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Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

bradfrost.com

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Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#191

Post by n1231231231234 »

ptasci67 wrote: post #154
fenwick67 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're an advertising company that gets most of its profits by collecting personal information about people and trying to manipulate them into buying things. Sounds pretty unethical to me.

Are billboards or radio stations or television channels unethical to you? Because they are also trying to "manipulate" you into buying things. Advertising is not inherently unethical. I want people to buy my product so I need to raise awareness of it, encourage people that it is the best, make them feel like they need it. I would even go so far as to say that Google's default anonymized model makes this far better. M…

the difference between a billboard and google is that ppl are aware that a billboard is advertisement. i don't think that ppl really understand what they are agreeing to when they get a pixel, chromebook, or even just gmail. and this way, google can put up those micro billboards that we often do not consciously perceive but that still influence our actions. and the google billboards that we do perceive, for them, very few ppl understand why they are so powerful at showing us personally just the right stuff.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#192

Post by 4bpp »

The obvious countermeasure seems to be to feed them bullshit data (wrong reviews, pictures from elsewhere and what-not), but for some curious reason this feels antisocial against other Google users in a way that outweighs the benefits of sabotaging their data collection. Attacking Google almost has something of being an /r/atheism style gadfly.

(Well, there's also the problem that there is no telling how they would react to an account getting flagged for nonsense submissions. Losing access to my gmail would be a personal catastrophe well in excess of losing a full wallet or two.)

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#193

Post by mrweasel »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #20
pdelbarba wrote: post #17

Disregarding the privacy issues, I find this to also be insanely annoying. I want notifications to be important. Not a bunch of spam that ultimately equates to advertising.

You can turn off these notifications in the Maps app. It's annoying they're on by default though.

They're on by default because only one person in this debate has said that he/she would turn it on. Most of these features have to be shoved down our throat, because there's on incentive to turn them on.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#194

Post by 4bpp »

ptasci67 wrote: post #154
fenwick67 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're an advertising company that gets most of its profits by collecting personal information about people and trying to manipulate them into buying things. Sounds pretty unethical to me.

Are billboards or radio stations or television channels unethical to you? Because they are also trying to "manipulate" you into buying things. Advertising is not inherently unethical. I want people to buy my product so I need to raise awareness of it, encourage people that it is the best, make them feel like they need it. I would even go so far as to say that Google's default anonymized model makes this far better. M…

If nothing else, the difference between those and Google is at least one of scale and power. With great power comes great responsibility, but Google does not really appear like its sense of responsibility has grown in proportion to its power.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#195

Post by deong »

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #10

Two things that happened to me: A) I walk into a store, get a notification from google photos asking me "I see you're at store X, wouldn't you like to take some pictures?". Possibly to use as part of google maps. Thinking back I think this is when I started de-googlifying my life. B) I get a notification from google maps asking me "you're travelling to place X soon, wouldn't you like to download an offline map, just…

And I started using Google's phones because I could see the potential for things like B. Hell yes, I want my phone to be aware of things in my email inbox. I want it to be more aware.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#196

Post by brndnmtthws »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #190
brndnmtthws wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're using it as a way of increasing their ad revenue by getting free data from their users. How is that not spam? If I send you unsolicited emails asking you to give me photos of products you use which I'll then sell ads for and keep all the revenue, would that not be spam? I did not sign up for any product promotion notifications, so if I receive any it's spam.

They pay the user for it with increased Google Drive space, a free subscription to the NYT, etc.

More like robbing people of their time.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#197

Post by darkerside »

beat wrote: post #182
Raphmedia wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My memory is terrible enough that I can't do those things myself. One could argue that your memory is terrible because you know you can rely on those services.

This reminds me uncomfortably of someone I saw yesterday arguing that you shouldn't get a flu shot because it makes your immune system lazy. Memory is complicated and difficult. It can be trained, but we only have so much bandwidth for it. It's very nice to have automation to "remember" for us, so we can stop wasting that limited bandwidth on things that don't much matter, like details of our dinner experience, and s…

> things that don't much matter, like details of our dinner experience

Really???

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#198

Post by cromwellian »

How is this functionality different than an app asking you to review it after using it? The app “knows” your using it and prompts you to contribute to crowd sourced app reviews in the App Store. Apple likely knows what apps you have run unless you disable all diagnostics and lots of apps phone home.

In this case, geo fencing is prompting you to review a location instead of an app.

I think people rely on a lot more crowdsourced information, much of it from nagging or campaigning, than they realize and would be sad if it didn’t exist. Waze has saved my bacon many times. Google Maps’s knowledge of near real time bussiness congestion or closures has stopped me from wasting an hour driving somewhere only to find out it’s closed or all full.

On the health front we could probably save millions of lives from disease if more anonymized health records were available to researchers for application of machine learning to medical histories or prediction of complications. So much good could be done in the world.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#199

Post by zacmps »

wvenable wrote: post #147
aiiane wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maps app -> Settings -> Notifications -> Your Contributions (and uncheck boxes as desired). The controls exist.

My guess is that doesn't turn off tracking but now you just won't be notified of it. I admit though, as a user of the data, I find this very helpful. Google is absolutely brilliant at give real time traffic information to roads and businesses. You want to know if Costco is busy right now, they'll tell you. Accident getting there going to cost you 5 minutes, they'll tell you that too.

That's a separate option called location history. Alternatively you can turn off location in Android.

Re: Google, You Creepy Sonofabitch

#200

Post by thg »

mudil wrote: post #104
rsync wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Google are a deeply, deeply unethical company and all of their employees are complicit." ... "My phone now asks me to review this restaurant every time I come home ..." Why are you using their products (specifically, their phones with their ecosystem built-in) if they are "deeply, deeply unethical") ? Every single step you take while your phone on is giving them more data and building their resource base.

Google is deeply unethical company because it follows you from the restaurant to your bedroom, literally. Google knows your sexual orientation, your friends, your hobbies, your political orientation. And they do it so they can show you an ad! Image any other multinational doing this, and there would be riots on the streets!

Then where are the riots about Facebook, who are arguably even worse than Google? With 1/3rd of the global population on Facebook, I don't think people care as much as you think they do.
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