Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 210 posts

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#31

Post by eps »

akie wrote: post #12
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #9

Not to make excuses for Google, but is this an entirely accurate portrayal? Like, I've been working on a web project that doesn't contain any analytics, but which stores and retrieves JSON data in Google Firebase. I imagine if I opened my website with this tool, I would hear lots of noise. But, I just can't imagine how Google could do anything useful (to them) with my random JSON blobs.

> But I can't imagine Google would know how to do anything useful (to them) with my random JSON blobs. They're not interested in the blobs, but in the people accessing them. Their whole suite of "free" developer tools (google analytics, google fonts, firebase, ...) are just a means to get information about what people do online.

Don't know why parent comment is in gray, but it's spot on.

The one and only genuine business reason for Google Fonts is to vacuum visits data from sites that don't have GA installed or by users who have GA blocked. That's it. Free cheese and all that.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#32

Post by kornhole »

dylan604 wrote: post #17
kornhole wrote: post #10

A common explanation I get from people with poor digital hygiene is that they do not see how it is affecting them. Making the imperceptible perceptible is a great concept for more innovations. I have sent the kids in my house logs for their devices from the DNS blocker I have running on our network, but it was too much for them to digest. Perhaps I should work on a visualization tool of all the data that shows impact…

Most adults' eyes glaze over when looking at access logs, so I couldn't imagine kids being interested. (Maybe your kids are grown, but the visual from first read didn't come across that way). Charts and graphs are the only way people not interested in data can even remotely become interested. If it's good enough for FPOTUS, then it should be a compelling enough reason to complete your idea.

Good idea. I should start first with just graphs. Later we could video or gamify it.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#34

Post by viraptor »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #30
akie wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're being downvoted, because that's exactly what they're doing. Do people really think Google just gives away things for free because they're being nice?

> Do people really think Google just gives away things for free because they're being nice? No, I assumed they gave the low tier away for free so people would eventually upgrade to the higher tiers.

To be clear, I'm not saying that's what they do currently. Just that you can get useful metadata from an aggregate of very basic info like this.

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#35

Post by jareklupinski »

kornhole wrote: post #32
dylan604 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most adults' eyes glaze over when looking at access logs, so I couldn't imagine kids being interested. (Maybe your kids are grown, but the visual from first read didn't come across that way). Charts and graphs are the only way people not interested in data can even remotely become interested. If it's good enough for FPOTUS, then it should be a compelling enough reason to complete your idea.

Good idea. I should start first with just graphs. Later we could video or gamify it.

I'm picturing an Invaders clone, where your ship blasts threat actors onto blacklists :)

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#39

Post by dylan604 »

kornhole wrote: post #32
dylan604 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most adults' eyes glaze over when looking at access logs, so I couldn't imagine kids being interested. (Maybe your kids are grown, but the visual from first read didn't come across that way). Charts and graphs are the only way people not interested in data can even remotely become interested. If it's good enough for FPOTUS, then it should be a compelling enough reason to complete your idea.

Good idea. I should start first with just graphs. Later we could video or gamify it.

Just seeing the data also might be an eye roll for people that just like the free stuff. It is very difficult to get someone not already converted to the religion of 'tracking === bad'. Even showing how it can legitimately be used seems so tinfoil hat level of crazy, that normal people want to get away from you as quickly as possible.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled used to be convincing the world the devil doesn't exists. Now, his greatest trick is to convince the world that it's okay that he exists and all of his schemeing done by his minions are perfectly fine

Re: Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

#40

Post by kylevedder »

kornhole wrote: post #10

A common explanation I get from people with poor digital hygiene is that they do not see how it is affecting them. Making the imperceptible perceptible is a great concept for more innovations. I have sent the kids in my house logs for their devices from the DNS blocker I have running on our network, but it was too much for them to digest. Perhaps I should work on a visualization tool of all the data that shows impact…

>they do not see how it is affecting them

I'm an adult who understands tracking tech and in particular Google's level of tracking quite well (I used to work on AdWords), and I'm one of these people -- tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all but it keeps the many free services I value greatly running.

Visual or audio representations of the amount of data they're collecting are hardly an argument for why it's bad, as the logic goes "see, they're collecting a lot of data about your browsing... ...and that's bad" but it doesn't fill in the logical leap in the middle. You are going to be a lot more persuasive if you can fill that in instead of making fancy graphs.

Post reply on HN