[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.