Tesla's Cybertruck, SAT Data For Sale
Tesla reinvents America's favorite vehicle. Want SAT and DMV data? Buy it.
The Teardown
Tuesday :: November 26th, 2019
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I Like The Cybertruck
In case you hadn’t heard, Tesla unveiled a new vehicle last Thursday, the Cybertruck. The truck is the amalgamation of significant intellectual thinking about different types of triangles, Santoku kitchen knives, and what those two items look like when glued together on top of wheels straight from a Transformers movie.
I don’t follow Tesla and didn’t know about the unveiling until my Twitter feed erupted with opinions bordering on pure disgust and devoted fandom. Jason Fried, CEO of Basecamp, is a fan:
Fried’s language is a tad lofty, but his positivity and excitement are echoed in a comment on Y Combinator’s Hacker News board:
As a truck guy who has owned a lot of trucks and currently owns a 2017 Ram 2500 CTD 4x4 and a Land Rover Defender 110, I'm telling you right now: this is going to kill it. This is the suburban status item of 2022.
I want to buy this right now. This has nearly the towing capacity of my Ram and will smoke my wife's Audi on the track.
Make no mistake, America consumers love trucks. We buy millions of them every year. We acquire cars that look like trucks (here). Their larger exhaust systems allow for delightful weekend afternoon pollution parties collectively known as rolling coal. We’re also stuck with them, and buy mostly those from American manufacturers as tax incentives and other regulations heavily favor our home-grown brands.
I like trucks, too. I voraciously consumed articles from the defunct Off-Road Magazine in high school, partially inspired by a thoroughly customized Chevy C/K born somewhat like this example. I liked to tinker, just like teenage boys, and the Chevy seemed like the perfect learning vehicle. Ultimately, I cruised the mean streets of Boston suburbia in an equally macho beige 1989 Honda Accord LX, complete with a moon-roof. I might one day buy a truck.
Putting aside serious and valid doubts about Tesla’s business today and in the future, I agree with much of the positive public commentary: the Cybertruck exemplifies refreshed thinking, even if it ugly to many. Americans will continue buying their trucks, truck-variants, and truck-looking cars, and I suspect plenty will pivot during the buying process and consider Tesla’s latest entry. The truck supposedly tows at least as much as a Ford F-150, but towing capacity is just a magic trick to many. Lots of trucks and their cousins — SUVs — are lifestyle or abhorrently material rather than utility or value purchases. A “truck” that accelerates from standstill to sixty miles-per-hour in less than three seconds appeals to lots of folks with something to prove, something to hide, or an actual interest in high-performing vehicles.
Pathetic Handling Of SAT Test Data
It's a given that advertisers sell or use your data in ways you don't know about. The most diligent anti-tracker who uses VPNs, isn't on Facebook or Instagram, and uses numerous dummy email addresses when signing into websites isn't completely immune. There are too many ways that businesses track individuals to catch all of them comprehensively. To make the point stick, here are some simple statistics from an iOS app called Guardian that helps manage and block traffic leaving my phone (from November 9th through today):
Blocked or detected traffic from 459 location queries (i.e. some app or website wants to know the GPS location of your phone)
Blocked or detected traffic from 2,097 data trackers (i.e. an app or a website uses a piece of code to extract various other types of data points like email, phone model, and many more)
What we don’t often think about is the data we provide — willingly if not unknowingly — to other organizations deemed purely necessary or practical in nature — the College Board is one of those organizations. It’s the not-for-profit organization tasked with administering and managing standardized tests — most notably the SAT.
The College Board’s funding comes from two sources: grants from organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and fees charged to institutions in return for managing the various components of the testing preparation, delivery, and scoring process. The WSJ’s reporting illuminates another more nefarious source of capital: selling testing data to universities.
Two key problems arise from the sale of data:
Universities incentivize the College Board to provide data because it helps generate more fees from the actual business — test preparation. This incentive is counter to what you likely believe their real motivation should be: creating and administering unique and fair exams
More problematically, universities are incentivized to purchase and use the data because it allows them to manage their acceptance rates to artificially low-levels. Many elite universities are marketing machines, extending their reach by describing a scarcity that may not actually exist
Ultimately, many prospective students are the real losers (emphasis mine):
The recruitment pitches didn’t help Ms. Johnson [prospective student], but they did benefit the universities that sent them. Colleges rise in national rankings and reputation when they show data suggesting they are more selective. They can do that by rejecting more applicants, whether or not those candidates ever stood a chance. Some applicants, in effect, become unknowing pawns.
Feeding this dynamic is the College Board, the New York nonprofit that owns the SAT, a test designed to level the college-admissions playing field.
The board is using the SAT as the foundation for another business: selling test-takers’ names and personal information to universities.
That has helped schools inflate their applicant pools and rejection rates. Those rejection rates have amplified the perception of exclusivity that colleges are eager to reinforce, pushing students to invest more time and money in preparing for and retaking exams College Board sells. Colleges say the data helps them reach a diverse pool of students they might have otherwise missed.
“The top 10% of universities don’t need to do this. They are buying some students’ names who don’t have a great chance of getting in,” said Terry Cowdrey, an enrollment consultant for universities and Vanderbilt University’s acting dean of undergraduate admission in 1996 and 1997. “Then the kids say, ‘well why did you recruit me if you weren’t going to let me in?’ They do it to increase the number of applications; you’ve got to keep getting your denominator up for your admit rate.”
Pathetic.
It’s Not Just SAT Data
I don’t need to belabor the point: most people aren’t thinking about data they provide to organizations not commonly with marketing, like the College Board.
Unfortunately, SAT data is hardly the only trove of information sold by an aggregator organization. Some of you own cars and occasionally spend far too long at the DMV. The DMV, like the College Board, collects lots of sensitive information, and you likely assumed this data remained inside the virtual walls of the organization.
In numerous states, you’re wrong:
California earned $51M selling DMV information during fiscal year 2017-2018.
Vermont collected $15M selling DMV data during the last four years.