A Netflix Tweet Showed How Creepy and Intrusive the Internet Can Be

When you're on the internet, utilizing a service, it is watching you. Facebook can see every political post, opinion on a product, and smiling selfie you put-up. Amazon is aware of any item you ever bought and has data to show trends and recommend other stuff to you. That porn site  you gave your credit card information to for a couple months complies data from users so it realizes you clearly have a fetish, and Netflix knows every single thing you've watched, and how many times you've watched it. When you're on the internet you don't have privacy as soon as you click that, "Agree," button on a website so you can shop there/view its videos/etc. People try not to think about this, but a Tweet from Netflix (oh, Twitter knows a lot about you too) recently made the lack of privacy clear.

Netflix jokingly said the other day how it noticed a number of people had watched the cheesy Hallmark movie, "A Christmas Prince," a number of days in a row. It was meant as a joke and some people giggled and promptly moved on. Other people thought, "Wait, Netflix can know exactly what a person is watching that easily?" and started feeling very uncomfortable. It was creepy--no matter what Netflix claims--and clearly raises a number of privacy concerns. After all, a number of people at Netflix most likely can see what any subscriber does. I don't know if this could ever be used to blackmail someone or something else nefarious ("Give us $100,000 or everyone will know about your terrible taste in sitcoms, Senator!), but it just gives people a feeling of unease. It is kind of funny though, because so often we ignore how little privacy we get when it comes to the internet--it is as intrusive as any service can be. I'm not saying this is a good thing, it just kind of is a sad fact, and a simple joke-Tweet from Netflix reminded people just how uncomfortably little you can keep to yourself in regards to the World Wide Web.