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Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

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Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#261

Post by CaptSpify »

libdjml wrote: post #164
paulie_a wrote: post #66

One of the few times a headline ends with a question mark the obvious answer is in fact: "yes" Google is evil. Facebook is worse.

I know I have an unexplainable bias toward seeing google as inherently positive to society, so I’m keen to hear what makes you think google is evil?

They intentionally design their products in such a way that puts their user's privacy and security in danger, by not putting the user in control of their own data. By using Advertising as the basis for their business, they have encouraged a huge race to the bottom for other online services. They also tie themselves unnecessarily into other parts of the web, and degrade the experience in efforts to consolidate power for themselves.

Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#262

Post by CaptSpify »

joshuamorton wrote: post #191
jonathanyc wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what comment you think you are replying to. Google Play Services cannot be uninstalled on a stock Android phone, like I said, only disabled; and disabling it means the vast majority of Android apps won’t work, like I said. These are facts that anyone can verify for themselves; you merely claiming otherwise doesn’t change this. You also seem to be confusing Google’s various services with Google Play Serv…

You can, however, disable the location tracking across your device pretty easily, or even just disable location history if you want other tools to be able to use your location. Yes, disabling core features of your device results in a worse user experience, this should not come as a surprise.

The point is that there is no reason those features need to be dependent on Google Play Services in the first place

Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#263

Post by joshuamorton »

CaptSpify wrote: post #262
joshuamorton wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, however, disable the location tracking across your device pretty easily, or even just disable location history if you want other tools to be able to use your location. Yes, disabling core features of your device results in a worse user experience, this should not come as a surprise.

The point is that there is no reason those features need to be dependent on Google Play Services in the first place

I believe there are power and compute related reasons that you actually do need there to be a central service that manages location data.

And I guess at that point you could say "but then there should be a single tool that does location management for apps and location tracking should be entirely separate", but I'm not sure why that's any better than "there's one app but you can toggle off the objectionable parts in a really straightforward way".

Or perhaps you mean that they could just provide raw GPS data and the app developers could handle everything else, but that too runs into power and usability issues. Android handles geocoding and reverse geocoding in relatively energy efficient (and reliable!) ways. If every app had to do its own geocoding, you'd have disparate experiences in apps. (Note that Apple does almost the same thing: there are builtin geocoder objects provided by the OS that convert from GPS to address over the network). You could make that a separate thing, but then you'd get people complaining that "none of my location based apps work even though I have GPS enabled".

So I guess I'm curious what your suggestion on what they should do instead is.

Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#264

Post by TulliusCicero »

kuschku wrote: post #167
product50 wrote: post #21

If FB goes down for one day it is a minor inconvenience. If Google goes down for one day, I am literally at a standstill. No Maps, no Search, no GMail, no YouTube, no Photos! I don't know how I will get through the day without these services :( As such, with Google, I am more than ok them using my data to target me ads since it does feel a mutually beneficial relationship.

> No Maps Here Maps or OpenStreetMap > No Search I’ve switched to a mix of Qwant and DuckDuckGo, depending on question > No GMail I’ve been self-hosting all my mail for 4 years now, works fine thanks to simple solutions such as this tutorial https://workaround.org/ispmail > No YouTube This is the largest issue, but most of what I consume is either music or streams, and most of the streams are also on twitch, and the…

> I use seafile with automated upload and a custom-built photos UI frontend to provide a photo gallery for me, and to allow me to share photos. I use the tensorflow pre-trained example model for object classification to tag the images, it’s good enough.

Possibly the most hacker_news.txt comment in this thread. "Why rely on [popular consumer service] when you could just build your own photos frontend and then set up a machine learning model attached to it? Easy!"

Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#265

Post by dancek »

lallysingh wrote: post #186
0xbadcafebee wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, Google and Mozilla and a handful of organizations are converting all web traffic to HTTPS through subtle manipulation of standards and user interface. They even proxy mobile traffic from their search engine. ISPs can't even see what IP you're visiting because it's all fronted by CloudFlare. Even your DNS is being hidden by an HTTPS tunnel in the browser. Your ISP soon won't be able to see anything you do online.…

There's still SNI in TLS. Hopefully that changes in 1.3, but I don't know how prevalent that is yet.

Well, you can use a browser that doesn't support SNI (IE8) or one that makes it configurable (I don't know if any do).

But a large amount of sites won't work without it. It's very common to run multiple sites on same ip/port. Not sure if it's technically possible to make that work without SNI or a similar technology.

Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#266

Post by dancek »

dancek wrote: post #265
lallysingh wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still SNI in TLS. Hopefully that changes in 1.3, but I don't know how prevalent that is yet.

