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Google Fights Back

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Re: Google Fights Back

#181

Post by Daniel_sk »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #101
pdimitar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully switched from Android to iOS when iPhone X came out in November 2017. I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps. Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app. Many Android users also lament the lack of a visib…

>Many Android users also lament the lack of a visible filesystem but that's a huge plus in my eyes That's awful in my eyes. What's more is my inability to browse that file system without a third party application when i want to simply move files to my computer. The only reason I'm even contemplating the move to iOS, is b/c I have a android based, digital audio player that has 2 SDcard slots that I keep disconnected f…

Android Q is adding scoped storage and it's more or less the end of a visible file system. Even the existing file manager apps will have trouble to show files without special permissions.

Re: Google Fights Back

#182

Post by falcolas »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #62
falcolas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is also holding the plunger that helped create the dam breakage. Not to mention the pry-bars being applied to any attempts to fix the dam. EDIT: For those who want to downvote, consider that the vast majority of Google's revenue comes from the use of your personal information to target you with ads, and that most of the advances in ad targeting using personal data have been made by Google.

I think you are espousing an "ADS ARE INHERENTLY BAD" mentality that just doesn't resonate with people. I want to know about the best services that are useful for me. I do not want to be advertised women's swimsuits on Instagram (I'm a male with no interest in purchasing said item). When I see ads that are useless its infuriating. However, when I see an ad for Allbirds or a cool new leather jacket, I feel very much i…

First and foremost - ads do not require personal information. Newspapers, television, and blogs have thrived on non-personalized ads for decades. The advent of targeted ads (the dam getting blown to hell) is what made general ads unfavorable (personalization and the absolute saturation of ads in every aspect of our lives).

/rant

That said, given that ads are a psychological trick to get you to purchase something (often something that you don't need in the first place), you're right: I do consider ads to be inherently bad.

"But mah blog isn't sustainable without ads" - If your blog depends on collecting a heap of pennies generated by psychological manipulation of your viewer base, your blog provides a net negative value to your viewers.

/end rant

Re: Google Fights Back

#183

Post by blub »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #105
holy_city wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blatant disregard for privacy is what bothers me the most. Like when I started getting push notifications from Android for my credit card payment with my exact balance due, which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank. It's easy to resolve that by changing the contact info/settings with the bank, but just the fact that engineers at Google thought users would appreciate having their priva…

> which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank. You say it as if it's a revelation or discovery, when Google is very upfront about surfacing relevant information and reminders based on your inbox. On more than one occasion, this feature has helped me take actions on pending work items like payments, renewals and so on. You don't want Google to show you ads, fair enough. You don't want Google…

Frankly, I'd reverse the question: why are you surprised that people are surprised? You think everybody has time to read the dozens of pages of legalese in Google's privacy policy, which anyway doesn't actually specify in which ways they abuse one's information?

It also sounds like you need to organise your life a bit better. Google's notorious for their screw-ups and service closures, one day you might miss an important payment because they turned off the feature or you end up on the wrong side of an A/B test.

Re: Google Fights Back

#184

Post by glenneroo »

marssaxman wrote: post #99
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all true, but to protect yourself from all that, you're going to have to keep your data away from Apple as well (i.e no iCloud drive/photos/calendar/mail, etc) Not running algorithms for ad targeting doesn't make the data any more secure. Only end-to-end encryption does.

This has always seemed pretty straightforward to me, so I simply don't store things that need to stay private on other people's machines. If I want to keep it private then I keep it to myself, and that's that. If I put it out into the world, I assume it's out there to be seen, and it doesn't really matter what privacy guarantees people claim to make today because policies may always change tomorrow. I do make one exc…

I have a feeling such privacy-conscious decisions will eventually have consequences, akin to the social-ranking systems from that episode of Black Mirror, or in China[0], where in both instances various forms of punishment are dealt to those not contributing "positive" data to the cloud.

It seems like there aren't very many people who really care about privacy... and they would be easy to single out and punish.

On that note, enjoy your semblance of privacy now... while you still can!

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.de/video-china-train-warns-citiz...

Re: Google Fights Back

#185

Post by afiori »

joefkelley wrote: post #178
holy_city wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blatant disregard for privacy is what bothers me the most. Like when I started getting push notifications from Android for my credit card payment with my exact balance due, which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank. It's easy to resolve that by changing the contact info/settings with the bank, but just the fact that engineers at Google thought users would appreciate having their priva…

Wait, so you trust them to store the email, and parse it for something like spam detection, but not for some smarter feature? What specifically are you concerned about that is a problem with this and not with them having the email in the first place? Sounds like you shouldn't be using Gmail at all tbh.

