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We Need To Talk, Google

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Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#191

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

RexRollman wrote: post #170
pdonis wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if the latest version simply isn't something you want? Exactly. Even worse, what if the old version was what you wanted, and now it's gone? For example, Google's book reader on Android. I started using it frequently about 6 months ago. Since then, every UI change they have made has made the experience worse for me. The only reason I still use it is that it does have one big advantage over the other readers I…

I know how you feel. Gmail's interface has become incredibly complicated and every change feels like a step backward. But as much as I don't care for Gmail's current interface, I can't and don't expect Google to support older web interfaces. If I really wanted interface consistency, I would run my own mail client.

That's exactly why I do run completely own servers, email, website, private communication platform etc. I don't like Google at all. Using Gmail is a trap, as we have seen here in other discussions.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#192

Post by cbhl »

ballard wrote: post #89
petitbeurre wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument, though, makes no sense at all. I'm a homosexual, and living in a very conservative and homophobic part of France. I don't want any things related to homosexuality and the lgbt community posted under my real identity, because then any member of my family or any of my friends could stumble upon it and make problematical deductions. Does that mean that I shouldn't be involved online in the lgbt community…

Anonimity is a basic human right that one should be free to exercise at any time. Without it, those in power or those crazies out there that have nothing better can easily find something to attack those they don't like. This is not the providence of "something to hide" but that people should be secure with certainty against all forms of intrusion that lacks probable cause. Anonymity is difficult for naïve people to u…

I think that anonymity is impossible; you could assign a unique number to each individual in something like 33 or 34 bits, which means you could de-anonymize your pseudonym in as few as 33 or 34 bisecting pieces of PII. (Gender identification provides at least one bit, and possibly more for someone who is homosexual; specifying a geographical region provides a few more.)

It's a nice ideal, but I think being anonymous is going to die in the next five years -- if it hasn't already.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#193

Post by glesica »

cromwellian wrote: post #49

Google is simply trying to unify their services. YouTube was an acquisition, with it's own login system and social network. They don't want to maintain this separation forever, they want a single signon for everything. Ditto for sharing and contacts. You had separate 'contacts' in Gmail, Latitude, G+, Reader, YouTube, and probably others I'm missing. Users shouldn't be prompted to maintain N different copies of this…

I think his complaint was more about feeling forced into creating a G+ profile, not about unified sign-on. The unified sign-on should be able to work just fine whether or not one has a G+ profile, just like it works whether or not one uses Blogger, YouTube or any other service...

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#194

Post by cbhl »

petitbeurre wrote: post #79
cbhl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is that if you didn't want them posted under "Mr John Smith" you shouldn't have posted them at all. I think they let you delete/hide all your old comments as part of the transition, but agreed that only accounts for the personal account use case, not the corporate YouTube channel use case.

That argument, though, makes no sense at all. I'm a homosexual, and living in a very conservative and homophobic part of France. I don't want any things related to homosexuality and the lgbt community posted under my real identity, because then any member of my family or any of my friends could stumble upon it and make problematical deductions. Does that mean that I shouldn't be involved online in the lgbt community…

> Does that mean that I shouldn't be involved online in the lgbt community whatsoever

What I'm saying is that YouTube is a terrible place to have a lgbt community. Most of the closed-garden Internet is a terrible place to have a lgbt community, because all it takes is Zuck or Brin or some other "benevolent" dictator deciding to reveal all your secrets, and you're dead.

Like, there was that girl who was disowned by her parents once Facebook made group memberships public on profiles, because she happened to be part of a lgbt group at her university.

You're putting a hell of a lot of trust in Google or Facebook over what is, for you, a life-or-death situation.

Choose a community where people only use pseudonyms, and which isn't driven by corporate profits.

