Amazon's recommendation engine has long used purchase history to personalize shopping, but a recent viral post highlights how blunt those inferences can be. According to TechCrunch, a Threads user found that Amazon's customer profile described her as having 'flat buttocks' — a label she guessed came from her purchase of butt-scrunch leggings. The post drew over a million views in under a day, prompting others to check their own profiles.
Amazon's 'About you' page lists assumptions based on shopping behavior, ranging from benign interests like vinyl records and ceramics to more intimate physical attributes. The company also infers things like whether a customer owns a Shark robot vacuum or shops from women's departments. The feature is accessible from the shopping preferences section of account settings, where users can also add their own interests and dietary preferences.
While the example is humorous, the underlying point is serious: retailers are building detailed consumer profiles from transactional data, and those profiles are not always visible until users dig into settings. TechCrunch notes that none of its staffers had anything as affronting as 'flat buttocks,' but the episode underscores how much Amazon knows — and how jarring it can be when that knowledge is laid out in plain text.