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Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

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Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#51

Post by ewYuck »

teekert wrote: post #32
driverdan wrote: post #6

> Governmental control is nothing compared to what Google is up to. Governments have guns, Google does not. I'm not saying we should ignore corporate surveillance but there is a big difference.

Also, Google is opt-in (to a degree, perhaps using Tor/blockers/anti-tracker should be called opt-out), The government presents not options.

This "opt-in" bullshit needs to take a dirt nap.

Claims like: you asked for it, it's your own fault, and on and on.

You know you're full of shit.

You're part of that same group of people who say: America, love it or leave it. You have the option to speak English or get the fuck out.

It's like hearing someone tell me that I can vote nuclear weapons out of existence. Oh really?

I've opted into mandatory JavaScript support, and opaque, minified JS which is required for so many sites, and I can stop server side exchanges of behavioral data, and I can just walk away from everything happening, and live in a cave, and I can opt into being a luddite instead?

I suppose I opted into the planes that fly overhead too. My omission of any actions against air traffic represent my token assent tons of aluminum circling overhead 24 hours a day. Right?

Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#52

Post by actuallyNo »

teekert wrote: post #32
driverdan wrote: post #6

> Governmental control is nothing compared to what Google is up to. Governments have guns, Google does not. I'm not saying we should ignore corporate surveillance but there is a big difference.

Also, Google is opt-in (to a degree, perhaps using Tor/blockers/anti-tracker should be called opt-out), The government presents not options.

This "opt-in" bullshit needs to take a dirt nap.

Claims like: you asked for it, it's your own fault, and on and on.

You know you're full of shit.

You're part of that same group of people who say: America, love it or leave it. You have the option to speak English or get the fuck out.

It's like hearing someone tell me that I can vote nuclear weapons out of existence. Like I can solve all my problems with my own little boycott! Oh really?

I've opted into mandatory JavaScript support, and opaque, minified JS which is required for so many sites to even work (cross-origin policies aside), and I can stop server-side exchanges of behavioral data, and I can just walk away from everything happening around me, and live in a cave, and I can opt into being a luddite instead?

I suppose I opted into the planes that fly overhead too. My omission of any actions against air traffic represent my token assent to having tons of aluminum circling overhead 24 hours a day. Right?

Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#53

Post by mirimir »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #50
mirimir wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that they work very well across languages. What Google ads page?

It won't work for you if you have no google account, you have to log in and go to http://www.google.com/ads/preferences , so here's a story about it with images: http://uk.businessinsider.com/what-google-knows-about-you-20... When it was doing the rounds a couple of years back plenty of people were commenting how often it got age and gender wrong. Sometimes it was widly inaccurate on interests too.

Thank you. It's been a while since I had a Gmail account.

Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#54

Post by nickik »

nitrogen wrote: post #15
themartorana wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Force is the ultimate form of influence against which there is only force to stand against it. I can stop using Google products tomorrow without the need for a gun or explanation. The article is sowing some serious FUD. Everything is engaged in behavior modification. That's the basic point of products and services. Watch more/better/less/no TV. Exercise more. Eat healthier. Stand up at work. Reward yourself with a ca…

Optimization of consumer behavior through endless A/B testing optimizes behavior in favor of the corporations, not the society or the individual. So one of my bigger worries is that these optimization strategies will lead society into a dead end local maximum where everyone is perfectly conditioned to consume for the good of the corporation, when we could have taken a different path resulting in a more egalitarian ou…

This is discussion that has happened in economics for a long time. I am still utterly inconvinced of the pure power of advertsing. Sure it has a big influence, but its not like google is so good that everybody is just a mindless zombi perfectly conditioned to buy whatever they show me. Even if that were the case, Im not clear why this would lead to less egalitarian outcome.

Your second point is in conflict with the first. If they want me to consume as much as possible, they have to show me what I want. If they want to influence broad culture they have to show me what they want me to see. If it is by algorithmic accident, then its like all cultural devlopment. Its all accidents, nobody planes the evolution of culuture, google, facebook and reddit have already changed culture and will continue to do so.

You points are a small worry, compared to something like the prospect of 1984.

Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#55

Post by scholia »

themartorana wrote: post #14
clouddrover wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Force is only one form of influence. As recently posted on HN, search engines have a strong influence over their users' thinking and decision making. Article: https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11255633

Force is the ultimate form of influence against which there is only force to stand against it. I can stop using Google products tomorrow without the need for a gun or explanation. The article is sowing some serious FUD. Everything is engaged in behavior modification. That's the basic point of products and services. Watch more/better/less/no TV. Exercise more. Eat healthier. Stand up at work. Reward yourself with a ca…

> I can stop using Google products tomorrow without the need for a gun or explanation.

