41–50 of 252 posts
Amazon already has been doing this as well. They started to recommend some items related with books I have never bought online, just after I got them at local bookstore by credit card.
FTA: "Google says it has access to roughly 70% of U.S. credit and debit card transactions through partnerships with companies that track that data." Wow.
I'm actually surprised that retailers haven't started surcharging people paying in cash by now in order to drive all of individuals' transaction data into the panopticon.
Hmm I was wondering how some stores show up on Google maps even though I did not use Google maps to get to those places. God damm Google.
That is because you have location services enabled on your phone. Google collects your phones location with this on. You can see the details by going to your location history.
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I'm actually surprised that retailers haven't started surcharging people paying in cash by now in order to drive all of individuals' transaction data into the panopticon.
They won't in the medium term because of how much they hate the credit card company's cut. 3% is a lot on an already low-margin transaction at Walmart.
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"Hey, they did feed us our whole lives, and gave us room to run for a bit. And they're a farm, so it's your fault for not realizing they were going to kill you for meat the entire time. And we're practically halfway to the slaughter house right now, so why would you even try to put up a fight. Just give in and let them end it nice and quick."
As opposed to going kicking and screaming, all to the same end? The metaphor is still flawed thoguh doesn't add anything to the conversation here. What exactly is the equivalent of death here? Google has all your data - what could they do with it that will affect you realistically? Or if someone malicious gets it? My point is that the likelihood of malicious activity is low, and so are the consequences. Am I missing…
One danger is that with all that data about you and very advanced AI/ML tech Google can push you into making irrational purchase decisions (yeah, I know YOU are special, and advertising doesn't work on YOU) - e.g. buying a red sports car in your 40s.
The other is this data will be available to NSA, GCHQ, etc. and their controlling governments, politicians, their wealthy sponsors/muppetmasters, etc. Do you trust the politicians in USA, or any other courtry?
We are all man and not angels. Having all data on someone, you can always find shady stuff. Using that government and big business can make sure there are no influential union leaders, political parties offering real change, etc. It will be the end of (however imperfect) democracy.
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So the only way to break the circle is to purchase with cash... And now fewer and fewer people buy with cash, to the point some Nordics plan on doing away with cash as much as possible.
It's very important to keep making as many purchases in cash as possible, precisely for this reason. At least where I live (France), this is very doable. Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced and is widely accepted. It's something that would be impossible to bootstrap today if it didn't already exist. Hence, it's crucial to keep it alive.
I just wanted to point out the possibility of tracking serial numbers on bills. Obviously it's not going to be as reliable, at least not now, but it could be made more so; for instance, if there was a sudden movement to use more cash for privacy. Of course, that seems unlikely; most people like the convenience of plastic/digital payments, and there's a lot of market pressure pushing people toward those payment methods, so deploying the infrastructure for more reliable cash tracking probably isn't worth a whole lot. But I haven't exactly run the numbers, and there are other possible incentives, so who knows..
Amazon already has been doing this as well. They started to recommend some items related with books I have never bought online, just after I got them at local bookstore by credit card.
Isn't there a difference? Google is sharing that offline purchase insight with advertising clients, rather than simply using that data itself, as does Amazon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the only way to break the circle is to purchase with cash... And now fewer and fewer people buy with cash, to the point some Nordics plan on doing away with cash as much as possible.
It's very important to keep making as many purchases in cash as possible, precisely for this reason. At least where I live (France), this is very doable. Cash is an anonymous payment system which cannot be traced and is widely accepted. It's something that would be impossible to bootstrap today if it didn't already exist. Hence, it's crucial to keep it alive.
Not really; bills are individually identifiable and can be tracked by either party to the transaction, and even if the payment medium isn't tracked, the transaction can even tracked by other means (e.g., cameras + facial recognition.)
It's only really untraceable if you assure privacy of the location of the transaction, and neither party to the transaction chooses to track it, and even then if the next party out on either side is tracking, a lot can be revealed.
Hmm I was wondering how some stores show up on Google maps even though I did not use Google maps to get to those places. God damm Google.
Isn't that just advertising?
Now I will have to seriously consider getting off the Google ecosystem now. Deactivating facebook was okay, but Google might be tricky considering many of website accounts use Google authentication.
Okay, this is a small rant that is not directly aimed at you, so nothing personal. This is aimed generally more at people in the privacy at all costs camp and the like. If there's some viewpoint I'm missing here I'd also love to hear it, so it's not really a mean-spirited rant either. Google owns the internet at this point. For general use purposes, they ARE the internet. So avoiding them should really have at least…
What else do they own?
It's already becoming in vogue to move away from facebook/google and are actively looking to move towards other systems but there aren't a lot of quality options out there at the moment.
If I could quickly spin up a remote server that had baked in panels for email, blog, and hooked up to mastadon, and a distributed reddit, I would probably go a step further. Further than that? Not sure what else I could do.
Open to suggestions.