Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#51

Post by matlin » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 4:47 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #30

matlin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There definitely is... That's the whole point of Facebook's Senate hearing. If it stays within company and can't be used by directly by third parties for their own agendas like influencing elections. I 100% think that we should be weary of over centralized information but we are talking about two very different scenarios: even a small social network with relatively little information can be very dangerous if it leaks…

You do realize that Google has it's own reasons for wanting to influence elections, right? They operate their own PAC and spend millions of dollars donating to political candidates and lobbyist groups. "Within company" is a meaningless distinction. It requires the assumption that Facebook or Google themselves are trustworthy, and smaller companies are not. But the big players themselves, are in fact, not trustworthy.…

Obviously but you're missing the main focus which is privacy and responsibility of holding personal data. It's not about whether Facebook is more or less trustworthy than Google--I think we should be very wary of both. All I'm saying is when you give your data to a company it should stay within those walls and be clear how is used. It's one thing if Facebook or Google is influencing elections (which every major corporation tries to do with money, power, and/or information) it's about allowing third parties to abuse that power indiscriminately which Facebook did and Google did not.

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#52

Post by matlin » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 4:56 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #20

notacoward wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that Google doesn't share that information with other firms. Are you absolutely sure about that? Are you absolutely sure it will remain that way tomorrow, or next month?

He may be sure but he's wrong either way. The Google real-time bidding spec outlines pretty clearly what data Google will share with third parties.

> The Google real-time bidding spec outlines pretty clearly what data Google will share with third parties

This is exactly my point is it is clear you are consenting and have control and can opt out here: https://adssettings.google.com/. I am very aware of real-time bidding for ads works.

Also you shouldn't assume gender.

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#53

Post by bluGill » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #38

alecco wrote: post #3

Google is more dangerous than Facebook. In the later you usually have a persona you pretend to be. But Google knows you better than yourself. You can’t lie to Google. Is your teenage daughter pregnant? Do you have a disease that is socially rejected? Do you want to have an abortion? Are those pimples in your groin an STD? Are you secretly looking for another job? Google probably knows that before you do. And their bu…

If we really want to deal with Google's enormous power, we'll need to tackle the issue at both ends: political and technical. As for politics, it doesn't look like Google is going to be attacked the way it happened to FB - the CA affair was almost an accident. And Google knows better and will do everything to avoid accidents. The second issue is technological. The competing search engines are not there yet, although…

Using other search engines goes a long way to get them there - the more they are used the more advertising dollars they get (and the less google gets), which leads to dollars to invest.

I find that duckduckgo is good enough for everything these days.

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#54

Post by notacoward » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:20 PM UTC

panarky wrote: post #39

notacoward wrote: post #11

Google is on the list, but I'm going to break away from the flock and say they shouldn't be next . Credit agencies and data brokers, who facilitate the worst kinds of third-party privacy violation and about whom most people know very little, should go next. Then the government itself. Then Google, and then Amazon. BTW, if you want to have some fun, just try to imagine that the the government's interest in Facebook's…

Facebook is in a completely different privacy universe from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter and Snap. Facebook actively employs dark patterns to get people to over-share. Google does not. Facebook has a social graph of 2.2 billion people. Google does not. Facebook has been caught repeatedly, systematically and recklessly leaking personal information to third parties over the last decade and a half. Google has not.…

Totally off topic. The question is whether Google should be next after Facebook, not whether it's worse than Facebook. Reminds me of presidential "debates" where every question is just an excuse to trot out the candidate's favorite message whether it has anything to do with the question or not.

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#55

Post by matlin » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:36 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #21

matlin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There definitely is... That's the whole point of Facebook's Senate hearing. If it stays within company and can't be used by directly by third parties for their own agendas like influencing elections. I 100% think that we should be weary of over centralized information but we are talking about two very different scenarios: even a small social network with relatively little information can be very dangerous if it leaks…

Please stop spreading factually wrong information, especially on a subject as important as this one. Maybe research the material for a bit? The best place to start is doubleclick and their profiling options as well as the RTB spec. That will give you a pretty shocking (if I understand the level to which you are still in the dark correctly) insight into what kind of data is freely shared between ad tech companies amon…

I understand that you are angry about the Cambridge Analytica revelations, I am too. But I am not spreading misinformation, I am participating in a discussion. I have repeatedly try to communicate that I am not talking about targeted advertising. In the senate hearing, the counsel is honing on some important points. What is the alternative to Facebook (i.e. a real competitor)? What information is Facebook gathering on non-users? What is Facebook doing to shield users' from the outside world? How much metadata is Facebook gathering/surmising outside of a user's direct input? These are way bigger questions than does Facebook allow Advertisers to target you based on certain demographics (a similar but different debate). Google is poised to abuse / misuse personal data in the same way but regulating and persecuting are very different processes and should not be conflated in these discussions. I simply want to draw those distinctions between Google and Facebook.

