Audible feedback on just how much your browsing feeds into Google • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by pclmulqdq » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 3:41 AM UTC

kylevedder wrote: post #183

pclmulqdq wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google making ad auctions more efficient becomes state surveillance the instant a subpoena arrives at their door. You might believe you are safe from a subpoena because you haven't done anything wrong, but you would be wrong about that: * Things like geofence warrants are used to surveil people who are merely within a given radius of a crime. * Subpoenas don't have to be for criminal cases, they can also be civil or…

Copy and paste from elsewhere because it's the same talking point over and over: big tech is not the government , and your complaint is with the government. The FBI could just as easily setup a StingRay network [1] and capture all cell information. The only protection against that is robust digital civil rights legislation protecting Americans from governmental over reach, not lampooning big tech companies for having…

Stingrays and other technical things that people could do are a lot more expensive than just asking Google or Verizon for their records. Also, that kind of indiscriminate tracking is a fourth amendment violation, so the government actually can't do it legally (and the evidence gathered by such a technique can get thrown out in court). Both of those things make a big difference.

The right people to go after are the ones who are not bound by the fourth amendment and who are creating a huge pool of data that is available for the government to grab. Technical solutions that collate data have been very useful tools for government overreach over the last century. IBM's census tracking system in the 1930's is a very well-known example of this sort of technology: a well-meaning innovation that efficiently organized Germany's demographic data and made it accessible... to the Nazis who wanted to find Jews.

Here's an example of the government using data from big tech that they would never have been able to collect themselves due to the fourth amendment: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18089090/amazon-ech...

Here are the stats on subpoenas, search warrants, and court orders that Google has received, showing how they have found over 80% of them to be not unreasonable: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?use...

If you were able to fight a subpoena for your own records (for example, because you owned the data instead of Google), I promise you that percentage would be a lot lower, solely because the incentives are different. Google doesn't particularly care about protecting you. Google cares a lot more than that about protecting its status with politicians. What this means is that they will do the minimum possible review on a subpoena for data on your account to not get sued by you.

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

#192

Post by dmitriid » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 5:19 AM UTC

kylevedder wrote: post #130

dmitriid wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have ads without tracking. I don't think anyone is against ads per se. People are against pervasive continuous tracking and wholesale sale of data to anyone.

>wholesale sale of data to anyone You know Google doesn't do this, right? Besides being against their own terms of service (and outright illegal), they're economically incentivized not to ; they use the data to make their ad auctions more efficient, an edge they would lose if they sold the raw data.

Google is big enough to not need to sell that data. Doesn't make it a right thing to do.

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

#193

Post by ephbit » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 5:52 AM UTC

wizofaus wrote: post #116

ephbit wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only DuckDuckGo existed, search algorithm quality would stagnate and then get worse ... You appear to be one of the people who surprisingly still get good results from google. There are dozens if not hundreds of discussions here in HN where people complain about exactly the opposite. Google search results have become worse and worse in recent years, mostly except for search queries that involve finding buyable p…

> You appear to be one of the people who surprisingly still get good results from google Add me to that list. Google results are invariably superior every time I've tried out alternatives. I wish it weren't so, as there's still a lot of room for improvement with Google but they have such a monopoly they're unlikely to invest heavily in further advances if there's any risk it reduces their ad revenue. Do you have some…

My point wasn't about google results possibly being superior to other search engine results. But about them having become worse and diluted by SEOed sites that sell something over time.

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

#194

Post by wizofaus » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 8:19 AM UTC

ephbit wrote: post #193

wizofaus wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You appear to be one of the people who surprisingly still get good results from google Add me to that list. Google results are invariably superior every time I've tried out alternatives. I wish it weren't so, as there's still a lot of room for improvement with Google but they have such a monopoly they're unlikely to invest heavily in further advances if there's any risk it reduces their ad revenue. Do you have some…

My point wasn't about google results possibly being superior to other search engine results. But about them having become worse and diluted by SEOed sites that sell something over time.