Well, you can use a browser that doesn't support SNI (IE8) or one that makes it configurable (I don't know if any do). But a large amount of sites won't work without it. It's very common to run multiple sites on same ip/port. Not sure if it's technically possible to make that work without SNI or a similar technology.

On re-reading the grandparent I have to admit I missed the point.

Considering CloudFlare offers to do SSL on their end, it'd be technically viable to only tell CF which domain you want.

Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#267

Post by [deleted] »

MarkMc wrote: post #253
jonathanyc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sure as hell don't think my Grandma or Dad would have realized that Google's dark pattern[1] "opt-out" dialogs asking if they want to "make Android better" actually were asking for permission to send their location on a minute-by-minute basis to Google. How do you think Google populates their "Popular Times" card on search results?[2] Do you believe that even a simple majority of people going to a hospital, say, fo…

I can't see anything wrong with the opt-out screen during Android setup [1] The option you refer to says, "Help improve your Android experience by automatically sending diagnostic and usage data to Google." There is a separate option which says in part, "Anonymous location data will be sent to Google, even when no apps are running". That seems pretty clear to me - I can't see any dark pattern. [1] https://fscl01.fonp…

[deleted]

Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#268

Post by CaptSpify »

joshuamorton wrote: post #263
CaptSpify wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that there is no reason those features need to be dependent on Google Play Services in the first place

I believe there are power and compute related reasons that you actually do need there to be a central service that manages location data. And I guess at that point you could say "but then there should be a single tool that does location management for apps and location tracking should be entirely separate", but I'm not sure why that's any better than "there's one app but you can toggle off the objectionable parts in…

> I believe there are power and compute related reasons that you actually do need there to be a central service that manages location data.

That may be, but they could open up that service for me to run on my own server, rather than through them.

> And I guess at that point you could say "but then there should be a single tool that does location management for apps and location tracking should be entirely separate", but I'm not sure why that's any better than "there's one app but you can toggle off the objectionable parts in a really straightforward way".

I'm not following what you mean by this. Can you expand?

> If every app had to do its own geocoding, you'd have disparate experiences in apps.

And? I already have disparate experiences in apps for tons of reasons.

Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#269

Post by joshuamorton »

CaptSpify wrote: post #268
joshuamorton wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe there are power and compute related reasons that you actually do need there to be a central service that manages location data. And I guess at that point you could say "but then there should be a single tool that does location management for apps and location tracking should be entirely separate", but I'm not sure why that's any better than "there's one app but you can toggle off the objectionable parts in…

> I believe there are power and compute related reasons that you actually do need there to be a central service that manages location data. That may be, but they could open up that service for me to run on my own server, rather than through them. > And I guess at that point you could say "but then there should be a single tool that does location management for apps and location tracking should be entirely separate",…

>And? I already have disparate experiences in apps for tons of reasons.

So because some things are a bad experience, we should make more things a bad experience? I don't follow. Or do you mean that you as an end user, not an app developer, should be able to configure the server used to look up the mapping of gps coordinates to street addresses used system wide, as though that isn't a giant security vulnerability? (as in, if I were Uber or Lyft, I wouldn't want to deploy my app on a platform where another app with root privileges could, for example, change the GPS lookup location to something adversarial whenever uber was in the foreground, leading to bad end user experiences).

As far as I know, apps can already do their own geocoding (no one could really stop them), they just don't because the built in ones are better and give consistent experiences.

>I'm not following what you mean by this. Can you expand?

I guess I'm not clear on what the problem with "I get my location through google play services" is. Like I understand why one might take issue with "the only way to get location data is to opt in to Google having my location history". But that's not what happens, since you can turn that off. So I'm unclear on why Play Services being the source of location data, as opposed to something else.

Re: Is Facebook Really Scarier Than Google?

#270

Post by drewmol »

drawkbox wrote: post #201
hueving wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They offer a service and people understand that. No they don't. Maybe in a superficial sense, but the vast majority of the public doesn't have any clue how data can be combined and mined to reveal far more than they thought they were bargaining for. Otherwise there would be no sudden Facebook scandal.

The scandal is that third party companies like Cambridge Analytica harvested the whole social graph and used it to manipulate people. People know that Google and Facebook track as they are ultimately ad companies, and if you get a free service people know that your data is the product. We pay for ISPs to protect privacy, not sell it off, that is the big difference. Many people have seen Facebook tracking from the mar…

I'd like to expand this because I don't see it written much, and please correct me if I misunderstand:

The scandal is that FB sold or allowed the ability for third party companies like Cambridge Analytica to harvest the whole social graph and FB sold or allowed the ability for them to use that same data on FB to target and manipulate people.

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