271–280 of 475 posts
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>it's hard to see how using personal data to sell ads is going to cause a harm anywhere near as bad as a person dying No need for imagination, simply read history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
To be fair, none of that involved selling ads.
Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I s…
You think Apple is less evil than Google? Remember that Apple has been cracked by the FBI, has proprietary connectors, and charges more than anyone. I couldn't disagree more. Apple is horrible to customers and developers.
I also don't see how "being cracked by the FBI" makes one evil, in fact I think resisting the FBI in the first place makes them good.
Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I s…
The minute their CEO went all-in on a US Presidential election well, that ol' Rubicon got crossed.
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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.
Are we reading the same support article? https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202303 Specifically listed as encrypted in transit and on server: - iCloud Drive - Photos - Calendar - Contacts Only mail is not according to this support article. Edit: I see the omission now. These things are not listed under the end-to-end section.
Every company has two mission statements: The stated one and the real one. Google's real mission statement is "make shitloads of money selling everyone's personal information to advertisers." The noises Google makes about being "useful" are just cover for the fact that being useful is the only way they can entice everyone to give them that personal information for free. If Google could get a law passed that required…
Honestly the amount of people concerned about their "privacy" is shocking... kinda makes one wonder what most of these people are up too, what are they trying to hide? Obviously, some people are just concerned for good reason but I get the feeling most people are concerned because their hiding shit. If it means that an literate mother of 3 from India can become literate when it counts then Google execs can take naked…
That said, there's also much value in allowing this data to be free. Google are open about their business model (and they always have been), and provide services that make use of it.
I do think it's funny when people accuse them of "harvesting data" or "surveilling" people. That's just using emotional language to paint a more sinister picture than is warranted, and it's rampant on HN unfortunately.
Try to watch out for extremist positions on both sides of the debate. Reality is more nuanced.
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Technically "we do not sell your data" ;) "We just have your data, and sell promises to show you exquisitely targeted ads based on our exhaustive data about you."
That is not a technicality; it is a completely different thing. I would definitely stop using Google if they actually sold my data. I don’t mind them using it for ad targeting.
So if I am using an ad blocker and dont see any ads at all, dont I just _cost_ google, facebook, etc. money from using their services and having them store my data? What if the majority of people would block all ads? Wouldnt data collection become meaningless?
Ads are much harder to block on mobile. Especially on iOS, it's nearly impossible to block ads in a native app. There are some tricks you can do with a VPN but the coverage isn't great and it's error-prone enough that I don't bother, which means casual ad-block users like my sister will absolutely never go that route. So to the extent that mobile is the future, it seems ad-blocking is not a long-term solution.
But I am not sure it's ever going to come. Many smaller devs and studios publish free apps which they monetise only with ads. Not sure Apple wants to scare off millions of developers by officially streamlining app ad-blocking.
On iOS, VPN remains the only good choice so far, sadly.
Say what you will about Google, they're really good at PR. They and Facebook share the most indefensible tech business model in today's political climate (at least in the west), but Google does such a better job of obscuring and re-framing that fact than Facebook does.