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Google Fights Back

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Re: Google Fights Back

#411

Post by titzer »

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…

> When I see ads that are useless its infuriating.

Yeah, me too. The difference is that nowadays all the platforms, services, devices, and tracking are being used intrude into every single corner of life. They are constantly tracking you, analyzing you, studying your every move. And they are trying to interpose into every waking moment of your life.

The day that my guitar tuner app for Android showed me an ad in the middle of tuning my guitar (which usually takes 20 seconds), intruding to the very thing that I need most to unplug from this shit show, I just about lost my mind.

Fuck advertisers. I hope that whole ecosystem implodes.

Re: Google Fights Back

#412

Post by DanBC »

teekert wrote: post #410
areoform wrote: post #7

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…

There is a contingency: GDPR. Use my data in ways I don't agree with and you are breaking the law. Best we can do in a world where information wants to and will be free, imo.

Consent is one legal basis for use of data under GDPR, but there are others.

Re: Google Fights Back

#413

Post by teekert »

DanBC wrote: post #412
teekert wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a contingency: GDPR. Use my data in ways I don't agree with and you are breaking the law. Best we can do in a world where information wants to and will be free, imo.

Consent is one legal basis for use of data under GDPR, but there are others.

Research use is one but you have to show that re-consenting is an unreasonable effort. Research use comes with a obligation to make sure data is anonymous and results have to be made public (for the common good).

Re: Google Fights Back

#414

Post by mengmeng »

areoform wrote: post #7

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…

its not that people can't see truth due to intelligence. the ability to see truth has requires only average levels of g. rather, the ability is bestowed as a gift. the gift is in the form of trauma through which the actual state of things forcefully injects itself into one's consciousness uprooting the foundations of self and inserting itself. and until death, it stays.

Re: Google Fights Back

#415

Post by vanche »

xvector wrote: post #311
aparc123 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm Multiple apple services collect data on your usage like Google does. They don't use this data for Ads Personalization but they do have the data.

> Umm Multiple apple services collect data on your usage like Google does. They don't use this data for Ads Personalization but they do have the data. Provide a source. Apple is pretty transparent in its iCloud security overview[1] and iOS Privacy Whitepaper[2]. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303 [2]: https://www.apple.com/business/site/docs/iOS_Security_Guide....

I'd rather like to have the "source" of iOS/iCloud client and verify if they behave as they claim.

Re: Google Fights Back

#416

Post by afiori »

esoterica wrote: post #244
afiori wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Computers cannot “understand” anything. You are inappropriately anthropomorphizing an algorithm. There is no epistemological difference between spam filtering and credit card statement parsing. Either way it’s just a cpu pushing around ones and zeroes.

Yes there is, whatever information google extract form an email during spam detection need not be associated with your profile. That is not the case for financial data.

> Either way it’s just a cpu pushing around ones and zeroes.

What is even this supposed to mean? also the information "kill on sight" on your profile of a terrorist association is just one bit, do not worry about that. The fact that they are digital does not mean that the data won't affect your life nor that human or machine will take complex decision based on them.

Re: Google Fights Back

#417

Post by afiori »

joefkelley wrote: post #343
afiori wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think I'm not understanding if you really answered the question you quoted - what specifically is the concern with having that information extracted? Is it just "it feels creepy"? My point is that they already have the information, so any potential misuse or abuse is possible regardless of what types of parsing they're doing. It might just be inconvenient.

One example is holiday photos: I am ok with stranger taking photos with me in the background. I am not ok with someone spending a lot of effort going around collecting all the photo with me in the background trying to build a personal profile on me.

There is also a security issue, I trust google to keep my email secure, I trust less google to keep my profile metadata secure as selling it is its main business model.

Re: Google Fights Back

#418

Post by cpv »

pdimitar wrote: post #346
loudtieblahblah wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

large onboard storage is no replacement for being able to swap out cards. especially in the case of a phone failure to boot.

I only met techies who cared about continuing to use a phone if they could only boot from their SD card. Regular people don't know about the option. So consider that this niche feature you find useful is of almost no consequence to anybody. Additionally, iPhones and Samsung devices have really durable internal storage. Almost always the battery craps out first.

Some Samsung devices have removable batteries, which if replaced with new ones, can add some more life to it.

Re: Google Fights Back

#419

Post by nullc »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #382
cr0sh wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But my next phone will be an iPhone. I'm seriously considering my next phone to be one I build. The hardware is available - cheap 4G LTE modules that plug right into a Raspberry Pi Zero exist; that and a cheap touchscreen will get you around 90% of the functionality most of us need, hardware-wise. You won't have a camera, or motion sensors. You will have GPS, voice, data, a screen, storage... Basically everything y…

You may be interested in the Purism Librem 5 [0]. It's made by people who care about software freedom. It doesn't use the common ARM-based SoCs which require proprietary drivers and will be unusable with modern software in a few years. Everything except the cell modem (on a replaceable M.2 card connected over USB) runs 100% free software. The device as a whole runs Linux with Gnome, and Plasma Mobile + others also de…

> It's made by people who care about software freedom.

How do I know that?

The first I saw about Librem was their original laptop that made clearly overstated claims about its openness. (e.g. claiming a device that used intel CPUs would have completely open firmware). After that I paid no further attention to them.

Re: Google Fights Back

#420

Post by nullc »

BeetleB wrote: post #320
blub wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impor…

>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? No, but I do think that everyone who gets a service for free should by default assume they don't have much privacy. That is not a huge burden to assume.

It is increasingly difficult to not use one of these "free" email services because of their aggressive blocking of any autonomously operated email servers.
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