True, but that would not stop Google from tracking you everywhere, via more than a dozen tracking systems.

Also, even if you don't use Gmail, Google may still have about half of your emails, maybe more.... https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be...

Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#56

Post by nickik »

clouddrover wrote: post #22
themartorana wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Force is the ultimate form of influence against which there is only force to stand against it. I can stop using Google products tomorrow without the need for a gun or explanation. The article is sowing some serious FUD. Everything is engaged in behavior modification. That's the basic point of products and services. Watch more/better/less/no TV. Exercise more. Eat healthier. Stand up at work. Reward yourself with a ca…

> Force is the ultimate form of influence against which there is only force to stand against it Gandhi would disagree with you. The weakness of hard power is that it is expensive, blatant in application, and virtually guaranteed to create opposition. The strength of soft power is that it is indirect while being cheaper and less likely to create resentment. People are best manipulated through suggestion rather than co…

Gandhi was a lucky guy because he was doing his opposition thing against a British Empire. Think for a couple of seconds what would have happened to Gandhi in the USSR. The British Empire had for a long time put itself in a position of bringing freedom and culture and when British trained Indians started to quote there own rhetoric back at them.

Gandhi had the extreme luck that WW1 and WW2 were happening effectively totally changing British culture, British power and so much more.

Soft power can be ugly and insidious but I still vastly prefer to deal with that then with a guy taking a baseball bat to my knie. If the worst problem liberals have to fight is the Google sort algorithm and the amazon recommendation engine then we are in a pretty good position.

Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#57

Post by nickik »

pdkl95 wrote: post #20
driverdan wrote: post #6

> Governmental control is nothing compared to what Google is up to. Governments have guns, Google does not. I'm not saying we should ignore corporate surveillance but there is a big difference.

> Google does not. That's simply not true; they use the government's guns every time they file a lawsuit. While the government is the ultimate controller of that power, the economic and legal powers available to corporations depend on the enforcement of the state.

Yes but that is the hole point. Those of use who are primly concerned with government and not corporations want to create a government and a legal system were neither the state itself or somebody using the state has the wide ranging powers that a modern state has.

If the state simply does not have the ability to attack a country on the other side of the world, then no amount of bribing politicians can make it happen. When the state does not have backdoors into everything, their is no amount of political pressure that can make the state misuse that power.

I want to limit government power because they have the monopoly of force. Everything that Google is doing threw the government has to go threw the governments monopoly of force. We need to control the monopoly of force by the rule of law on the level of individual freedom.

The wrong way to go about it is to have a super powerful state that can easily regulate every aspect of what Google and co are doing and can tell them what to do because that is essentially Fascism.

Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#58

Post by nickik »

kaybe wrote: post #9
driverdan wrote: post #6

> Governmental control is nothing compared to what Google is up to. Governments have guns, Google does not. I'm not saying we should ignore corporate surveillance but there is a big difference.

I wonder, in the future, might Google (or similar) be able to make a government use those guns? If we as the sovereign of democracies can be influenced massively, I can imagine that at least in tipping-point situations. There is a lot of money in wars too, so even without state-level actors paying, motivation is not unthinkable.

The problem with corporation controlling the state is a old one and Google is not particularly scary in that regard.

The point still stands, if you can create a state that does not have waste powers in the first place, then neither the state by itself, nor a cooperation can use that power.

Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#59

Post by paraxisi »

cronjobber wrote: post #36
hifier wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is not about who is more powerful. The difference is that I can choose to use DuckDuckGo instead of Google. I cannot (barring extreme measures) choose to disobey the government.

Yeah, you have the "choice"... of cutting off most of your friends, your employers and customers, and be "Google free".

Because using DDG and having friends are mutually exclusive.

Re: Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism

#60

Post by cronjobber »

paraxisi wrote: post #59
cronjobber wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you have the "choice"... of cutting off most of your friends, your employers and customers, and be "Google free".

Because using DDG and having friends are mutually exclusive.

Your friends are on google mail, maybe hidden behind their own domain. Your friends post stories and pictures involving you on G+. If you hang with them...and their android phones. You can get rid of them or you can accept being google data.
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