> What specifically are you concerned about that is a problem with this and not with them having the email in the first place?

That they use millions of computing-dollars to extract this information and store it.

Supposedly spam detection does not need to understand the numbers in your bank emails. Supposedly it needs mostly information about you previous contacts and spammy patterns from the rest of the internet.

The point being that you cannot misuse the information you do not have. Google is very good at thinking of a lot of this kind of quality of life functionality, they do not seem to realize how creepy and disconcerting they can be.

Re: Google Fights Back

#186

Post by fauigerzigerk »

orhmeh09 wrote: post #151
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is encrypted (except email) but Apple has the keys for the stuff I listed: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202303 Also, in China Apple handed over iCloud operations to a government owned company, including the keys.

I don’t see Apple having access to keys there. Could you point it out? CTRL+F for “key” came up with 7 results but nothing to suggest Apple holds them and can decrypt. Apologies.

There's a section about half way down that lists all end-to-end encrypted data (keychain, health, payment data, ...).

By implication, all other data is not end-to-end encrypted. That includes iCloud drive, photos, calendar, contacts and mail.

Re: Google Fights Back

#187

Post by grincho »

reilly3000 wrote: post #171
pdimitar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully switched from Android to iOS when iPhone X came out in November 2017. I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps. Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app. Many Android users also lament the lack of a visib…

No need to jailbreak. Just dial 3001#12345# for field mode and enjoy the stats!

Note that HN formatting ate the single asterisk before and after. You'll need to enter them as well.

Re: Google Fights Back

#188

Post by sonnyblarney »

This is a painfully well contrived bit of PR.

When companies start peddling poor people in need from some desperate place to pull on our heartstrings ... it's a problem.

If this were something related to their core product - maybe.

But this is virtue signalling at it's ugly finest.

Surely, they mean well. Kudos for that - it's good they're spending a tiny portion of their trillion dollars doing that.

What I object to - strongly - is the attempt to brand themselves by this act, to imbue themselves with some kind of moral fervour, especially in such an emotional way.

"Look at these puppies, they were starving, and then we saved them! Everyone likes puppies, right?" Ok, so they actually saved puppies.

---> Now please fix our privacy problems, which is actually the core of what you're supposed to do.

Re: Google Fights Back

#189

Post by mceachen »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #62
falcolas wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is also holding the plunger that helped create the dam breakage. Not to mention the pry-bars being applied to any attempts to fix the dam. EDIT: For those who want to downvote, consider that the vast majority of Google's revenue comes from the use of your personal information to target you with ads, and that most of the advances in ad targeting using personal data have been made by Google.

I think you are espousing an "ADS ARE INHERENTLY BAD" mentality that just doesn't resonate with people. I want to know about the best services that are useful for me. I do not want to be advertised women's swimsuits on Instagram (I'm a male with no interest in purchasing said item). When I see ads that are useless its infuriating. However, when I see an ad for Allbirds or a cool new leather jacket, I feel very much i…

Please don't discount how deep the rabbit hole goes with adtech.

I spent over a decade in adtech. I have several patents from > 8 years ago for metadata-based ad targeting.

While I agree with you that it is better to see relevant ads over irrelevant ads, the datastores that enable fine-grained behavioral targeting is, simply put, just too much power for any corporation (or government) to wield.

Corporations directly profit from larger data stores. The more invasive the data extraction, and the more available it is to their true customers, which are advertisers, the more they profit. The advertiser dashboards and ability to explore potential audiences based on targeting, both on G and FB, are astoundingly detailed.

I try to convince everyone in my life to run an adblocker and stay off FB.

One of the richest sources of metadata about you and your loved ones are your photos. I quit my day job to build a self-hosted, life-scale photo store, partly as a passion project, partly driven by disgust and penance from prior adtech work.

Re: Google Fights Back

#190

Post by afiori »

afiori wrote: post #185
joefkelley wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so you trust them to store the email, and parse it for something like spam detection, but not for some smarter feature? What specifically are you concerned about that is a problem with this and not with them having the email in the first place? Sounds like you shouldn't be using Gmail at all tbh.

> What specifically are you concerned about that is a problem with this and not with them having the email in the first place? That they use millions of computing-dollars to extract this information and store it. Supposedly spam detection does not need to understand the numbers in your bank emails. Supposedly it needs mostly information about you previous contacts and spammy patterns from the rest of the internet. Th…

Actually I want to make a slightly different point. The problem is that "intelligent" systems are unpredictable. In the future google could wrongly decide that your business is inconvenient blacklist you from searches. Maybe it got that idea from your name being mentioned in relation to some extreme stuff and unified you with ISIS.
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