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The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation

thecreepyline.com

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Re: The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation

#51

Post by vatueil »

Lio wrote: post #44

I think that a lot of Google and Facebook’s creepyness would go away if they’d just voluntarily respect the Do Not Track header. There’s no techical reason why don’t, just business ethics. That header is someone explicitly telling Google “I don’t want you to do this” _before_ collection happens and Google’s response is “we don’t give a shit what you want” and doing it anyway. The current model where you have to regis…

Microsoft turning DNT on for all Windows users automatically pretty much killed the movement's momentum. While privacy as the default has strong arguments going for it, as a practical matter since DNT was supposed to be an intentional signal Microsoft's mass-flagging effectively drowned the signal in noise. And those who didn't know better lauded them for it, too.

Re: The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation

#54

Post by lkdjjdjjjdskjd »

ludston wrote: post #3
giza182 wrote: post #2

How does the site know what sites you are logged into? Is there some sort of guesswork involved?

There is some javascript that is connecting to around 40 different websites. If you are logged into any of these sites already then they don't return a login prompt so the site knows that you are logged in.

So any site can grab the home page of any other site I am logged into, unless that site tries to prevent it (same origin policy or something like that?)? Yikes...

Re: The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation

#55

Post by Lio »

vatueil wrote: post #51
Lio wrote: post #44

I think that a lot of Google and Facebook’s creepyness would go away if they’d just voluntarily respect the Do Not Track header. There’s no techical reason why don’t, just business ethics. That header is someone explicitly telling Google “I don’t want you to do this” _before_ collection happens and Google’s response is “we don’t give a shit what you want” and doing it anyway. The current model where you have to regis…

Microsoft turning DNT on for all Windows users automatically pretty much killed the movement's momentum. While privacy as the default has strong arguments going for it, as a practical matter since DNT was supposed to be an intentional signal Microsoft's mass-flagging effectively drowned the signal in noise. And those who didn't know better lauded them for it, too.

Even if Microsoft turned DNT on by default Google/Facebook should still respect it.

They could ask users to turn it off in the same way they bug people to install their software.

Alternatively they could work on business models that don’t rely on collecting massive amounts of personal data about people who don’t want them to do that. E.g. Basic Attention Tokens and others.

Re: The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation

#56

Post by atoav »

oceanstone wrote: post #11

I looked at the "Google" page ( https://www.thecreepyline.com/programs/google-v2 ) and noticed it doesn't mention a few kind of important things. (1) You can pause activity collection at https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols (2) You can delete activity here https://myactivity.google.com/delete-activity Also, does anyone know if Facebook offers interfaces like these?

What I hate, is that the privacy respecting method should be default always.

When you look at the tracking in google maps, the app asks me nearly every time whether I want to switch it on. Similar thing with the search preferences. Every time they update something in their search preferences you have to step through nested pages and flip a bunch of switches to go back to your previous setup.

That is the equivalent of a creepy guy working at a grocery store, stalking someone every month until they are confronted in painstakingly detail about what they should stop to do. And he is nice, because he stops (unless you forgot to tell him about a tiny thing that he will continue to do).

The thing is: you should not have to ask them to stop even once. This stuff should be opt in and not opt out

Re: The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation

#57

Post by air7 »

ludston wrote: post #3
giza182 wrote: post #2

How does the site know what sites you are logged into? Is there some sort of guesswork involved?

There is some javascript that is connecting to around 40 different websites. If you are logged into any of these sites already then they don't return a login prompt so the site knows that you are logged in.

That's not entirely accurate. Some trickery is involved...

Javascript in one site can't just access another website's content. That's the Same Origin Policy. But what you can do is dynamically link to an image on another website. You can't access its content, but you can know if it loaded correctly. So if you find some image that is only accessible to a logged-in user (non logged-in gets a redirect for example) you can determine logged in status.

Another technique uses time measurements and non-image resources. Loading them as an image will fail anyway, but if there is a substantial time difference in the error response for logged-in vs not, it can be done that way too.

Re: The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation

#58

Post by mda »

polskibus wrote: post #19
oceanstone wrote: post #11

I looked at the "Google" page ( https://www.thecreepyline.com/programs/google-v2 ) and noticed it doesn't mention a few kind of important things. (1) You can pause activity collection at https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols (2) You can delete activity here https://myactivity.google.com/delete-activity Also, does anyone know if Facebook offers interfaces like these?

Would this unlearn the Google's ML models from my data?

Why would it matter, models are regenerated frequently, from millions, billions of other data.

Re: The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation

#59

Post by creato »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #41
creato wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't buy it. If you (or the authors of this piece) want to have a conversation about data harvesting, do that. Subtly entwining that with conservative conspiracy theories isn't just an innocuous side thread of the conversation. This is clearly an attempt to hijack the conversation about data harvesting to amplify their totally unrelated message about supposed suppression of conservative speech. This is a ca…

I'll try again. And that's it. You are concerned that this piece is wrong/misleading. Ok. Great. Another person wrong on the internet. Now, from a meta level, can you accept that the public discussion about data harvesting, like everything else is going to be politicized? And would you rather understand and engage people of all political persuasions by following their arguments, or are you happy just being in teams?…

You are basically regurgitating a bunch of points that apply more to what you are saying than what I am saying.

When you align yourself (presumably concerned about data harvesting) with people that think facebook/google are suppressing conservative speech, who is it that is just happy being in teams?

> You are concerned that this piece is wrong/misleading.

No, my concern is that by hitching the data harvesting wagon to the Tucker Carlson/Fox News clown show, you will be politicizing an issue that should be apolitical.

Re: The Creepy Line: a documentary about Google, Facebook and user manipulation

#60

Post by fipple »

Lio wrote: post #48
fipple wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google does actually clear that data. It persists in some backups for awhile but it’s never used again.

Do they clear it without using it and if they do use it to they clear the results of that use?

Don’t understand the question. Say you have 10 million records across 50 systems. You clear data, each of those systems does a delete by userid, but then the collection starts again as of your next click.
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