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Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

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Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#91

Post by ConceptJunkie »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #54
dmitriid wrote: post #36

It's not even the beginning of an end game. We're in midgame, at most. 10 years ago Ars Techinca published the evergreen article called "Owning the stack: The legal war to control the smartphone platform": https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-stack... At the time it explained, with great accuracy and insight, all that was happening in smartphones: all the visible and invisible wars and battles to co…

Remember when we thought Microsoft was evil, and Google was a force for good?

At the time it was arguably true. But it seems every company gets increasingly amoral at it becomes more powerful, and eventually becomes evil. I think one reason is the relentless pressure for growth by shareholders. Another is the simple fact that power corrupts.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#92

Post by mysterydip »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #59
mission_failed wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Google and Microsoft have screwed up email so that self hosting is a never-ending game of 'who will they block today?' You can't run a business where the 2 companies that control the vast majority of email can block you for no reason, and absolutely no visibility that something is wrong until a customer directly contacts you that they are not receiving email (and how would they even know in most cases unless t…

If you have the right kind of business, you can tell your customers that it's Google and Microsoft's fault (“they want to keep people on Gmail so they keep blocking everyone else”) and suggest using another email address “while you get it sorted” – they might just do that. Of course, that is risking significant amounts of money out of your own pocket just for a stupid nerd turf war… https://xkcd.com/743/

Tried that before, doesn't matter. Customers say "my address works for everyone but you, it must be your problem. I'm not getting another address just for this, I'll use ."

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#93

Post by mysterydip »

dade_ wrote: post #15
swiley wrote: post #3

Do not use software that you cannot self host.

I found this rule more practical (and I hold to it): Do not rely on software you cannot self host or holds your data hostage in a proprietary format. Data export must be a supported feature.

One caveat with any online service is data export could be modified or removed in a future (forced) update with no practical recourse.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#94

Post by pessimizer »

syshum wrote: post #60
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only institution on the planet that has granted itself the right to legally steal, plunder, and murder you... Rights that, legally, only have validity if people want them to. (In theory, in some countries.) In principle, Google is allowed to ignore the will of the people; in principle, the government is not.

None of that is true, in fact it really is opposite. Google has to entice people into voluntary exchange, yes the power is imbalanced but it is possible to remove yourself from google, thousands have. You can not remove yourself from government, if you try they will kill you. Google will not kill you if you stop using their services if I disconnect from my city utilities, if I stop paying taxes, if I grow an unapprov…

> Google will not kill you if you stop using their services

This is only true because the government dictates it. Without government intervention, the only considerations that Google would need to have when deciding to kill or threaten to kill people who refuse to use their services would be the effects of that decision on their revenue and profits.

> Further this idea that the government is beholden to the will of the people, even in the ever lauded (and seldom understood) "democracy" is provably false, many many studies have been done that prove the will of the people hardly ever changes the will of government so I am not sure what factual factual basis you have to claim that governments must follow the will of the people.

This is of course true. If replacing the governance of the country with the governance of google's internal structure is something we want to do though, we should do it explicitly. I do find it contradictory that you would dismiss all possible forms of government as unfixably corrupt, yet accept the org chart of a search engine as your government.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#95

Post by automatic6131 »

beaconstudios wrote: post #66
pibechorro wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a monopoly. They are dominant. Start using duckduckgo and other similar sevices. The internet is still a free market. If you continue to use their products you are just whining. Become the change you wish to see in the world.

"vote with your wallet" is a useless aphorism when it comes to implementing systemic change. In order to stop Google from abusing its dominance, billions of people would have to simultaneously choose not to use the best (?) and most popular set of products. Free market activism doesn't work for consumers.

"implementing systemic change" is a useless aphorism when it amounts to "I want someone else to do all the work for me at no inconvenience to myself". Everyone, but everyone, who cries out for "systemic change" either is using it for cover to give themselves total control, else demand someone does it on their behalf.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#96

Post by riffraff »

samizdis wrote: post #2

In hindsight, I find it hard not to feel complicit, having invited friends and family to Gmail back in the day when invites were a thing. I had actually believed Google's "don't be evil" line, when it launched what was a brilliant stripped-down search product. (And yes, I defected from AltaVista with the crowd. Oh, how I miss case-sensitive queries; how I miss all those relevant results.) I was far too gullible.

I don't know. Google 20 years ago felt good. All the stuff about FLOSS vs proprietary software. Support for open standards. The summer of code. A search that seemed to reward quality content over paid results.

There was reason to doubt, but I think at some point the motto was legitimately aligned with the company interests and everyone benefited from it, until it wasn't.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#97

Post by yulaow »

another_why wrote: post #90

Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated like finance, aviation, medicine, and power. The giants who've cheated us must be broken up to their smallest viable constituent parts, and their future interactions be through a framework of radical accountability. Considering that more than 50%(70? 90?) of IT is 100% based on those ad revenues, sounds very reasonable, yeah. Bees against honey. All those, who cry the mos…

I am personally not against ads, I just want to have the contextual ones and not the profiling/tracking/I_must_know_everything_of_you ads.

Simple solution? Just ban any form of profiling for ads and force the whole industry to go back to contextuals.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#98

Post by zaphar »

mission_failed wrote: post #25
swiley wrote: post #3

Do not use software that you cannot self host.

Except Google and Microsoft have screwed up email so that self hosting is a never-ending game of 'who will they block today?' You can't run a business where the 2 companies that control the vast majority of email can block you for no reason, and absolutely no visibility that something is wrong until a customer directly contacts you that they are not receiving email (and how would they even know in most cases unless t…

This is overly simplistic. Frequently you get blocked because your IP block legitimately has a lot of people with poor computer hygiene who are a source of large amounts of spam which puts your IP on a reputation blocklist.

There are legitimate and valid reasons for Google or Microsoft to be taking the actions that they do because email is an extremely hostile environment. Blaming them for that environment is silly. You may be a good actor but you are in a sea of really bad actors and it's non-trivial to figure out that you aren't one of those bad actors.

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#99

Post by happycube »

samizdis wrote: post #14
dtech wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what we should've done. Google for a long time won users by making almost objectively better products. It's only in the past decade or so that they started to abuse their monopoly. Putting the blame at government failing to enforce existing and create new anti-trust legislation seems much more sensible than blaming users picking the best products.

I'm having an ironic morning of it. I also posted [1] from The Register a piece about China's antitrust watchdog, which seems to be advocating for policies one can only envy. (What emerges in reality, though, is unlikely to live up to my optimism.) If I were at The Register, I'd look for a way to combine that China news article with the Google opinion piece of this thread. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=290…

There, if you don't play with the unwritten rules, you get clobbered by the written ones...

Re: Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated

#100

Post by EastSmith »

another_why wrote: post #90

Data trading for ad revenue must be regulated like finance, aviation, medicine, and power. The giants who've cheated us must be broken up to their smallest viable constituent parts, and their future interactions be through a framework of radical accountability. Considering that more than 50%(70? 90?) of IT is 100% based on those ad revenues, sounds very reasonable, yeah. Bees against honey. All those, who cry the mos…

There are ads, and then there are privacy violating targeted ads.
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