I've come to believe that there is nothing that humans can do to resist the privacy encroachments of our machine overlords. Don't blame Google - it's a universal inevitability.
Not OK, Google
181–190 of 594 posts
Re: Not OK, Google
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
As was mentioned below, in Google's case I'm particularly looking for ease of use and a UI that lets me turn things on and off quickly and intuitively. That might sound odd, as if I care deeply enough about my privacy to complain about it, but not enough to quickly switch the settings on my Google account, but I do think it matters. The more specific work I need to go through to set up my privacy, the less inclined I…
Did you check that link? It looks fairly intuitive to me. Given that I'm having a hard time parsing your response. However if there's some specific setting in there that's not available, that would make sense.
I think each individual action is fine, but I don't understand how it's easy to manage privacy as a whole. Each aspect of privacy is separate, and can be finely customized in one particular way per session. There's no way to set different arrangements of settings for different times, or even just a button on mobile to whack that indicates "Ignore my data for the next few minutes."
Re: Not OK, Google
#183Google Now has done the same for me, told me how long it will take to get to a bar I frequent. My reaction was quite exactly "Oh that's neat, thanks!" and I went and had a great burger that night. Totally OK for me Google. I respect that people have different privacy thresholds, but I think the fact that it's different for everyone is being lost in articles like this.
To me it's pretty simple. If you don't like what Google is doing, don't use their services, and don't buy their products.
Re: Not OK, Google
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should be glad that it doesn't remind you: "Hey, it's a been a while. Why don't you go to ... today? Traffic conditions are favorable too."
Their business model is to attract and sell your attention to other companies. Given that, and the existence of pervasive surveillance and data mining, the above is inevitable.
Or as one fellow once said on HN with regard to self driving cars and advertising as a business model:
"Oh you wanted to go to the bank today? Fuck you, we're going over by the mall" doors lock shut
Re: Not OK, Google
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think for quite a large number of people, allowing AIs to make decisions for them will probably be better for them.
Imagine some day your doctor advises to cut back on burgers and alcohol. Is Google going to incorporate that advice in its bar recommendations?
Why not? As long as you're clicking their ads, they'll make money regardless of whether you're buying a burger or a salad.
Re: Not OK, Google
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
One tiny caveat being that, Google (and others as well, to be fair) will be able to indirectly collect data even on the privacy-aware part of the population who don't use Google much. The simplest example being, even if you don't use GMail, still some part of your emails inevitably end up in GMail inboxes. Now also consider this: just being a guest in a Google-stuffed house means you are under surveillance. So no, it…
If you visit a place of business you are potentially under surveillance. I'm sure there is a distinction but I'm failing to come up with it right now. I was somewhat radical about privacy in the late 90s (only person I knew that read every EULA) and am still a supporter of the EFF but I don't really understand the issue here.
Its one thing to be under surveillance by a grocery store's security cameras and another thing when those cameras are sending all your data to the same central organization. Right now we aren't that great at integrating all that data — knowing that I'll be in a certain bar on Sunday nights is a little disconcerting, but if I knew that was the limit of AI assistants' invasiveness I'd be embracing it for the convenience. But technology for AI and data processing will improve, and data gathering will become more pervasive and more centralized, and soon megacorps will have a much more complete profile of you that they can query if ever they or one of their employees develops malicious intent (not to mention the non-malicious actions that can cause harm).
Tl;dr there's privacy in decentralization.
Re: Not OK, Google
#187> ... your daily business is Google’s business.
I can see the day coming where this is their primary marketing slogan.
Re: Not OK, Google
#188What I think is interesting is that many of us nerds have probably innocuously fantasized about having a Star Trek-like AI assistant with us, but now that they're taking the first steps towards that, we're starting to realize that in order for it to do everything for us, it has to know everything about us, too.
The big difference is the Star Trek computer wasn't using its data about Kirk to provide him "enhanced advertising experiences", there wasn't a big corporation controlling the computer and no government was accessing the computer's information.
A truly user-aligned AI assistant would be great. Ideally in the future these things will not be tied to indirect business models, but rather will be something you buy and all data/services will be under your control.
Re: Not OK, Google
#189From the article: So the actual price for building a “personal Google for everyone, everywhere” would in fact be zero privacy for everyone, everywhere. That has no basis. It is completely possible to do what they are doing by keeping everyone's individual privacy intact. And if I go by Google's privacy policy, that's exactly what they are doing. And I think it's in their best interest to keep it that way, because the…
"Zero privacy" here means privacy from Google. Based on your reading of their ToS and your beliefs about their best interest, you may trust them to do no wrong and you may therefore be comfortable with Google knowing everything about your life, but not everyone feels the same.
Yes, sure, I know a lot of people who're not comfortable with sharing everything with Google, and I can understand that. Unfortunately, most of them are sharing their private data with some third party if not Google (that won't be any more careful about their privacy if they could mine the data as Google can, and probably technically less capable of preventing external breaches). In the end, it comes down to trust, one 3rd party or the other - as they're not managing everything themselves.
Re: Not OK, Google
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a fairly uncommon name and predominately use Gmail. Still, I receive a surprising amount of other people's mail in error. Apparently lots of people guess at email addys. I do often wonder at both the lack of privacy this engenders and what the Goog machine must make of it all.
I definitely worry about my life being affected by situations like this. I receive a ridiculous amount of other people's email - for serious things like email account reset, to banking info. When the Ashley Madison hack happened, my email address was there multiple times! Imagine if my then-partner had bothered to look, what a mess that would be.
Lay down a trail of public comments for plausible deniability. Smart!