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After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

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Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#71

Post by Eridrus »

AJ007 wrote: post #44
justinzollars wrote: post #35

Concerned that google has so much info ( https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity ) I visited https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols to turn off Web & App Activity, but left Voice & Audio Activity on. This breaks my google home. I do not want Google to save 20 years of search history so I can use a stupid google home. For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. This is a dark pattern Google

I’m waiting for an answer to this: will the least invasive platforms end up the least intelligent?

Almost certainly, if they don't know anything about you they can at best show the median/average outcome.

Some of this can be counteracted with local processing, but that's not really hardware efficient, e.g. you wouldn't consider running a Google instance on everyone's phone.

Breakthroughs in how we do computation could change this, but it would need to be a significant breakthrough, e.g. in homomorphic encryption and differential privacy or huge progress in compute/storage price/density/energy usage.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#72

Post by Sir_Substance »

brokensegue wrote: post #70
Sir_Substance wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* Gmail Protonmail. Encrypted, ad free, and no one reading your email. >Search Duck Duck Go. Google is actually well past it's prime on this front. Their per-customer result filtering is now so aggressive that the filter bubble they apply to you is now an active impediment to web use. I generally find that I cannot replicate a google search on a different computer with the same search term, and about 20% of the time…

doesn't protonmail still not support full-text search of your mail?

Depends which mail client you're using I guess. Works fine in Thunderbird.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#73

Post by hedora »

Zhenya wrote: post #28
Sir_Substance wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Their tools are 10x better than anything else for many cases, so you're simply doing yourself a disservice to not use them. I think that at this point that's basically only true for mapping, and they are losing ground on that, slowly. You've got stockholm syndrome.

I'll bite. What's actually better than: * Gmail * Search * Docs And all of the Integration that works cross platform for all of those.

DuckDuckGo is great for search.

Google search had one killer feature that would have me come back a few times a month, but they discontinued it:

Things like “12573238458 bytes / 22 days in Mbps” used to do the unit conversions and print the answer.

Docs’ only killer feature for me is inline comments (and not requiring windows update...). Even atlassian has that now.

I hate the gmail UI, and just access it via ldap; to each their own, I guess.

All the things I mentioned work great on all the platforms that are currently alive, and integrate as much as I’d like via smtp, so there’s that checkbox too.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#74

Post by majidazimi »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #56
justinzollars wrote: post #35

Concerned that google has so much info ( https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity ) I visited https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols to turn off Web & App Activity, but left Voice & Audio Activity on. This breaks my google home. I do not want Google to save 20 years of search history so I can use a stupid google home. For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. This is a dark pattern Google

> For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. Apple does collect analytics, but those can be turned off in OSX at the very least. As a company, they are not currently geared towards data collection. They have publicly positioned themselves in favor of privacy.

I don't have problem if a company collects usage information. End of the day, they need it to improve the product. But for fuck's sake, DON'T sell it to others to increase revenue. Just use it for product development.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#75

Post by notacoward »

Mononokay wrote: post #59
notacoward wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing more than CNN disliking that Youtube is challenging them in viewers and ad money Which is also what's behind journalists, bloggers, etc. all hating on Facebook too, but nobody ever wants to hear that.

> Which is also what's behind journalists, bloggers, etc. all hating on Facebook too, but nobody ever wants to hear that. Yeah, no. Generalisations are stupid. Doctorow's a perfect example of why what you're saying isn't true, for example.

One counterexample doesn't prove anything, and Doctorow is barely even a relevant example. It's journalists who feel most threatened by Facebook, as they see their subscriber base - and thus their own income opportunities - dwindling. Pseudo-journalist commentators even more so. Once they might have looked to Facebook as a possible ally, a channel through which they could ply their profession, but increasingly (to answer another respondent) they see Facebook purely as a threat. Whether consciously or not, they're highly motivated to magnify everything negative about a rival and never ever write about anything positive.