Edit: Also, a "anonymous" online political activist is going to live a miserable life; look at Snowden and Manning and Assange. You can't even send stuff to the newspapers any more without angry people coming to destroy your hard drives.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#195

Post by cbhl »

nolok wrote: post #114
petitbeurre wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument, though, makes no sense at all. I'm a homosexual, and living in a very conservative and homophobic part of France. I don't want any things related to homosexuality and the lgbt community posted under my real identity, because then any member of my family or any of my friends could stumble upon it and make problematical deductions. Does that mean that I shouldn't be involved online in the lgbt community…

I would like to add that while I disagree with the comment you're replying to (reminds me of "why disagree with spying if you have nothing to hide" ...), I understand that nothing forces a particular company to allow anonymous content on their website and that's fine by me. But there is a world between refusing anon, and suddenly and posteriorly displaying the real name of people on top of content they thought was an…

You shouldn't rely on Mother Google or Daddy Facebook to fight your battles for you, because their interests are not the same as yours.

Real Names was protested to death the moment that Google+ came out; my understanding is that their compromise was that your entire Google profile was to use the same name, but that name could be a pseudonym so long as it was realistic. (If your legal name was weird, well, too bad, send in some ID.)

There's nothing we can do about this now, whining about it on HN. Choose to stop using YouTube, switch to a new account with a pseudonym, use Vimeo instead, start your own.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#196

Post by criley2 »

mbell wrote: post #160
bambax wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find value in these things Well then good for you, and you should be able to merge all your accounts with Google into one; but why should this be almost compulsory? What's more, if there's so much value into this, why does Google have to force its users to do it?

> Well then good for you, and you should be able to merge all your accounts with Google into one; but why should this be almost compulsory? Quite often here on Hacker News we sit around and talk about how removing features or options from an App is often the best thing to do for usability. I think this is true. At the same time every time this comes up with regards to Google or some other large company the response f…

It's not that.

It's Google becoming more and more mainstream. It's Lowest Common Denominator Google.

Every revision, something else is gone. Another menu is missing, another option.

After scouring enough Google Support forums, tinkering in enough settings and trying enough workarounds, it's the only solution I can come to.

Google isn't the hacker search engine we fell in love with over a decade ago.

It's an advertising company looking to monetize on a user's lack of privacy to help connect them with advertisers. Adwords is 99% of their business. We can't just ignore that forever.

The lowest common denominator of user is the the type of user is probably most susceptible not controlling their privacy well enough and for Google being able to target them widely. How much does Google really care about us ad-block toting hacker types anyway?

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#197

Post by sukoto »

piyush_soni wrote: post #181
bambax wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find value in these things Well then good for you, and you should be able to merge all your accounts with Google into one; but why should this be almost compulsory? What's more, if there's so much value into this, why does Google have to force its users to do it?

Well, it's not. YouTube asked me exactly once if I want to use my Google+ name and pic on YouTube. I said no. It said Ok. Didn't ask since then.

I've been asked multiple times, trying to get me to use my real name on YT.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#198

Post by wjk »

sukoto wrote: post #197
piyush_soni wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not. YouTube asked me exactly once if I want to use my Google+ name and pic on YouTube. I said no. It said Ok. Didn't ask since then.

I've been asked multiple times, trying to get me to use my real name on YT.

I haven't been asked for years. I have the same username i had in 2006.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#199

Post by jevinskie »

kevingadd wrote: post #96
jevinskie wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. They pester you quite often to try to link YouTube with Google+. I'm surprised I haven't accidentally clicked the wrong choice yet. The copy for the two options is confusing!

They've changed them/moved them a few times, too. Presumably in the hopes that you'll screw up.

It just happened again. It is a two step process. 1) "Hey fix your name, you better do this!" and then if you click "No", it does 2) "Are you really sure?" with a new way of presenting the same two choices! It is absolutely a dark pattern and I am thinking about finding/writing a browser extension to take care of it.

Re: We Need To Talk, Google

#200

Post by alexmat »

humbledrone wrote: post #172
raheemm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from chrome to FF and google search to duckduckgo search after prism.

You know that DuckDuckGo is a US company, right? And thus subject to the same exact laws as a company like Google (and the same NSA snooping). It's true that they don't log your search queries, but if the NSA has access to the root CAs they can snoop on you anyway. And what do you think happens if the government subpoenas DuckDuckGo and tells them to log your traffic? They will of course do so. And they have a MUCH s…

DuckDuckGo Tor Hidden service address, for anyone interested: 3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/08/duckduckgo-now-o...

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