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Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

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Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#151

Post by ehsankia »

fenwick67 wrote: post #111
cloudwalking wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, what makes Google so "deeply unethical?"

They're an advertising company that gets most of its profits by collecting personal information about people and trying to manipulate them into buying things. Sounds pretty unethical to me.

That's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is:

They're an advertisement company that profits from showing you the most relevant data and things that you will like.

It's all about perspective. You can take anything and spin it to be nefarious if you try hard enough.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#152

Post by ocdtrekkie »

bhhaskin wrote: post #70

There are things you can do to help fight this. Donate some time or money to the Ubuntu Phone project. It isn't maintained by canonical anymore, but it is far from dead. More choices and options are what we need now. It is insane that there are basically two OS you can do.

Purism's Librem 5 would be a better effort at this point.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#153

Post by zzzcpan »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #89
hateduser2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I feel like it’s kind of easy to guess what they mean. I’m sure it’s related to spying and data hoarding and tracking and privacy issues and their incentives are highly misaligned and encourage unethical anti consumer behavior.

As far as centralized companies go Google is one of the better ones. It's unfortunate that so much power accrues to only a few entities. But slamming Google is like slamming a side effect of a bigger problem: many markets are naturally winner takes all and vertical integration confers enormous benefits. I don't see much of a way around this but many feel stronger regulations to protect consumer data should be enacted…

> many markets are naturally winner takes all

I don't think this is true. "Winner takes all" is a predatory behavior and it is only possible with enormous concentration of wealth. Otherwise markets become full of small players and fair competition.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#154

Post by ptasci67 »

fenwick67 wrote: post #111
cloudwalking wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, what makes Google so "deeply unethical?"

They're an advertising company that gets most of its profits by collecting personal information about people and trying to manipulate them into buying things. Sounds pretty unethical to me.

Are billboards or radio stations or television channels unethical to you? Because they are also trying to "manipulate" you into buying things.

Advertising is not inherently unethical. I want people to buy my product so I need to raise awareness of it, encourage people that it is the best, make them feel like they need it.

I would even go so far as to say that Google's default anonymized model makes this far better. My preferences can be used to serve more meaningful ads to me which makes everyone happier. Eg, I was searching for tent reviews online. Saw an ad for a tent from a brand I had never heard of. Looked up their reviews and bought that tent.

Unfortunately, they are a lot of bad actors in this space. Google is actively trying to weed them out. They are deeply incentivized to rid the internet of them because it means less ad blockers and less spam and more money for them.

Any website you visit or app you use is going to collect some personal information about you. How many times have you questioned why you need to turn over your email to a stopwatch app. At least with Google's default-anonymized model, you are opting in to a fairly sweet deal. You volunteer things you are interested in so that Google can serve you better ads and keep the internet free (in the dollar sense) and the information you provide is not reversible back to you.

Doesn't sound too unethical to me especially because it is all one big opt-in.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#155

Post by wvenable »

rhizome wrote: post #125
someguydave wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your cell phone cannot function without actually knowing where you are (to some approximation) at all times. This information is known to the phone company, at the very least. The phone company almost always records and retains that information. Similarly, you cannot communicate to anyone on the internet without using an IP address, which your counterparty must know and nearly always retains.

Your cell phone cannot function without actually knowing where you are (to some approximation) at all times. That's like saying a transistor radio needs to know where broadcast antennas are, which is obviously absurd.

It's a cellular telephone -- they need to know all the cell towers near you and direct your phone between them. It's a rough area but my phone provider definitely knows I'm at work right now.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#156

Post by jrochkind1 »

geofft wrote: post #67
jrochkind1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, they don't intentionally track or keep tracking data, but for cell phones to work the network _has_ to know what tower you are next to (or really what 'cell' you are in, why it's called a 'cellular phone'), to deliver a phone call or txt to you. What happens if they get a law enforcement request with warrant/subpoena? I bet the data is there to be delivered. If they aren't _very_ intentional about scrubbing it,…

I see a huge difference between "will violate my privacy if served with a valid subpoena" and "will violate my privacy to make money on a daily basis". (And, for what it's worth, Apple has fought against a valid subpoena for iPhone data that they did technically have the capability of answering.)

true enough! Just good to know what data is where and accessible by whom.

