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New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

forbrukerradet.no

331–340 of 463 posts

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#331
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Silicon Valley has no intention of retraining itself in any manner. Historically, no industry, once became major, intended to retrain itself to be more positive to the society. If any improvement happened, it was forced from outside.

So who was forcing the many famous Victorian philanthropist industrialists to build their railway and model villages, with free schools, hospitals and more for workers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_village

Mostly God, e.g. Titus Salt is listed in that article

"Salt's motives in building Saltaire remain obscure. They seem to have been a mixture of sound economics, Christian duty, and a desire to have effective control over his workforce. There were economic reasons for moving out of Bradford, and the village did provide him with an amenable, handpicked workforce. Yet Salt was deeply religious and sincerely believed that, by creating an environment where people could lead healthy, virtuous, godly lives, he was doing God's work."

Now, God doesn't exist, so as an external motivation he's a bit of a problem, certainly it doesn't seem to make _more_ sense to cite a non-existent God as forcing Salt to build this village than it does to credit it to his basic humanity.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#332
My "favorite" Google dark pattern is suggesting "Privacy Checkup" when I'm logged out. The checkup of course requires signing in.

This is so cunning — they make it look like they care about my privacy, while in reality they upgrade from no tracking (signed out) to at least default tracking they allow themselves in the ToS.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#333
post #276

My list of degooglifying actions: * switch default search engine to DuckDuckGo (can still use !s bang when one wants to see what Google has) * use tracking blocker (uBlock origin, BlockBear on iOS) * use anonymous/private/porn mode browsing most of the time (except for sites I actually want to be logged in permanently) * use Zoho as a replacement for shared Google docs * use Youtube either in private window, and/or d…

don't forget about fingerprinting:

https://amiunique.org/fp

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#334
post #167
post #45

This dark pattern seems to be spreading. Amazon recently pushed out an update to their (beta last I knew) web app that allows you to use their smile.amazon.com charity donation through the app. But in order to turn that on, you have to turn on all the notifications the app has, including their rather constant pushes of "deals I may be interested in". They're holding you hostage to their notifications because "it's fo…

> Silicon Valley has no intention of retraining itself in any manner. Historically, no industry, once became major, intended to retrain itself to be more positive to the society. If any improvement happened, it was forced from outside.

That improvement forced from outside is called "Disruption".

The disruptors will eventually be disrupted.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#335
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Answering "no" should mean you store it locally, not that you don't store it at all. If you tell Google not to save your search history on their servers, they just disable it completely, when they could just save it locally. I think you are ridiculously underestimating the complexity and issues that would arise with two separate mechanisms for saving the same kind of data, and an option to switch between the two. D…

> Do you download account-saved locations locally when changing to local storage? No, you delete the data that's on the server. That's the reasonable way to handle a revocation of consent from the user.

Headline: "Big company degrades user experience for users who choose to opt out". I'm absolutely certain that there are people who'd get mad that their history is gone if they went from "collect it in the back end" to "collect it in the client".

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#336

I have had to visit the #nixos channel in Freenode (IRC) lately on a computer with all tracking disabled and the Recaptcha that is usually just click and continue becomes a multi-minute endeavor finding street signs, cars and buses. You really get punished if you opt out of tracking.

Which makes sense, seeing as they use account data and other heuristics to determine if you're a bot or not. The streetsigns are their fallback for when they don't have enough data.

No, it's not that simple. When recaptcha particularly wants to punish a user they start fading in tiles which doesn't make the captcha any harder for ML to solve, it only frustrates real humans.

Furthermore, when the security level of the captcha is configured by the web admin to the lowest level, users are able to use a noscript version of the captcha. When you do this, it becomes clear that the javascript version is deliberately rejecting correct answers to make you solve more and more challenges just because they're in the mood to fuck with you. This becomes clear because the noscript captcha from the same IP and same browser will accept the correct answer the first time, every time.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#337
post #276

My list of degooglifying actions: * switch default search engine to DuckDuckGo (can still use !s bang when one wants to see what Google has) * use tracking blocker (uBlock origin, BlockBear on iOS) * use anonymous/private/porn mode browsing most of the time (except for sites I actually want to be logged in permanently) * use Zoho as a replacement for shared Google docs * use Youtube either in private window, and/or d…

* Replace stock android with LineageOS if your phone is on the list of supported devices [1]. It has worked great for me.

[1]https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#338
post #211
post #6

They constantly berate you to deactivate no tracking preferences on google maps. When you're aware of this fact you start seeing it everywhere, not just on google. For example, on Pinterest they will berate you to sign up using highlighted buttons on land, and the x button is out of the way on the top right corner. This end result is due to product managers/devs looking at conversion rates and optimizing for whatever…

It's almost like we need regulations to counteract what are otherwise inevitable consequences of profit maximization!

No, we just need to stop buying from companies whose business model is anything other than you give them money and they give you stuff.

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#339

FTA: "Bundling of services and lack of granular choices - If the user wants features such as Google Assistant and photos sorted by location, Google turns on invasive location tracking." I unplugged my google home precisely for this reason. It wouldn't operate with all kinds of web and location tracking turned on. And when I turned them off it would only respond with something along the lines of "you have to turn on f…

There was an article posted here recently about a device that feeds white noise to devices like that until you give the new device they keyword it's looking for. It was supposed to look like a fungus or something. Lemme see if I can find the article... Wouldn't help with location tracking, but might put your mind partially at ease if you own a creepy home assistant thing.

Project Alias.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18903289

Re: New study: Google manipulates users into constant tracking

#340
post #194
post #45

This dark pattern seems to be spreading. Amazon recently pushed out an update to their (beta last I knew) web app that allows you to use their smile.amazon.com charity donation through the app. But in order to turn that on, you have to turn on all the notifications the app has, including their rather constant pushes of "deals I may be interested in". They're holding you hostage to their notifications because "it's fo…

Amazon finally exceeded my tolerance for slimy behavior last year, and I let Prime lapse. The amount of time and energy they have put in to making it hard to compare prices in their own goddamn store was enough by itself; behavior like this is motor-oil icing on the garbage cake. I had to readjust a few common purchases, but I was far less habituated to them than I thought I was. Having to actually pay attention and…

Amazons search is TERRIBLE! I'm beginning to think sites that don't just let you download the catalog and search it yourself are probably trying to hide something. Amazon being the prime example of that.
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