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Become Ungoogleable

joeyh.name

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Re: Become Ungoogleable

#181

Post by reaperman »

evanchisholm wrote: post #172
bachmeier wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet. I mean no harm by this comment, but I think you're the one living in a bubble. Do you watch high school students using the internet? Where do they go for information? Reddit is the first place they look. Then they look for a Discord serve…

This is so untrue. Most high schoolers run a Google search for their queries first. Most of the time just looking for a Wikipedia page. Occasionally smart ones will Google and append "reddit" to the end of their search when looking for opinions but a lot of highschoolers barely know what reddit is. YouTube would probably be next up and then maybe TikTok. But Google is still 100% the first place to go. Source: I'm a h…

Your first-hand perspective is valuable here. Thanks for pitching in where you’re an actual “expert”.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#182

Post by bachmeier »

evanchisholm wrote: post #172
bachmeier wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a categorically false premise. The kind of statement that only makes sense when you're in a deep bubble and entirely removed from the average person's use of the internet. I mean no harm by this comment, but I think you're the one living in a bubble. Do you watch high school students using the internet? Where do they go for information? Reddit is the first place they look. Then they look for a Discord serve…

This is so untrue. Most high schoolers run a Google search for their queries first. Most of the time just looking for a Wikipedia page. Occasionally smart ones will Google and append "reddit" to the end of their search when looking for opinions but a lot of highschoolers barely know what reddit is. YouTube would probably be next up and then maybe TikTok. But Google is still 100% the first place to go. Source: I'm a h…

I don't disagree, but that's actually what I'm talking about. It apparently wasn't clear that I was making a distinction related to using Google to find information as opposed to using Google as a portal to sites that hold the information you're after. Your response shows that it's taken for granted that of course people wouldn't use Google to find a link to someone's website (which is the topic of the post).

Use Google to find a Wikipedia result.

Use Google to find a Reddit result.

Use Google to find YouTube videos.

Use Google to find TikTok videos.

20 years ago it was "Search Google and click on the links it provides".

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#183

Post by owyn »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #166
vmoore wrote: post #108

My most sensitive searches are when I lookup people online. Google only gets you so far. With enough money, you can throw a few coins at data broker firms and get back solid 'dox' on many people. It depends on how online a person is, and how much they unwittingly divulged to various services (services that sell their data to people-search firms and other brokers). I have the real name of several so called 'anonymous'…

Mind specifying what these services are? "how much they unwittingly divulged to various services (services that sell their data to people-search firms and other brokers)." Would a regular person have unwittingly given information to these services?

For example, Intelius does background checks, reverse phone number lookups etc. One small piece of information can lead to others. As far as unwitting, of course. The wikipedia page says that company has acquired background check companies, a facebook genealogy app company, classmates.com and a "people" search engine company... not to mention all the public databases that are available (criminal records, property records) The've been collecting online and offline data on people for almost 20 years. I'm sure they have data scraped from sites that don't exist any more. Combine that with the current terminally online population and I think it would be surprising to most regular people how much data is out there.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#184

Post by phendrenad2 »

There is a better reason to "become ungoogleable": Simply make the content you want, how you want, and if it has value Google will have to adjust their index to account for it. Too long we've been slaves to the SEO wheel, spending so much time on SEO that we don't have time to make stuff.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#185

Post by userbinator »

superkuh wrote: post #2

It's a fine idea. But what I'm taking away from this post is the link to the Google/Chromium web DRM prototype and summary ... yikes. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environ... >- The web page executing in a user's web browser >- A third party that can “attest” to the device a web browser is executing on, referred to as the attester >- The web developers server which can remotely verify attestati…

Remote attestation is the true enemy of your freedom.

People were suspicious of TPM and the "trusted computing" initiative and were fed plenty of propaganda about how it will make things "safer" and more "secure". There are corporate mouthpieces spreading that FUD on any article that's even just slightly critical of them and their plans.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32234022

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29859106

Start revolting against these hostile technologies before it's too late. They're slowly boiling the frog and hoping we don't notice.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#186

Post by wyclif »

deltarholamda wrote: post #78
distortedsignal wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that I agree. My brother tried to set me up with a girl last week. She has a pretty uncommon name. Googled her. Found... a lot of stuff. I have a VERY common name. Think multiple (relatively) famous people (photographers, US Medal of Honor winner, enough lawyers to choke a court system for DECADES), but if you google my name and the city I live in (1,000,000+ people), my LinkedIn is like the second resul…

Okay, but now try "what's the best gaming laptop?" or something similar. This is the sort of query that, at one time, would unearth some nerd's web site alongside PCWorld or whatever. Now it's seven pages of nearly identical listicles, some of which are on bizarre domains like "DougsAutoBodyAndFlowerShop.com", and all of which are festooned with ads, also provided by Google.

The worst is when (as in your example above) there's a bunch of YouTube videos on the first page of results. I do watch some YT channels, but generally speaking if I'm doing a Google search I'm looking for information quickly, so there's no way I'm going to watch a video in order to extract the bit of information I'm looking for.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#187

Post by userbinator »

sclarisse wrote: post #125
JeremyNT wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... I don't think the original post is the best. This blog post doesn't add much context. Maybe the URL should just be updated to the github document the blog post links? [0] [0] https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity/...

On the contrary. The URL you post here has been submitted to HN several times (plus my attempt to make the title a little catchier as I linked to the GitHub issue #28, which I titled “Don’t add website DRM to Chrome” in a defensible attempt to expand the title the best I credibly could under HN rules - the issue title is just “Don’t.”) These all died in obscurity. This blog post by contrast had a catchy title that HN…

These all died in obscurity.

I doubt they died "of natural causes".

It's not HN's fault that the enemy is huge and yields great influence.

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#188

Post by 38 »

bachmeier wrote: post #182
evanchisholm wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so untrue. Most high schoolers run a Google search for their queries first. Most of the time just looking for a Wikipedia page. Occasionally smart ones will Google and append "reddit" to the end of their search when looking for opinions but a lot of highschoolers barely know what reddit is. YouTube would probably be next up and then maybe TikTok. But Google is still 100% the first place to go. Source: I'm a h…

I don't disagree, but that's actually what I'm talking about. It apparently wasn't clear that I was making a distinction related to using Google to find information as opposed to using Google as a portal to sites that hold the information you're after . Your response shows that it's taken for granted that of course people wouldn't use Google to find a link to someone's website (which is the topic of the post). Use Go…

You seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that the first four words of your examples are "use Google to find"

Re: Become Ungoogleable

#190

Post by tadfisher »

incompatible wrote: post #175
superkuh wrote: post #2

It's a fine idea. But what I'm taking away from this post is the link to the Google/Chromium web DRM prototype and summary ... yikes. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environ... >- The web page executing in a user's web browser >- A third party that can “attest” to the device a web browser is executing on, referred to as the attester >- The web developers server which can remotely verify attestati…

I can't even visualise how this would work in any meaningful way. You are going to have some software that "attests" that, say, the user is running an approved version of Chrome. But you couldn't just distribute such software everywhere, since I assume it would be trivial to extract any keys from it and then attest whatever you wanted. The site mentions "Google Play" as a possible attestor, so it would perhaps work o…

You can have the same cryptographic chain of trust on PCs with Secure Boot enabled. Essentially the attestation is a signed hash of the computing environment, with Microsoft as its root authority in the PC ecosystem. The kernel+boot environment is next, then the system software stack, and finally the executable image. This is exactly what is provided by the trusted execution environment on Android devices, and Google Play is just the trusted arbiter of the software signatures.
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