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Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

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171–180 of 696 posts

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#171
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet this went up. I understand it’s easy to just say “marketing teams don’t understand anything,“ but I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions. They get it wrong but they tend to air on the side of caution which means the vast majority of the time they avoid situations like this incredibly intentionally.

> I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions. And yet there are countless examples that show the exact opposite. This made it through one of the largest marketing budgets in the world… https://youtu.be/uwvAgDCOdU4

All of y'all keep saying variations of this yet the whole point is it’s the exception to the rule. The vast majority of ads aren’t controversial. That’s why it’s such a big deal when one is. It’s newsworthy and everyone has an opinion on that one ad.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple isn't on the evil list, aside from the kowtowing every powerful leader must do not to have their business attacked.

Apple was a PRISM partner. They share just as much with the NSA as Microsoft and Google.

Remember when Apple PR spent a bunch of time putting Tim Cook alongside images of RFK? Civil rights hero! That campaign wouldn’t land these days.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#173
Regular where I live:

I don't use google maps, I use Waze I don't use messenger, I use whatsapp I don't upload my pictures, contacts (sync is enabled by default)

Anyways. What are the options? It will be another free cloud hosted service.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#174
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone commented on a HN threads on just de-googling and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account. Just not using it is really unrealistic for the average person at this moment

I know it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware. Unfortunately, the status quo also means the US (and its tech giants) has real power and control over other countries' technology sector. So, no party in America will make or enforce laws that will change th…

What law would you propose, and have you thought through unintended consequences?

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#176
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware. Unfortunately, the status quo also means the US (and its tech giants) has real power and control over other countries' technology sector. So, no party in America will make or enforce laws that will change th…

> make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware. None of this is legally easy to implement or enforce, and any attempt of doing it is virtually guaranteed to create an unbelievable amount of unintended consequences as people figure out ways to game this new set of rules.

We need something similar to FIPS for interoperable software and standards. Organizations will fall in line when money is at stake.

Say for example your local/state/federal agency publishes (or accepts) documents exclusively in ods/odf instead of proprietary formats, that will automatically drive adoption of software and prevent lock-in.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple isn't on the evil list, aside from the kowtowing every powerful leader must do not to have their business attacked.

> Apple isn't on the evil list Yeah, Tim Apple handing over a 24-karat gold plaque to the sitting president is completely normal behavior for CEOs to engage in, and not at all about just making as much money as possible. He had to do that, otherwise Apple as a company would disappear tomorrow. They're just trying to survive.

I don’t like that we’ve gotten to a place where presumably serious people think that giving a token prize to a narcissist is the same thing as engaging in massive surveillance of the entire population.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#178
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone commented on a HN threads on just de-googling and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account. Just not using it is really unrealistic for the average person at this moment

I know it is probably not the American way but the only way to address this problem is to make laws that prevent a duopoly, penalize anti-competitive behavior and push open-source standards for software/hardware. Unfortunately, the status quo also means the US (and its tech giants) has real power and control over other countries' technology sector. So, no party in America will make or enforce laws that will change th…

Even in the EU we can't use a lot of "society important" smartphone apps without Google Play or the Apple Store. I can get a physical key thing for my national digital ID, but I can't get anything for my bank, my healthcare (which is a public service in Denmark) or any of our national digital post services. You can apply to get exempt from the digital post services, and they do have a website sollution, but still.

Don't get me wrong. I appreachiate all the work being done to get Europe out of the claws of US tech companies, but I think having an official EU app store alternative would be a good start.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet this went up. I understand it’s easy to just say “marketing teams don’t understand anything,“ but I have worked with many and they are incredibly sensitive to negative feelings/reactions. They get it wrong but they tend to air on the side of caution which means the vast majority of the time they avoid situations like this incredibly intentionally.

Marketing teams are constantly out of touch with the message they want to convey vs the message that gets conveyed. The creative team is usually not even talking to the other teams that would drive decisions like this - they almost exclusively are an isolated team (purposefully, like how engineers are often isolated from customers) that talks to a separate marketing team that then manages things like legal/compliance…

I worked in that world for a solid decade as a “creative” (video production) and when it comes to the big dogs, that is absolutely not true. They are incredibly top down and have to review everything. We have to pitch our ideas even when we’re in the door. They have strict brand bibles we have to adhere to. Ones that gave us free rein were the exception, not the rule.

Sometimes it was for no other reason than a bunch of people in house felt they needed to justify their existence, but regardless that’s how it was 90% of the time.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I know it seems hard, but just stop using Google, Amazon, Meta products. I noticed your own app's website [0] hosts videos on YouTube [1] and uses Stripe as a payment processor [2], which is hosted on AWS. You also mentioned that your app is vibe coded [3]; the AI labs that facilitated your vibecoding likely built and run their models using Meta's PyTorch or Google's TensorFlow. "Just stop using" makes for a catchy…

Someone commented on a HN threads on just de-googling and he couldn't even pick up his kids without a gmail or apple account. Just not using it is really unrealistic for the average person at this moment

Everything counts, this attitude is very defeatist. Stop using it the easy ways at first, and then make conscious steps to get off these services going forward.
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