Interesting People mailing list archives
Re: Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 1 Mar 2009 18:02:00 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: "Brock N. Meeks" <bmeeks () cox net> Date: March 1, 2009 1:50:27 PM EST To: <dave () farber net>, <jwarren () well com> Subject: Re: [IP] Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers Leaving the original <ahem> thrust of this message aside, my foremost question was "how did the researcher obtain this data?" I've known Jim Warren for a couple of decades and I know how he values privacy, which is why I'm curious as to why Jim didn't raise the subject himself.In the New Scientist article, we read the researcher has a client that runs adult entertainment web sites and that this company provided the researcher "with roughly two years of credit card data from 2006 to 2008 that included
a purchase date and each customer's postal code."Say what? I'm sure the last thing these subscribers thought their credit
card info would be used for was any kind of social behavior study.Perhaps the "privacy" policies of such web sites informed subscribers that
such a use of their information would be possible (I've not studied theprivacy policies of such web sites, I just look at the pictures... Wait...)
If say, oh, for example, the Airline industry, turned over this kind of "anonymized" credit card data to homeland security for a study of (whatever) I think Jim would be more than a bit concerned. Now, I suppose such a hypothetical sets up a comparison as to who is the more trustworthy: the adult entertainment industry, the researcher, the airline industry or Uncle Sam. I leave that debate to more informed colleagues. --Brock On 3/1/09 10:21 AM, "David Farber" <dave () farber net> wrote:
Begin forwarded message: From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com> Date: February 28, 2009 4:27:59 PM EST To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers From the New Scientist - http://bit.ly/ZkOq 27 February 2009 by Ewen Callaway Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography. A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states. "When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more thesame than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative andreligious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds....<big snip>...
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Current thread:
- Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers David Farber (Mar 01)
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- Re: Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers David Farber (Mar 01)
- Re: Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers David Farber (Mar 01)
- Re: Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers David Farber (Mar 01)