Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private • Hacker News Board

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#271

Post by whyenot » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:12 AM UTC

dcow wrote: post #268

neolog wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was marketed as vitamin water because it does focus on providing additional vitamins. water + vitamins = vitamin water. But that's not what this is. So it's a misleading name. People shouldn't have to be educated in order to make good decisions. A beverage company shouldn't be misleading people, it should be making beverages and helping people find the beverages they would want if they were educated about them.

What would be an appropriate name? To respond to your point, though, the application of your philosophy simply doesn't yield a remotely familiar society. I understand how it is alluring to, in an isolated example, argue that stupid people must be coddled. But if we have to build a society where nobody can make bad decisions then we have to apply this filter everywhere. What's the end result? Humans are no longer allo…

flavored sugar water with vitamins

32.5g of sugar per bottle, most of which is fructose.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#272

Post by Xelynega » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #77

aforty wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t the point of the article. The point is that you can’t share your data with your friends without sharing that data with Google the company as well.

Going to have to say "duh" here. Short of an e2ee location sharing app, you have to send your location through an intermediary for your friend to see it.

I believe e2ee should be the default when I consent to share private information with someone through an intermediary. The libraries are already on every device with a web browser and the overhead is minimal, so IMO there's no excuse other than the intermediary wanting to look at the data.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#273

Post by stubish » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:18 AM UTC

codyb wrote: post #227

londons_explore wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Location data is very important for search. Try turning on a VPN from another country, opening an incognito window and doing a google search for 'pizza'. See how the results are nearly useless...? A bunch of delivery services that don't deliver in your country, who want payment in a currency you don't have, and all written in a language you don't speak. Location at the local level matters less, but even so it makes s…

Couldn’t just search for “pizza in Brooklyn” then? It’s not that onerous.

This isn't normal? Due to ISP internal networking, my exposed IP address either gets geolocated to my state capital or a state capital on the other side of the continent. And I like it that way. Wrong country might be annoying, but preferred language will get that right enough.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#274

Post by squiggleblaz » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

dcow wrote: post #257

edgyquant wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hate that “reasonably think” defense. Yes most people, including myself, did think that vitamin water was healthy until reading the nutritional sheet. It’s one step away from selling chocolate as, “good for you bars,” and claiming no reasonable person would think they’re good for you.

I hate the lawsuit in the first place because nutrition information is printed on the back of every single bottle for exactly this reason and any actually concerned consumer (any reasonable thinking consumer) will simply look at the nutrition label when making purchase decisions. It was marketed as vitamin water because it does focus on providing additional vitamins. So what do we call it? Vitamin Sugar water? This d…

> any actually concerned consumer (any reasonable thinking consumer) will simply look at the nutrition label when making purchase decisions.

That isn't the definition of a reasonable consumer. Reasonable people don't have infinite time to second guess everything that people trusted to give them health information are saying. If they imply it's healthy and they're trusted to tell you whether it's healthy or not (i.e. they're trusted to publish nutritional information on their bottle), then a reasonable person should be able to trust the implication. We've all got too much to do to assume that someone is both misleading and telling the truth at the same time.

As for names, the could have called it Nigglepuff Drink. Nigglepuff Drink does not imply any untrue health claims and it is not associated with any f&b products.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#275

Post by dcow » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:22 AM UTC

whyenot wrote: post #271

dcow wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be an appropriate name? To respond to your point, though, the application of your philosophy simply doesn't yield a remotely familiar society. I understand how it is alluring to, in an isolated example, argue that stupid people must be coddled. But if we have to build a society where nobody can make bad decisions then we have to apply this filter everywhere. What's the end result? Humans are no longer allo…

flavored sugar water with vitamins 32.5g of sugar per bottle, most of which is fructose.

So everything that has sugar in it but doesn't explicitly spell it out in the name must be renamed to include a reference to sugar in the name? Frosted flakes -> sugar frosted flakes, rice crispy bars aren't just rice + crispy, they're rice + sugar + crispy. Orange juice -> orange juice and added sugar. I mean come on it doesn't work.