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#56

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:43 PM UTC

matlin wrote: post #55

jacquesm wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop spreading factually wrong information, especially on a subject as important as this one. Maybe research the material for a bit? The best place to start is doubleclick and their profiling options as well as the RTB spec. That will give you a pretty shocking (if I understand the level to which you are still in the dark correctly) insight into what kind of data is freely shared between ad tech companies amon…

I understand that you are angry about the Cambridge Analytica revelations, I am too. But I am not spreading misinformation, I am participating in a discussion. I have repeatedly try to communicate that I am not talking about targeted advertising. In the senate hearing, the counsel is honing on some important points. What is the alternative to Facebook (i.e. a real competitor)? What information is Facebook gathering o…

It's all targeted advertising so if you want to make the case that outside of targeted advertising Google is squeaky clean then you're welcome to that but it's a rather narrow definition for what arguably is the largest advertising company in the world.

They exist because of and for targeted advertising, everything else is just a means of getting there.

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#57

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

matlin wrote: post #52

jacquesm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may be sure but he's wrong either way. The Google real-time bidding spec outlines pretty clearly what data Google will share with third parties.

> The Google real-time bidding spec outlines pretty clearly what data Google will share with third parties This is exactly my point is it is clear you are consenting and have control and can opt out here: https://adssettings.google.com/ . I am very aware of real-time bidding for ads works. Also you shouldn't assume gender.

Anonymous profiles can be addressed using either gender until otherwise specified, besides that HN is so skewed towards males that it is a safe assumption.

If you want to distract from the discussion at hand by making it about gender then that's on you.

As for 'consenting' and 'opting out' that's not how it should work, you don't 'consent' to being tracked by Google because you didn't opt out, that's Google assuming your consent (which, to tie it in with the previous bit is a lot more serious than assuming someone's gender).

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#58

Post by zamalek » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

sametmax wrote: post #41

kozikow wrote: post #40

Not saying Google is a saint, but it's orders of magnitude better at privacy than Facebook: - Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app. - Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time. - Mostly compliant with GDPR for years prior to the regulation being released. The same can't be…

> - Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app. If I remember well, Google was part of PRISM. And it did give data to a malicious state actors. Plus it has analytics, which you can pay to have data on people (although no personal, but personal data from facebook is aggregated and used the same way in the end). Also google let you literally google peop…

> I'm not an insider, but I would imagine that with android, gmail, chrome, various search tools and google Web APIs (fonts, graphs, analytics...), Google tracks you everywhere, whether you are logged in or not. It doesn't even need a cookie with all the behavioral data it has to fingerprint you.

Why would they take all that risk when they allow you to opt-out of targetted advertising?

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#59

Post by dschuetz » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 5:51 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #24

mtgx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also annoys the hell out of me how often companies get away with something if they just say "Whoops, it was a mistake/bug." Google was recently found to track Android users' location even when they didn't have their GPS on. And they said it was a "bug". Like I'm just going to believe that from a company whose main objective is to track as much about us as possible. But my point is the FTC should have slapped them…

As long as money and politics are strongly intertwined it is unlikely this will happen within the country of origin of the company. Lobbyists are just too powerful. And that's before we get into the kind of tricks and entity like Google or Facebook could pull if they decided to become an active participant rather than just a channel for advertising. If that hasn't already happened.

Money and politics is basically the way people run things, as sad as it sounds. You can substitute money with something different, it doesn't matter as people need some system of exchange. Money seems effective and easy enough.

So, it's not the money that is the problem. It might have something to do with people, but I haven't figured it out yet.

Re: Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

#60

Post by hlecuanda » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 6:04 PM UTC

Reprising my comment from a few weeks ago:

Facebook never gave me anything of value in exchange for constantly monitoring and profilingmy behavior online. in fact, as it became ubiquitous,it added a new chore for me: maintaining ever changing privacy options on a defensive profile on their network.

So it takes peoples time, attention, and details on top of behavioral monitoring.

In contrast, Google provides me with a very competent productivity suite, a superb photo-managing software navigation, maps, aggregate traffic data,and a host of tools to actually build a business and educate myself and others.

Plus i get enterprise class security for my account and -arguably- the best web email service.

The day theres a data breach or in this case a breach of trust, im more likely to view google in a better light and give them the benefit of the doubt. Facebook gets my contempt and scorn.

>Inb4 "well then don't use Facebook": I don't. But that doesn't stop FB from building a shadow profile on me, so if I want some measure of control over my digital footprint, I have no choice or recourse but to open and maintain a defensive profile whose only purposes are a) claim my username / URL used on most services where I'm provided with such a srfvixe, b) "squat" my name and likeness so I can't be unknowingly impersonated on their network and c) keep up with their ever changing privacy controls

>Inb4 "sounds like cringe material from Google's social team": -I don't work for Google. I admit I'd love to, but I'm too old, perhaps. OTOH, I don't see how it's "cringe" since I succinctly describe the services the company does provide for me in exchange for my data and observing my behaviour; services I've used in making a living lately. Try making a living by developing on the FB platform, where every API Iteration makes you re-evaluate your business model.