Google's software mistreats or harms the user • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#201

Post by yarrel » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 8:51 PM UTC

riazrizvi wrote: post #173

The DRM stance is ambiguous IMO. Property rights of content creators are generally considered worth protecting in a good society. The issue is with locked down software which 1) abuses this privacy to violate user privacy, and 2) takes the creative freedoms that the software publishers enjoyed when they wrote their software and creates a contract which denies those freedoms to their users. I feel like we would better…

DRM (Digital Restrictions Machinations) being an ineffective and harmful measure isn't ambiguous. There is no reciprocity to them, and they are generally neither imposed by nor respectful of creators.

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#202

Post by hrktb » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

creeble wrote: post #68

leshow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - They describe Google's demonstrated ability to remove malware from user's devices as a "backdoor" from wikipedia "A backdoor is a method, often secret, of bypassing normal authentication or encryption in a computer system, a product, or an embedded device " Seems to fit. > - They describe parental controls as "censorship" "Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the…

Aren't the parental controls voluntary censorship? That is requested by the user? True by definition, but not by intent.

I interpret it as a point about the mechanism being in place.It being marketed as a parental control is accessory.

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#203

Post by judge2020 » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 8:57 PM UTC

yarrel wrote: post #195

chucksmash wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd naively consider a keylogger to be software that captures your keypresses universally. I use Firefox and have search suggestions disabled there so I am somewhat sympathetic to their point. That said, calling server-side autocomplete on a field you explicitly are typing in strikes me as about as sensible and forthright as calling an Amazon text field that takes my credit card number a card skimmer.

If the text field sent everything you type but didn't autocomplete, it would be spyware. Autocompleting doesn't change that. The Amazon text field would have to send your credit card number for a credit check without telling you to compare.

The autocomplete provides a valuable service: it shows you suggestions for search terms; it's similar to if the credit card number is sent to the server and the server sends back whether or not the number is a valid credit card number (although this is now done on the client side).

It can also be turned off extremely easy, not exactly what we know as "malware" if it allows you to turn off its "malicious" activities.

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#204

Post by yarrel » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

notyourday wrote: post #103

craigsmansion wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly sure that a hypothetically retired RMS would have no problem calling a restaurant, over a landline or hopefully a freedom-respecting mobile device. Also that, should he go for a drive, maybe to a folk-dancing festival, he would use GPS and maps, maybe the paper variety. As for the people inviting him to speak at a conference taking care of his scheduling and accommodation, I think that's fairly common and…

(a) he does not do it (b) it is not really possible for those whom he wants to "empower" to live like it is 1980s while maintaining life as it is needed in 2019. This is why he rubs people the wrong way when he peddles his philosophy as something that is possible in practice. Do I, a person who is pretty happy playing with computers, writing code, sometimes helping others with their technological issues or helping th…

Watching Netflix via a surveillance device or watching VHS rips of old shows is a false dichotomy.

rms wants people to live in 2019 but with free software.

As in, with more free software, not just software from the 80s.

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#205

Post by yarrel » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #172

TeMPOraL wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is purposely written in a foreboding way. A lot of this stuff is standard SaaS procedure. Just because it's standard , doesn't mean it's moral . FSF has been speaking about immorality of these practices for decades now. Their point is essentially that as a software creator, you shouldn't do it, and as a user, you shouldn't (for both ethical and practical reasons) subject yourself to these practices.

Casting the vast majority of tech workers as immoral is a great way to win people over. Pragmatism wins over purity, and the FSF is far, far, far from pragmatic.

The FSF has been very pragmatic.

It hasn't capitulated, though.

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#206

Post by ssully » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #124

Dylan16807 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> also an insincere definition of DRM I have no idea what you mean by that. I really need you to elaborate, because it sounds like a perfect description of DRM. It's there to stop you from playing/copying files, and nothing else.

The purpose is to extend what I as the producer of the files can do, giving me the ability to send you a file and still control your usage.

This is what I could call are a sincere definition.

I understand why someone could view this as limiting, but saying DRM is malware and it's only purpose is to limit you is intentionally ignoring other information about DRM to make it sound even worse then it is.

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#207

Post by modzu » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #25

Almost all of this is heavily exaggerated, presenting relatively innocuous features as if they were harmful, or calling out simple bugs as if they were intentional and actively malicious. None of it is flat-out wrong per-se (at least as far as I can tell), and I can certainly see where GNU is coming from, but I think for the average user most of the features they're criticizing actually do a lot more good than harm.…

"Although Google's exercise of this power has not been malicious so far, the point is that nobody should have such power, which could also be used maliciously. You might well decide to let a security service remotely deactivate programs that it considers malicious. But there is no excuse for allowing it to delete the programs, and you should have the right to decide who (if anyone) to trust in this way."

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#208

Post by holy_city » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 9:00 PM UTC

johannes1234321 wrote: post #148

holy_city wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say you want to send data to an untrusted destination and want the data to be read-only and non-copyable. DRM is the solution. That's not malware, it's part of the threat/loss prevention model for certain kinds of data. There are plenty of issues with DRM from a practical and philosophical level. But I think calling it malware is disingenuous. Alice doesn't cede her rights over her data by transmitting it to Bob, and…

By sending it me you have to copy it, either onto a medium or network, I then have to copy it (from some medium/network at least into main memory and then copy either into video or audio memory which then do magic to highlight pixels or create audio waves) The copy is essence of what a computer does. A computer can essentially only do some math and copying. If you ask me to install some DRM software (or maybe even so…

Maybe "non-redistributable" instead of "non-copyable."

I don't disagree with your assessment, except I'd say DRM doesn't exist to restrict the machine - the goal is to restrict the user. Which is necessary, when users aren't trustworthy.

But I'd disagree that DRM doesn't serve you a purpose. It serves the purpose of establishing trust and enforcing conditional exchanges of information. The alternative, like you imply, is no communication, or communication through a different medium that doesn't involve your hardware at all.

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#209

Post by mav3rick » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #186

mav3rick wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that legally parents are allowed to make that choice among other things. It doesn't matter if the kids are the direct user. This is the legal framework we live in

Disagree. We’re allowed to dislike the legal framework we live in. We’re allowed to say, if we wish to, that our laws appear to force [1] parents to use censorship to limit what their kids see, and that that is a bad thing. Furthermore we can say we disagree with the rules defining that censorship — for example, I have always been more disturbed by violent content than sexual, and I wish that fictional depictions of…

Blaming the law and society should be a separate thread. Conflating that with tech companies abiding to them is plain wrong and dilutes two separate issues.

Re: Google's software mistreats or harms the user

#210

Post by scarejunba » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

Haha, privacy advocates love this sort of sensationalism. They run around saying the world is ending.

Then, when they spend all their time yelling that autocomplete is surveillance, they wonder why no on is listening.

I, for one, am fully informed of all this and choose to share my info. Even better, when Google gets "My Timeline" wrong, I correct it. For free. That's right. For free.

Because there's no nuance to their arguments, they end up looking like the crazy guy with the sign about contrails on Market St. Then when MKULTRA comes out, they act like they predicted it when the f-score of their predictions is near zero.