oh please. It’s 2024, and you’re still wondering how a company knows who you are? The plane knows who is sitting on which seat, unless you change seats, and the airline has, at least: you email, your credit card, name, address, gender, age, nacionality, origin and destination. From there, they can ask a number of data brokers for more information like purchase habits, health, wheather you have children, your field of work, etc etc. Even if it’s one’s of those flights without assigned seats, there are cameras in the cabin. It would be pretty easy to face ID who is sitting where.
That’s what I wanted to know. Well total surveillance is slowly becoming a thing. Having multiple digital identities and using privacy-respecting services makes more and more sense every day
The problem is that you can’t fly anonymous. They will always know exactly who you are. But yeah, you can at least try to limit the information on you, but still.
I believe you can use your “official identity” only for stuff that requires identification (like border crossing, business and flights) and create another one for general internet usage and stuff like that. It’s much harder in countries that require ID to buy a SIM card though
I think the whole of Europe requires ID for SIM cards these days.
It makes sense why they want to do it but it’s really sad. I think you still can use the majority of privacy-respecting internet if you host your own email (so you don’t need a phone number to register it) but it basically reverts the internet to the 90s because you need knowledge to set up a server and it doesn’t let you use almost all of the popular messenger apps, making usage of the “official identity” mandatory to contact most of the people and therefore lose privacy when the situation gets worse
I wouldn’t mind the ID if providers were regulated properly and couldn’t harvest user data, but naturally that’s not the case 😢 even governments expect to be able to request customer data.
Slowly? It’s already here. Been here for some years even
Not really. Some stuff can still remain private and there are useful privacy-respecting services. I believe it can get much worse
I take small pleasure in the fact that any ads I see I have no intention of ever purchasing their shit. I would actively tell people to avoid it as well. We literally have ads shoved in our faces 24/7 and the amount I have after bills and shit is already earmarked so the ad companies can go shove a baseball bat up their ass.
Last time I had my phone plugged in to charge it, I noticed that it wasn’t on charge mode exclusively, but it was actually on File Share Mode.
Now I don’t know if the airplane was able to instigate that connection mode, or why my phone was on that mode, but it did concern me incredibly that they were able to browse the files on my phone, when I just wanted it to charge.
Well that is obvious. Btw many phones have file share mode as the default now. Make sure you change it. But how about other cases? I don’t really understand. Are digital profiles officially tied to the ID and plane tickets now?
Or do you have an UA credit card?
Oh so they just use the data from the credit card like age and gender? It’s still bad but not that much of a problem as if they had access to all Google, Apple, Meta and other kinds of analytics and behavior data. Though I heard some banks do buy that data so I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave it to the airline. Well I know the era of total surveillance is coming. The EU may fight it but the US doesn’t seem to have any desire to do so. That’s unfortunate but only a big amount of active people can change it. Also what is an UA card?
That’s why you should use “usb condom” when charing your phone from untrusted power source.
They know your name. That’s usually enough.
And your email, identity document, photo, payment method… lots of fun data points to boil it down to a demographic of one person.
I would assume it’s mostly ads for tourist places or local attractions at your destination
But the article says the ads are personalized. I really suspect it goes deeper than just the destination
All I can say…
Booooooo!
I’m going to bring tape and construction paper to cover it up. Double sided sticky tape
Super glue seems appropriate 🤔
Skip the construction paper, just use a magazine
Ads for replacements for items in your luggage they broke?
The whole experience sounds like an ad for Greyhound or Amtrak.