"Good" isn't a very high standard! But fair enough.

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

#195

Post by tarakat » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 9:20 AM UTC

kylevedder wrote: post #40

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 ar…

> tracking doesn't seem to negatively impact my quality of life at all but it keeps the many free services I value greatly running

"My leash is long enough to reach all the places I care to visit, and the food is good."

Look at China for a glimpse of what will happen when they shorten the leash. But you didn't bother to remove the leash while you still could.

> But that's the State, not Google!

Will it matter? The State will use Google, and Google will use the State.

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

#196

Post by ctchocula » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 9:54 AM UTC

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…

Recently installed pi-hole, which uses a Raspberry Pi to block ads and the visualization they have is pretty good.

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

#197

Post by legacynl » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 11:14 AM UTC

kleer001 wrote: post #59

handity wrote: post #11

I consider myself very privacy conscious, bordering on the paranoid. I use FOSS as much as possible, avoid FAANG, and remove surveillance from my life wherever I can. This tool shocked me. It exposes in a visceral way just how prevalent Google is, and does a better job getting that idea across than every video, article, post or comment I've consumed on the topic.

As a counter point (and you're not wrong, this is just my take)... I consider myself privacy and security and convenience conscious, not at all paranoid yet as I don't expect I have aroused the interest of a State power (touch wood). I use what most people use and prefer less friction over philosophically and/or ethically pure services. This tool made me shrug. Sure, yea, that's not an unexpected frequency, I guess.…

"Rationally/ethically X sounds dangerous and bad, but I haven't seen any widespread disaster resulting from X, therefore X is fine/good enough, so I just try to not think about the ways X is bad and unethical"

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

#198

Post by legacynl » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 11:15 AM UTC

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #50

kleer001 wrote: post #37

Ok. What does it sound like on Firefox or Safari or Brave or anything other than Chrome (a Google product)?

Pretty much the same. (There's a Firefox video in the same Twitter thread mentioned earlier)

and what if you disable search-suggestions?

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

#199

Post by handity » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 12:37 PM UTC

kleer001 wrote: post #59

handity wrote: post #11

I consider myself very privacy conscious, bordering on the paranoid. I use FOSS as much as possible, avoid FAANG, and remove surveillance from my life wherever I can. This tool shocked me. It exposes in a visceral way just how prevalent Google is, and does a better job getting that idea across than every video, article, post or comment I've consumed on the topic.

As a counter point (and you're not wrong, this is just my take)... I consider myself privacy and security and convenience conscious, not at all paranoid yet as I don't expect I have aroused the interest of a State power (touch wood). I use what most people use and prefer less friction over philosophically and/or ethically pure services. This tool made me shrug. Sure, yea, that's not an unexpected frequency, I guess.…

Paranoid was maybe the wrong word. I am not worried about anything in particular happening to me, but I know that mass surveillance is bad in principal, so I oppose it.

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

#200

Post by dogman144 » Tue, Aug 23, 2022, 1:52 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #159

dogman144 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve worked for the govt and no they aren’t a nebulous blob of power with tech. What they are though is an entity that has a set of directives supported by access to the data tech provided in conjunction with either not understanding tech or really getting it. The tech company approach of staying willfully ignorant or positions like ITT with “we just build it!” has caused a lot of damage in the hands of the govt user…

> I’ve worked for the govt and no they aren’t a nebulous blob of power with tech. Yes and I've worked for tech companies that use tracking in their products, though not (my products) for ads, so I know what a tech company can and cannot do. > The tech company approach of staying willfully ignorant or positions like ITT with “we just build it!” has caused a lot of damage in the hands of the govt users it’s delivered t…

You should read up on cybernetics for what I mean regarding mass collection of data leading to undemocratic outcomes, my guess is you haven’t ran into it. But, large area of research.