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How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

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Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#41

Post by jhall1468 »

013a wrote: post #39

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain. Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business mo…

> Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history.

A few things:

1. It takes a fairly high throne to look down on people for their employers issues.

2. You assume a great deal about what people are willing to put up with for free services.

I think you're probably going to be wrong. Most people will whore themselves out for convenience because they don't care if they get targeted ads in order to get those free services.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#42

Post by paulddraper »

jhall1468 wrote: post #41
013a wrote: post #39

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain. Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business mo…

> Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. A few things: 1. It takes a fairly high throne to look down on people for their employers issues. 2. You assume a great deal about what people are willing to put up with for free services. I think you're probably going to be wrong. Most people will whore themselves out for convenience because they don't care if th…

The strongest lesson life has taught me:

Never underestimate the power of convenience.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#43

Post by driverdan »

13of40 wrote: post #8

I had a related thing happen a couple of months ago: I started getting some lower back pain that I thought might be kidney stones based on a couple of Google searches. Went to my doctor, who prescribed a muscle relaxant, which I got at the pharmacy across the street. It went away. Over the next few weeks I got several robocalls on my cell phone from a pain clinic offering me relief for my "chronic pain", so it was ei…

This is just correlation, not causation. The illegal "chronic pain" robo calls are being made to everyone. They have robo dialers enumerating every phone number. Everyone I know has gotten them.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#44

Post by 013a »

jhall1468 wrote: post #41
013a wrote: post #39

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain. Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business mo…

> Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. A few things: 1. It takes a fairly high throne to look down on people for their employers issues. 2. You assume a great deal about what people are willing to put up with for free services. I think you're probably going to be wrong. Most people will whore themselves out for convenience because they don't care if th…

I view it as something governments will eventually step in to fix. It's very convenient to dump toxic waste into rivers. If it weren't for regulation companies would probably still do this. That doesn't make it ok, and it doesn't mean that behaviors like that will always be allowed.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#45

Post by [deleted] »

13of40 wrote: post #8

I had a related thing happen a couple of months ago: I started getting some lower back pain that I thought might be kidney stones based on a couple of Google searches. Went to my doctor, who prescribed a muscle relaxant, which I got at the pharmacy across the street. It went away. Over the next few weeks I got several robocalls on my cell phone from a pain clinic offering me relief for my "chronic pain", so it was ei…

[deleted]

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#46

Post by megous »

chongli wrote: post #7
jlangenauer wrote: post #2

Further proof, as if any was needed, why other countries require something like the GDPR, backed up be significant penalties, and well-resourced enforcement. It won't happen in Australia though, as we are governed by fools who barely understand technology, and if they need to, rely on the representations of business to make any decisions.

From the perspective of a casual, non-European observer, the only effect of the GDPR that I've witnessed is the explosion of websites being extremely aggressive about forcing me to consent to their tracking cookies. Where is the real benefit to Europeans' privacy?

I've used it 10's of times to remove my contact info from various websites and now I get 0 unsolicited unwated calls on my phone.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#47

Post by jlarocco »

zachlatta wrote: post #36
Avamander wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I watch my non-technical friends use websites, they dismiss the prompts without reading or understanding them. That's a problem in general in IT. The nice solution would be websites respecting DNT option in browsers and every browser asking if they want to be tracked on the web or not. Or well, we could just purge 3rd party cookies from existence for starters.

Unrealistic. Economics drive the internet and ignoring DNT / having 3rd party cookies is vital to monetization.

I disagree. Economics may drive everything, but there's more to life than money, and it shouldn't stop us from creating laws that protect citizens and increase public good.

Before we created the relevant laws, economics also drove companies to hire children, dump trash into rivers, ignore safety, etc. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say tracking cookies and advertising malware are the pollution of the internet.

Even as a tech person, I'm skeptical ad-based services are a net win for consumers. It wouldn't be the end of the world, IMO, if tracking cookies and shady marketing practices were illegal and companies had to use traditional sales tactics online.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#48

Post by Cyphase »

tw1010 wrote: post #40
013a wrote: post #39

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain. Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business mo…

This seems like a fairly easy thing to test rigorously (in a statistically significant way). Just create a fake account and do a search and see what the effect is on other places on the web. Are there services that does this automatically, so we don't have to rely on anecdotal "I searched for X here and now I see recommendations for that on Y, and I think it was because of X, but maybe it's just coincidence"? A site…

That could turn into an arms race of the target companies trying to detect when it's a fake account versus a real one, and the analysis service trying to make the accounts seem more real. Of course, if it became public that the target companies were trying to dodge the analysis, that could be damaging to them. Then again, automated accounts would likely be against the TOS.

The analysis service could work by watching the traffic of real people who download a browser extension, but then privacy from _them_ becomes an issue.

Perhaps some kind of distributed data-collection system could be created, where an extension will analyze your own traffic, strip out as much personally identifiable information (PII) as possible / as you'd like, and then submit that to a central repository for aggregation or further collective analysis.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#49

Post by Jyaif »

chongli wrote: post #7
jlangenauer wrote: post #2

Further proof, as if any was needed, why other countries require something like the GDPR, backed up be significant penalties, and well-resourced enforcement. It won't happen in Australia though, as we are governed by fools who barely understand technology, and if they need to, rely on the representations of business to make any decisions.

From the perspective of a casual, non-European observer, the only effect of the GDPR that I've witnessed is the explosion of websites being extremely aggressive about forcing me to consent to their tracking cookies. Where is the real benefit to Europeans' privacy?

The real benefit is that we'll use the web less because it's such a pain in the ass now.

Re: How my sexual health searches ended up in the hands of big tech companies

#50

Post by ErikAugust »

jhall1468 wrote: post #41
013a wrote: post #39

One of my "wake up" moments was when I searched for the phone number of a local physical therapy office on Google. Within the day, I started getting Youtube video recommendations for massage techniques to relieve shoulder pain. Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. Society will only take so much before breaking; they need to figure out their business mo…

> Google and all of its employees who make products like this are on the absolute wrong side of history. A few things: 1. It takes a fairly high throne to look down on people for their employers issues. 2. You assume a great deal about what people are willing to put up with for free services. I think you're probably going to be wrong. Most people will whore themselves out for convenience because they don't care if th…

Familiar with the “banality of evil”? Give it a good thought before you give employees a free pass for the behavior of their employers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem

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