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Google’s GDPR Workaround

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Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#201

Post by freeone3000 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #74
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real time bidding on ad placements seems like a thing that a user could never give consent to as it's literally feeding your info to a massive ever churning list of companies that get to bid on it. Aka - you land on a site, it send your IP and whatever identifiers it has to 10,000+ companies who all then figure out if they want to bid on showing you an ad.

Do you have to give consent for each individual third party your data gets shared with? I’d thought that if you give consent for some purpose, the company can use whatever processors it wants as long as it ensures they protect your privacy.

If ten thousand people agree to protect your privacy, is it really protected?

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#202

Post by fmajid »

philwelch wrote: post #160
tboyd47 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean how there are somehow always commenters in every topic ready to leap to the defense of China and major US tech companies?

I'm fairly confident China (and for that matter Russia, but we all knew that) do this. As for tech companies, I would honestly mark a lot of that down to fanboyism. Not that I'd be entirely surprised, but I somewhat doubt that Elon Musk, in particular, is actually paying all of those people. And Tesla seems to have the most defensive supporters on the internet. People talk about Facebook and Google for their privacy…

China or Russia don't need to pay shills in all case, there are always nationalists to do it for free. In other cases, it's Stockholm Syndrome.

As for paid shills, there is an entire sub-industry of PR called "Reputation management" devoted to this.

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#203

Post by TeMPOraL »

philwelch wrote: post #155
Aunche wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no marketing expert, but I doubt that the best way Google can think of to sway public opinion is to call people privacy nuts. Google employs over 100,000 people and even more people work at similar companies like Facebook or buy targeted ads. Many of these people browse Hackernews and get offended if others accuse their livelihoods of being evil.

Every company I've worked at has had an explicit policy of not commenting on that company's business on the internet.

Never seen that in any of the contracts or employee handbooks I've ever signed. So I guess it varies.

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#204

Post by axaxs »

wutbrodo wrote: post #198
axaxs wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because literally anything is a fact, when worded the right way. In fact, that's most of what is wrong with the state of our 'News' today. Even little word changes can be used to sway public opinion (ex: 'victim' vs 'drunk woman', in a case an assault victim happened to have been drinking).

I confess that I've also never really understood why people are so outraged by the hypothetical it likely presence of actual shills: it's not like the population of non-shill commenters doesn't already produce every stupid and inane take possible. Shills can shift the composition of votes and comments away from a given board's biases (towards their preferred biases), but what does that change from the perspective of…

Critical thinking is one thing, but that's not always or even usually the point of such campaigns. It can be as simple as 'bandwagon effect', which regardless of how silly it is to believe people behave that way, they absolutely do. Few people want to be on the unpopular side of an opinion.

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#205

Post by amelius »

tantalor wrote: post #149
amelius wrote: post #64

Targeted ads are already a serious leak of information. If somebody looks over my shoulder and sees the ads presented to me, they can infer things about me. Also, if a malicious actor targets an ad to a group of people, and some of these people buy the advertised items, then the actor can infer things about those people not necessarily related to the items sold.

"somebody looking over your shoulder" can see a lot more than you ads, like your private messages, bank info, medical info, etc.

Not if I'm just showing them a random website. The problem with targeted ads is, they show up at random websites.

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#207

Post by paul7986 »

philwelch wrote: post #191
paul7986 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can attest to that as when you point of things like Google gets caught stealing IP from a MIT student they invited for an interview (a popular thread here on HN) it gets downvoted voraciously. Either its employees, hired guns and or something...

Or maybe that particular story didn't really stand on its merits. I never saw the thread, but from my perspective (which is increasingly skeptical of Google), any sort of "stealing IP from interview candidates" theory doesn't make much sense.

It did receive almost 2k upvotes on HN.

Further She has emails from Google ATAP(one of their supposed R&D departments) in which they note they invalidated her patent after getting caught...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#208

Post by jeena »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #85
amelius wrote: post #64

Targeted ads are already a serious leak of information. If somebody looks over my shoulder and sees the ads presented to me, they can infer things about me. Also, if a malicious actor targets an ad to a group of people, and some of these people buy the advertised items, then the actor can infer things about those people not necessarily related to the items sold.

At my last job the traffic was filtered through a proxy due to FINRA regulations. I’d see Portuguese ads for diabetes medication and there were 2 Brazilian guys in the office. Seemed like a major HIPAA violation to me.

It would have been a more funny story if it were ads for Viagra ;)

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#209

Post by [deleted] »

idlerig wrote: post #192

This is exactly what happened in the McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit. It wasn't some "Karen" who hit a bump while driving. It was an elderly woman (in her 70s, IIRC), sitting in the passenger seat. McDonalds already had complaints (and some lawsuits) over the (significantly higher than industry standard) temperature of their coffee, so this wasn't exactly out of the blue. She ended up with 3rd degree burns on her leg…

[deleted]

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#210

Post by prophesi »

stareatgoats wrote: post #142
NullPrefix wrote: post #49

>I was branded as a 'privacy nut' Companies do actually employ shills to go on forums and try to sway public opinion. They call them something like public advocates, doesn't change the idea though.

> Companies do actually employ shills to go on forums and try to sway public opinion I'm inclined to believe you, but sources please. Especially interested if you (or anyone) have anything on Google in this respect.

Not exactly a company, but if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party is a thing, I can't imagine that it's not also happening in a corporate context.
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