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Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google

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

#81

Post by dogman144 »

kylevedder wrote: post #76
dogman144 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a snapshot of the cognitive dissonance that causes AdWords to keep growing despite the people building it being smart folks. It doesn’t affect me and I like free stuff, so seems fine. There isn’t a missing logical leap in the middle. The tracking is self-evidently anti-democratic.

>There isn’t a missing logical leap in the middle. The tracking is self-evidently anti-democratic. If you can't mount a coherent argument that doesn't assume the conclusion, you should consider the possibility that the conclusion simply isn't true.

There is a massive corpus of research on this that I think you’re unaware of. Start with the Snowden leaks and work your way back.

Since I can’t reply to below, the general approach of “I don’t know about this so it must not exist and I won’t research” is very backward if you’re in a PhD program.

I get what you’re getting at. Google just builds the technology, the rest is up to the users.

That said, re: Snowden, IC piggybacked off Google cookies and direct taps into Google infra (PRISM). Email, chat, videos, photos, stored data, file transfers, logins, all tracked.

The classic approach from tech until recently is what I said above - we just build it! That didn’t work well for the cigarette companies.

In other words, it is difficult to convince people that they are doing wrong/causing wrong when their research and pay is dependent on not believing they are.

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

#82

Post by kylevedder »

dogman144 wrote: post #81
kylevedder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There isn’t a missing logical leap in the middle. The tracking is self-evidently anti-democratic. If you can't mount a coherent argument that doesn't assume the conclusion, you should consider the possibility that the conclusion simply isn't true.

There is a massive corpus of research on this that I think you’re unaware of. Start with the Snowden leaks and work your way back. Since I can’t reply to below, the general approach of “I don’t know about this so it must not exist and I won’t research” is very backward if you’re in a PhD program. I get what you’re getting at. Google just builds the technology, the rest is up to the users. That said, re: Snowden, IC p…

The Snowden leaks were about NSA data collection. Last I checked the NSA was not a tracking ads powered big tech company.

Also I hope you realize pointing me to an entire metaverse of memes is not an argument. If this corpus is so massive it should be easy to concretely point to several very specific examples, not hand wave at the entirety of one of the largest national security leaks in American history.

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

#83

Post by arrosenberg »

kylevedder wrote: post #80
arrosenberg wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are using their ad business (wherein they have an effective monopoly on search engine advertising) to subsidize their other businesses. That is a fairly standard definition for predatory pricing in the US.

Their other businesses being what search or maps? Those are ads properties. You could setup competitors that also serve ads.

Thats not how antitrust laws work.

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

#84

Post by easrng »

7373737373 wrote: post #42
jnsaff2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, their captcha is everywhere for starters. Obviously a lot of other deps too.

How come there isn't a single open source captcha solution?

There are plenty of open source "type the letters" captchas, there are also open source PoW "captchas" like https://github.com/FriendlyCaptcha (that one might only be partially open, not sure)

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

#85

Post by somedude895 »

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.

> Their whole suite of "free" developer tools (google analytics, google fonts, firebase, ...) are just a means to get information about what people do online.

Is this actually confirmed to be true? It would make a lot of sense for them to use free-tier GA data for profiling for Display ads etc, but has it ever actually been proven?

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

#86

Post by kylevedder »

arrosenberg wrote: post #83
kylevedder wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their other businesses being what search or maps? Those are ads properties. You could setup competitors that also serve ads.

Thats not how antitrust laws work.

You're asserting that's not how they work, but you're also asserting they're illegally subsidizing their search and maps business with... the revenue they generate from selling ads space on their search and maps businesses.

I'll leave it as an exercise to the lurkers to decide who is probably right.

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

#87

Post by CWuestefeld »

drcongo wrote: post #49
kylevedder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ar…

Do you know for sure that surveillance capitalism isn't pushing up the prices of your health insurance because you once googled a symptom, or your flight prices because your search history reveals your disposable income? Or even, taken to extremes, it could even preclude your from even getting health insurance because it can prove knowledge of a pre-existing condition.

Do you know for sure that surveillance capitalism isn't pushing up the prices of your health insurance because you once googled a symptom

Yes, I do, at least for the very large majority of Americans who get their health insurance through their employer. As problematic as that relationship may be, it does set up a wall such that (a) the cost to me, personally, is completely standardized; and (b) there's a large gap between my individual online identity and my identity as an employee within my organization.

Further, health insurance is just about the most heavily-regulated industry in the universe. Aside from the trivial assertion that it's absurd to refer to this industry as "capitalism" because it's so far from a free market, the fact is that the insurance companies are watched very closely, and I think it's improbable that they could have a setup like this without anyone having learned about it.

Finally, again for the majority who are covered through their employer, most of these policies are self-insured. That is, it's the employer themselves who pays the charges, and they're also paying the insurance company to administer the program, but not to shoulder any risks. The more the insurance company has to spend on that administration, the less likely they're going to be hired. To make such a trade-off there would need to be a pretty clear demonstration to the employer that more money is being saved in medical payments than is being spent on that additional administration - and again, that's consistent with my argument in the prior paragraph.

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

#88

Post by kylevedder »

dogman144 wrote: post #70
kylevedder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a bit orthogonal so I put it in a separate comment, but let me be even more aggressive and do a bit of offense: I've read a lot of the "pro privacy/anti tracking" arguments over the years, and (outside of a few exceptions) they almost always hinge upon some aesthetic dislike for companies having this information, rather than having any material justification for why it's harmful. But attacking ads and ad trackin…

> rather than having any material justification for why it's harmful Material - During the bombings in Austin, Google provided a blanket location/data dump to the police of everyone with Google accs within x-miles of the event. That data, regardless of linked to the bombing in the end, is kept by Austin PD and likely the FBI, forever. You have given the police a warrantless log of citizens basically based on “well th…

The police asked for stuff and the company complied and now you're upset that the government has it, but somehow it's actually Google's fault? Pass laws so your government can't do things you don't like.

>If you don’t see the glaring material issues, that explains a lot about why Google is Google.

I don't work at Google anymore. Feel free to click on my profile to see what I'm up to these days.

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

#89

Post by [deleted] »

kylevedder wrote: post #86
arrosenberg wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not how antitrust laws work.

You're asserting that's not how they work, but you're also asserting they're illegally subsidizing their search and maps business with... the revenue they generate from selling ads space on their search and maps businesses. I'll leave it as an exercise to the lurkers to decide who is probably right.

[deleted]
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