[nedrocks]

I'm certain this type of data is tracked on most devices. In an optimistic outlook it drives a better customer experience because AMZN can capture trends in data to discover things like "oh people change the page forward too frequently accidentally" and track down root causes. In a pessimistic sense it can help target you based on how long you spend reading specific content and which content you highlight as a reader.

Generally every product I am aware of tracks interaction based data such as where someone clicks or taps and what context they are in. Consider things like `utm` parameters which suffix most links people click to determine the context they clicked on something and what they clicked on.

I do not see this as sinister. I imagine somewhere in settings one can turn this feature off but I don't know for sure.

* Disclaimer: I am currently employed at a subsidiary of Amazon. These views are my own.

[luckylion]

> "oh people change the page forward too frequently accidentally"

Would you need to log every page turn with every book and time and date for something like that though? Wouldn't that be a more specific event like "turns page forward, turns page back within x seconds"? This sounds more like "we don't know what we might use this data for, but it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it ... who knows, maybe we can deduct some profile from knowing how quick the user read through that chapter in that book" than legitimate use cases.

[nedrocks]

This assumes the client can keep state in a more reasonable way than a server can piece it together. Definitely a stateful event is more powerful but is likely more lossy.

From what I've seen tracking simple events and then piecing them together en masse tends to show up significantly more frequently.

[luckylion]

Sure, I mean, it's also easier because you don't have to know the questions you might want answered.

Given the very private nature of the data ("he read Marx and Mao, and read some sections carefully!"), vacuuming up as much as possible doesn't sound like a good idea. Add to that the almost chronic inability of large corporations to protect data, they really should start treating data collection as a liability rather than an opportunity.