All that said, the term vitamin is also entirely subjective. Nothing about "vitamin" to me ever implied "healthy". It simply implied "has vitamin". It's just all around absurd.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#276

Post by dcow » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

boibombeiro wrote: post #270

dcow wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be an appropriate name? To respond to your point, though, the application of your philosophy simply doesn't yield a remotely familiar society. I understand how it is alluring to, in an isolated example, argue that stupid people must be coddled. But if we have to build a society where nobody can make bad decisions then we have to apply this filter everywhere. What's the end result? Humans are no longer allo…

A fantasy name like most soft drinks

Fantasy names are a psychologically manipulative marketing tactic deployed to cause you to associate the thing you are consuming with something unrelated to the thing you are consuming so as to divert your attention from the thing you are consuming to some other (presumably more exciting) topic thereby increasing likelihood that you consume the product. Or they're a brand identity entirely divorced from the actual nature of the product which would also require you to look at the label into order to discern the healthiness of said product.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#277

Post by hedora » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #218

nojito wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Location targeting isn’t effective. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.118... Google are fighting tooth and nail to protect the illusion that their ads work.

Location data is very important for search. Try turning on a VPN from another country, opening an incognito window and doing a google search for 'pizza'. See how the results are nearly useless...? A bunch of delivery services that don't deliver in your country, who want payment in a currency you don't have, and all written in a language you don't speak. Location at the local level matters less, but even so it makes s…

I get mistargeted geographic ads all the time; not on a VPN.

Heck, I even get ads in the wrong language.

Hint: Instead of noticing that I’ve been doing manual labor recently, and inferring that I’m not a native English speaker, just use contextual targeting: show me ads in the same language as the content I’m watching.

Ad blockers are making the problems tracking-based much, much worse. Whatever signal is left after people block aggressively block trackers is actually just noise. Hopefully the market will see this and self-correct.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#278

Post by stubish » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:30 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #169

QuadrupleA wrote: post #74

Google had a brilliant advertising business with AdWords originally, where the ads were simply based on the search term and not a bunch of Orwellian surveillance on the person searching. From the research I've seen, all this privacy-invading crap doesn't even improve ad performance much - it's small incremental gains at best. And per this article, those gains are clearly coming at the expense of user trust and goodwi…

What research? Multiple companies which use these practices have grown from zero to trillion+ dollars in market cap, so I find it hard to believe the narrative that all of it is useless and ineffective.

It doesn't have to work. Your customers just have to believe it works. Even just have to believe it might work, since they are looking for any competitive advantage. You need research to show it help just as much as you need research to show it doesn't.

I think you will find both sorts of research, because it seems obvious that results will depend on what sort of web site you run and what sort of audience you have.

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#279

Post by qwerty456127 » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

I rarely ever turn location (GPS) on and I always deny using WiFi to improve location precision. Do I still have location privacy problem?

Re: Google made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private

#280

Post by dcow » Sun, May 30, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

squiggleblaz wrote: post #274

dcow wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate the lawsuit in the first place because nutrition information is printed on the back of every single bottle for exactly this reason and any actually concerned consumer (any reasonable thinking consumer) will simply look at the nutrition label when making purchase decisions. It was marketed as vitamin water because it does focus on providing additional vitamins. So what do we call it? Vitamin Sugar water? This d…

> any actually concerned consumer (any reasonable thinking consumer) will simply look at the nutrition label when making purchase decisions. That isn't the definition of a reasonable consumer. Reasonable people don't have infinite time to second guess everything that people trusted to give them health information are saying. If they imply it's healthy and they're trusted to tell you whether it's healthy or not (i.e.…

You've trusted Coca Cola to give you health advice? No offense but that's patently insane. Your doctor gives you health advice not a sugared soft-drink company with a motive to withhold any negative information about its products from you so you'll continue to consume them. I assume you trust Google to give you privacy advice, no?

I don't know what a reasonable consumer is then. The first thing I usually do when reaching for a new drink is glance at the nutrition label to make sure I'm not consuming 55 grams of sugar. It takes less than 10 seconds. I learned this from my mom, who was generally concerned as a parent about making sure her children were eating healthy. It's not rocket science.

I personally don't understand how Vitamin == Healthy. Maybe I'm N == 1, but the claim "has vitamins" which is what "vitamin" in the name implies to me is not, in fact, false. The leap from "has vitamins" to "is healthy to drink with abandon" is the problem here. Maybe if you could prove that the company knew the drink was unhealthy and deliberately fabricated the name so as to mislead their consumer base into making unhealthy choices, you might have a case?

But by this argument any instance of a name where somebody could plausibly make that type of jump must be regulated. If I was taught that fish are healthy because they have healthy fats then I could reasonably make the association that fish stix are healthy. Couldn't I?