The incentives for bloggers are similar, though lesser. The more income they derive from ads on their site, the more they see that ad revenue decreasing, the more similar their motivations become to those of the professional media. I'm sure Doctorow makes a bit from pushing products on Boing Boing, but most of his (and other contributors') income comes from other sources and the audience there was always rather Facebook-averse since forever so Facebook's (or Google's) increasing dominance of the ad space has probably not made a dent for them overall.

The real point, though, is that one can't point to self interest as a reason for criticizing Google and pretend that it plays no part in why people criticize Facebook. That's just favoring the devil you're in bed with over the one you're not.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#76

Post by notacoward »

prolikewhoa wrote: post #41
notacoward wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nothing more than CNN disliking that Youtube is challenging them in viewers and ad money Which is also what's behind journalists, bloggers, etc. all hating on Facebook too, but nobody ever wants to hear that.

That doesn't really make sense. Facebook is a large advertising platform for journalists and media that have existed for a very long time. It's not exactly a space for creators like Youtube.

> Facebook is a large advertising platform for journalists and media

That's outdated thinking; see my response to Mononokay. As much as a year ago, journalists might have seen it that way. What has changed, and why the tone has changed, is that almost no journalists today see Facebook as anything but a competitor. It doesn't even matter if they were right then or are right now, or both, or neither. That's just the zeitgeist.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#77

Post by [deleted] »

majidazimi wrote: post #74
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. Apple does collect analytics, but those can be turned off in OSX at the very least. As a company, they are not currently geared towards data collection. They have publicly positioned themselves in favor of privacy.

I don't have problem if a company collects usage information. End of the day, they need it to improve the product. But for fuck's sake, DON'T sell it to others to increase revenue. Just use it for product development.

[deleted]

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#78

Post by izacus »

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #56
justinzollars wrote: post #35

Concerned that google has so much info ( https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity ) I visited https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols to turn off Web & App Activity, but left Voice & Audio Activity on. This breaks my google home. I do not want Google to save 20 years of search history so I can use a stupid google home. For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. This is a dark pattern Google

> For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. Apple does collect analytics, but those can be turned off in OSX at the very least. As a company, they are not currently geared towards data collection. They have publicly positioned themselves in favor of privacy.

Please don't forget the treasure trove of data Apple gets via iCloud services, which rival Googles if you're invested in their ecosystem - contacts, calendars, emails, location (Find my phone), all application data (backups), etc.

They don't also fully encrypt all of that information and give it to government on request.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#79

Post by izacus »

rlv-dan wrote: post #26
aphextron wrote: post #16

I trust Google, but it's only because I have to. Their tools are 10x better than anything else for many cases, so you're simply doing yourself a disservice to not use them. It's not like Facebook where I can just email my friends or whatever. Google search is a fundamentally life changing technology that is untouched by any competitor.

Google may be better than everyone else. The question is though, do you really need all that "betterness"? Because if you don't, there are actually plenty of alternatives to choose from. They may not be as good as Google, but they do their job pretty well. Giving up some of the (perceived) "Google awesomeness" in favor for say privacy, may be worth considering. Just a thought.

As a counter viewpoint - Google has one of the best security infrastructures and security experts in business. If anywhere, data is safe there (for certain definitions of "safe"). Do you trust all other small companies to secure and lot leak your data in the same way?

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#80

Post by Natsu »

DanBC wrote: post #9

> Child advocates have also raised alarms about the ease with which smartphone-equipped children are exposed to inappropriate videos and deceptive advertising. COPPA has unfortunate consequences. My 7 year old child watches youtube. He can't have an account, so he uses my account. Youtube thinks an > 18 year old is watching the videos, and so places ads for gambling and alcohol on the videos he watches. There's no me…

I'd simply watch YouTube without an account?

I've not seen any reason to log in unless you're going to upload a video or leave a comment and he could get you for that.

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