Google+ broke our trust • Hacker News Board

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#231

Post by lilsunnybee » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 12:39 AM UTC

nknighthb wrote: post #135

d23 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's advocate: they imprison a lot of their own citizens (more per capita than any other country) and play empire across the world.

The obviously relevant US government (since it's the one that ended slavery, fought the robber barons, passed the Civil Rights Act, recently passed health insurance reform, and has limited powers compared to other western democracies) imprisons 216,896 people[0], or less than 0.07% of the US population. State governments are not "the US government". If someone says "the US government", they are either referring to th…

The Drug War was started at a Federal level, with the Controlled Substances Act and the creation of the DEA (US Drug Enforcement Agency). [1] Approximately 1 in 10 Americans have been arrested on drug related charges since then, and even just looking at Federal prison facilities, 0.5 million people are incarcerated every year. [2]

And that's just drug policy. Abuses by Federal agencies are numerous across history into the present day, and have often taken place on a grand scale:

FBI misconduct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fbi#Controversies

CIA misconduct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cia#Controversies

US Military Interventions since 1890: http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions.html

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs

[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#232

Post by fzltrp » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 12:40 AM UTC

ben0x539 wrote: post #226

fzltrp wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That harm and those people are apparently not as important as some business goal. That offends me. I understand your point. > Why would an insult convey more offense than all the criticism in the article already does? That really depends on the aim of the article. If it is to express a feeling, fine, she did express her feeling. If it is to make a point, she shouldn't, or one might simply say she cannot have a ratio…

> If it is to make a point, she shouldn't, or one might simply say she cannot have a rational discussion, because it simply doesn't prove anything. One might say that, but I don't think that would delegitimatize her position at all. If someone seeks to be offended to avoid having to engage with the actual argument, that's on them, and they probably didn't need the pretense of caring about the insult to begin with. >…

> The problems with google's approach have been pointed out almost immediately after their policy became known.

I've been the devil's advocate til now, I will not give up so easily. If people knew about this policy, then they couldn't have opt out of the service and look for something more amenable to their needs of privacy, couldn't they?

>For a hamhanded car analogy, if someone parks in a parking space for the disabled out of laziness, and now some guy in a wheelchair has to cover another block's worth of distance because he had to park elsewhere,

The policy there wasn't that someone took that reserved parking place, it's that the place simply disappeared from that parking lot. So yeah, it does suck, but there are other parking lots to use (which also mean other shops, if that guy in a wheelchair liked Google's ones, tough luck).

> I think that's really unlikely. I might conjecture a hypothetical culture where insults are expected and polite, but I think it's sufficient to look at the actual cultural context. Correct me if I am missing something, but "jerkface" is the blandest, least serious insult I can think of. It doesn't invoke gross body parts, religion, sexual language, the subject's intelligence, morals, looks or status. In fact, I cannot imagine anyone using it without irony, going intentionally for a weak and childish insult.

Really? Do kids use that insult? Well, I don't speak English fluently enough (especially cursing), and I'm not going to pull a dictionary definition to verify it. If indeed it's as you say, then that's a misunderstanding on my side, and I clearly deserved a downvote for that. I'll take your word for it.

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#233

Post by matsutake » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 3:08 AM UTC

mreiland wrote: post #217

Silhouette wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it touched" line: Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names, then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered "an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products. Google, particul…

If I could find a good alternative to gmail, I'd take it in a second. Over the years, I've really started to dislike gmail, and most of google's services.

Fastmail is really good.

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#234

Post by cerberusss » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 7:40 AM UTC

mreiland wrote: post #217

Silhouette wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it touched" line: Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names, then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered "an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products. Google, particul…

If I could find a good alternative to gmail, I'd take it in a second. Over the years, I've really started to dislike gmail, and most of google's services.

Did you mean a good _free_ alternative? Or just a good alternative?

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#235

Post by Khaine » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 9:12 AM UTC

tomp wrote: post #133

pron wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand not wanting the NSA to snoop your correspondence. I can't understand letting Google do that for years, analyze it, profile you and sell that information to just about anyone, but then thinking that the NSA is the final straw.

Google can't put you to jail. NSA (and the government) can.

There are things far worse then gaol

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#236

Post by fanf2 » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 11:03 AM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #136

bane wrote: post #129

> Google+ embodied the Internet's cardinal sin: It broke everything it touched I think this is the most important single line of the piece. G+ was pretty broken from the get go despite some promising ideas. But instead of focusing around what was working, Google simply amplified all the broken garbage -- then spread it around everywhere, making everything toxic, cancerous. It's one of those many weird cases where you…

I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it touched" line: Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names, then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered "an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products. Google, particul…

Google+ is the main reason I am very reluctant to get an Android phone.

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#237

Post by acjohnson55 » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 2:06 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #116

acjohnson55 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a big difference. As ubiquitous and powerful as Google is, the US government is vastly more powerful, and I think it's vastly more dangerous without accountability.

Well, perhaps more dangerous in theory. In practice, the biggest role the federal government has played in US history is that of liberating people from the tyranny of private businesses: first with slavery, then Teddy Roosevelt vs. the robber barons, the Civil Rights Acts (that prohibited private businesses from discriminating based on race), and most recently the (unfortunately not-so-successful) fight against priva…

I'm a big proponent of government and a healthy mix of public and private enterprise. My point is mostly that I'm worried more about safeguards against a corrupt referee than a corrupt star player, to use a sports analogy.

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#238

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 2:20 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #182

3rd3 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The huge success of Facebook and Twitter, the Social Network movie (October 2010) and the introduction of Apple’s iTunes Ping (September 2010) probably added a lot to this momentum.

Now that's a funny image: I'm imagining a time-traveller coming back from the future where Google has created Skynet, and telling Apple "if you create a social network in 2010—don't worry, you can shut it down a year later—you'll scare Google into pushing their own social network out the door, it'll infect their tech culture utterly, and you'll gain a five-year lead on anything you want to put out from them on. (Also…

[deleted]

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#239

Post by Silhouette » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 2:55 PM UTC

fanf2 wrote: post #236

Silhouette wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it touched" line: Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names, then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered "an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products. Google, particul…

Google+ is the main reason I am very reluctant to get an Android phone.

Same here. I'd love to have a smartphone, but I don't want a smartphone that relies on any of the major mobile OS platforms today. I don't trust any of them not to do some combination of spying on me and/or forcing unwelcome changes on me later. Until someone credible comes along and breaks that pattern, I'll stick with cheap and cheerful Nokia feature phones and the like.

Re: Google+ broke our trust

#240

Post by joeevans1000 » Sun, Jun 08, 2014, 3:07 PM UTC

fanf2 wrote: post #236

Silhouette wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there was a more thought-provoking part than the "broke everything it touched" line: Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt told National Public Radio digital editor Andy Carvin in 2011 that if people don't want to use their real names, then they shouldn't use Google+. He explained that Google should be considered "an identity service" with Google+ as the foundation across all its products. Google, particul…

Google+ is the main reason I am very reluctant to get an Android phone.

Do you have to have google+ to have an Android?