21–30 of 360 posts
If Google goes down for one day, I am literally at a standstill. No Maps, no Search, no GMail, no YouTube, no Photos! I don't know how I will get through the day without these services :(
As such, with Google, I am more than ok them using my data to target me ads since it does feel a mutually beneficial relationship.
What is scary is the unregulated way in which massive amounts of data can be used to sway public opinion so easily. What is even scarier than this is the way in which those in power can use massive amounts of data to sway public opinion without oversight. The very notion of a republican form of government may end up needing to be reanalyzed. Forget concentrating on Google or Facebook. There is a larger concern. If mu…
I was trying to come up with a solution. Something like retroactively classify companies that are taking money or are involved in this type of stuff register as a Political Action Committee. Because this is regulated by the FEC. Make Google, CNN, Facebook, Fox, whatever, disclose they are working for hire to politicize your experience. Then, make it so that every 5 years a company can appeal this retro-active PAC sta…
People hate the other side more than they love their side I find.
What is scary is the unregulated way in which massive amounts of data can be used to sway public opinion so easily. What is even scarier than this is the way in which those in power can use massive amounts of data to sway public opinion without oversight. The very notion of a republican form of government may end up needing to be reanalyzed. Forget concentrating on Google or Facebook. There is a larger concern. If mu…
What is scary is the unregulated way in which massive amounts of data can be used to sway public opinion so easily. What is even scarier than this is the way in which those in power can use massive amounts of data to sway public opinion without oversight. The very notion of a republican form of government may end up needing to be reanalyzed. Forget concentrating on Google or Facebook. There is a larger concern. If mu…
What is scary is the unregulated way in which massive amounts of data can be used to sway public opinion so easily. What is even scarier than this is the way in which those in power can use massive amounts of data to sway public opinion without oversight. The very notion of a republican form of government may end up needing to be reanalyzed. Forget concentrating on Google or Facebook. There is a larger concern. If mu…
If we talking about politics, it seems entirely reasonable that a politician would want know what their constituents were thinking about, would tell their constituents what the constituents wanted to here and go to Washington and do what they promised. That's democracy - obviously, this democracy isn't in very good shape. But it's hard claim to that having a very fined-grained understanding of a constituency's wants is the thing that is destroying American democracy. I would lie it's more simply "lies and demagoguery". Now, it seems like Trump undoubtedly used data to fine-tune his demagoguery but I think we have to look elsewhere that data-access to explain the problem. Or - the problem with American democracy isn't groups have fragmented to many, many sub-constituencies but that significant portion of these have palpably irrational views (anti-vaxers, pizza-gate, etc).
That's problem for our democratic system. That degredation of education might be to blame. The destruction of the safety net might be to blame. Or the willingness of mainstream media to engage in propagandistic approaches equally as manipulative as the extreme right might be to blame - and that bring the point that complaints about Cambridge Analytica in a broader context seem entirely in this propagandistic stream, shifting the focus of attention and packaging a vague threat rather than giving any coherent analysis.
I know Google is profiling me and harvesting my data. But it's not using me to harvest my friends information. I know Google is targeting ads at me - and they maybe AB tested. But those ads are from real companies or organisations - they aren't fake bots or astroturf groups algorithmically designed to tell me what I want to hear. I'm sceptically watchful of Google, I feel I have a social contract with them where they…
Of course. It already has your friends’ information.
What is scary is the unregulated way in which massive amounts of data can be used to sway public opinion so easily. What is even scarier than this is the way in which those in power can use massive amounts of data to sway public opinion without oversight. The very notion of a republican form of government may end up needing to be reanalyzed. Forget concentrating on Google or Facebook. There is a larger concern. If mu…
Basically, it walks through how something as simple and subtle as search results can sway public opinion. It wouldn't get a pro-Hillary person to vote Trump but can nudge the middle one way or the other.. and with your social info, it's easy to tell who's in the middle.
I know Google is profiling me and harvesting my data. But it's not using me to harvest my friends information. I know Google is targeting ads at me - and they maybe AB tested. But those ads are from real companies or organisations - they aren't fake bots or astroturf groups algorithmically designed to tell me what I want to hear. I'm sceptically watchful of Google, I feel I have a social contract with them where they…
But is it not though?
Because it analyzes any emails I send to your gmail account, and any SMS messages I send to your android phone. Google will argue about data vs metadata, but really it's all just data, and it's as much about me as it is you. I don't know if Google pioneered shadow profiling, but they certainly perfected it.
My room mate got a pair of home mini's over my explicit objections. He insisted that they send "bytes per hour tops" back to google when idle, and that I was just paranoid for hating them. I did some network inspection to validate that for myself.
They pretty much ceaselessly probe my network, mostly with multicast traffic, and are uploading something in the area of hundreds of kilobytes per minute when idle. I can't tell what they're uploading because they're using secure connections (presumably with pinned certificates, although I haven't checked), but if I were to baselessly speculate, I would guess they are discovering, logging and reporting the comings and goings of android phones on my network so google can follow people as they move from one home to another, possibly mapping IP's to locations.
Now for sure, I'm a lot further down the tinfoil scale than most people, but I disagree with you. As someone who actively works to avoid google, my friends sure do keep inflicting it on me.