I am pleased that the publicity (mainly from Snowden release) has led some businesses to fight subpoenas and/or warrants in court. I definitely don't count on them to keep doing it, pretty easy for them to silently comply (even _without_ a warrant/subpoena) without publicity, as most everyone has generally done until recently (and I suspect still does often).

Also, if you fight in court and lose in court, pretty sure any company will of course hand over the data at that point.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#157

Post by geofft »

Anderkent wrote: post #82
geofft wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge and meaningful distinction about the technical ability to violate your privacy, and actually doing so, and trust (slash non-creepiness) is largely about not doing so when you could. For instance, the fact that my roommate can open my bedroom door at any time does not mean that I have no privacy when making phone calls in my room; it means that I have privacy because I trust my roommate not to do so, ex…

Why do you think whether your phone asks you if you want to send a restaurant review is in any way related to whether your phone provider is using your location data maliciously? In fact if there's any relation wouldn't it be the reverse? If you're using the location data unethically, you wouldn't want to draw attention to the fact that it's being gathered.

I don't think that - the behavior I object to is not solely behavior that the provider thinks is malicious / unethical. The roommate in my example who barges in on my phone calls could believe they were genuinely contributing to whatever conversation I was having on the phone and helping me out, but they would still be creepy.

So I don't see this as about whether the provider has "good" or "bad" intentions; I see this as about whether the provider asks me for permission/consent before using my data. It's certainly theoretically possible that a provider is good at talking the talk and also being actively malicious, by asking for permission and then ignoring it or something, but that's not the problem I have or the article's author has with Google.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#158

Post by Orangeair »

fenwick67 wrote: post #23
fwdpropaganda wrote: post #10

Two things that happened to me: A) I walk into a store, get a notification from google photos asking me "I see you're at store X, wouldn't you like to take some pictures?". Possibly to use as part of google maps. Thinking back I think this is when I started de-googlifying my life. B) I get a notification from google maps asking me "you're travelling to place X soon, wouldn't you like to download an offline map, just…

#1 is so obnoxious. No Google, I won't do free work for you. At least offer me some store credit.

If you sign up for the local guides program, there are some various minor benefits you get in return.

But besides that, I think the "payment" you get in return is the quality of Google Maps itself. Features like being able to tell when a restaurant is most busy can't realistically exist without automatically collecting data about users who are visiting it throughout the day.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I find data collection of that sort -- where the data is directly being used to improve the product -- acceptable. What I find much more unacceptable is tracking for the purpose of showing ads. Although companies try to say they're "improving the experience" by showing targeted ads, I'd rather not constantly be bombarded with things that are engineered to extract as much of my attention as possible. (yes, I realize location tracking is used to target advertisement, which is why I keep location services enabled and block ads)

Disclaimer: I work for Google (but not on Maps)

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#159

Post by adregan »

FreakyT wrote: post #87

This issue reminds me of a key permission iOS gives control over while Android (even post-Nougat) doesn't: The distinction between allowing an app to use location while the app is open versus anytime . Android makes no distinction between these two states, which opens up the ability for many apps (not just Google's) to enable automatic stalking mode. Take Yelp, for example. I do want it to be able to access my locati…

Yes! And the newest version of iOS grants you the ability to say "while using the app" for any app rather than just the apps where the developer gave the user that option.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#160

Post by throwwwwaway9 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #130
throwwwwaway9 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly Google needs to be broken up. They pulled the "we're a cool company doing ethical and interesting stuff" for far too long." They are too big to exist. I wonder if Matt Cutts is still shilling for Google, talk about losing respect.

Check his G+: https://plus.google.com/+MattCutts Matt Cutts has actually posted several times recently about things that irritate him about Google products. He still uses them though, of course.

too late, he was there spinning as Google search switched from relatively fair into a pay-per-visibility scam site. Site guidelines must be obeyed so I'll not be honest.

I never understand such people. If you were with Google from almost day one, you can't hide behind "I need the paycheck to feed my kids.."

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