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Google Fights Back

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Re: Google Fights Back

#281

Post by pdimitar »

bepvte wrote: post #211
blub wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be that it's a hit piece concocted by the secretive privacy cabal, still working at their evil plan to hurt people by making them control their private information and at the same time to inconvenience powerful corporations from doing whatever they want.

There is no privacy cabal that you sarcastically suggest, but there is a lot of money to be made out of paranoia, justified or not. Protonmails worthless encryption, the dubiously safe vpn ads I see everywhere. I tend to see a lot of exaggerations from some privacy oriented companies. I still trust those companies far more, and a sizable portion doesnt try to spread fear and exaggeration, though, but I do believe tha…

> Protonmails worthless encryption

Can you elaborate on that, please?

Re: Google Fights Back

#282

Post by nybble41 »

mirkules wrote: post #160
kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> deeply unethical the way it was presented to me as a user How was it presented to you in a way that you found deeply unethical? As I understand it shows up as a soft notification on your phone.

It is unethical, or at the very least, unsettling the way it is presented. I am actually in awe at how many folks - especially HN folks - are ok with this. Years ago, I looked at my Google dashboard. They knew when i filed for taxes, how much was owed/reimbursed, my medical history. NONE of which I consented to Google using. Google is constantly eroding the expectation of privacy we have wrt to our emails (and probab…

> NONE of which I consented to Google using.

And that is where you are wrong. You DID consent to this use of the information in your email when you signed up with Google as your email provider. They don't exactly make any secret of the fact that the emails in your account will be data-mined, both for the various assistant features they offer and for their own business purposes, including marketing.

It is not Google's fault that you failed to consider the obvious implications of that consent.

> And additionally, we have constructed a world for ourselves such that not using these services to not expose private information is practically not an option anymore.

You have plenty of options. There are email providers other than Google, and means of communication other than email. Encryption is also widely available for those motivated enough to use it.

Re: Google Fights Back

#283

Post by gigatexal »

Yeah I don’t buy any of it (full disclosure I and my household are an Apple only household). I’ve been moving away from google services. It’s slow. And it’s tough because most everything they do is so damn good: google search, amazing; google maps, gold standard imo; gmail — eh? It’s rather good. But I would rather a company like Apple study me because currently they’re not in the business of monetizing my every thought, action, or whim. I pay a premium for the hardware and in return I get a company hellbent on privacy so much so that they refused to unlock an iPhone used by a terrorist.

So while I often hate that DuckDuckGo’s results are sometimes wildly laughable compared to Google’s I’ll continue supporting privacy first companies and pay a premium to do so before I let my phone be a Google phone.

Re: Google Fights Back

#284

Post by dreamcompiler »

umeshunni wrote: post #275
dreamcompiler wrote: post #251

Every company has two mission statements: The stated one and the real one. Google's real mission statement is "make shitloads of money selling everyone's personal information to advertisers." The noises Google makes about being "useful" are just cover for the fact that being useful is the only way they can entice everyone to give them that personal information for free. If Google could get a law passed that required…

Given that you lack basic understanding of how advertising works, the rest of your argument is moot.

Please enlighten me as to what I'm missing about how advertising works.

Re: Google Fights Back

#285

Post by aparc123 »

oflannabhra wrote: post #120
aparc123 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't we make the same argument about Apple. What happens when apple stops being apple, when they don't have the smart phone dominance and decides to venture back into Ads. Or who owns apple when someone else has to. I understand why anyone would want ios now but your argument is about the future.

The point the parent is making is that Apple doesn’t have your data in the first place, therefore if things go south, or they become nefarious, you’ll have to give them your data first.

Umm Multiple apple services collect data on your usage like Google does. They don't use this data for Ads Personalization but they do have the data.

Re: Google Fights Back

#286

Post by pier25 »

ProAm wrote: post #180
grenoire wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP is probably confusing service with commodity, as privacy is not a tangible to be sold or exchanged.

No I did mean commodity, but a personal commodity. Essentially when you are born you are born into a certain level or amount of privacy. And slowly as you age and use technology, everything you wished to remain personal or private is slowly given away or sucked away, stolen, etc.... It's near impossible to remain a private individual in today's world. And privacy is something that once gone you can never get back. So…

A philosophical question... but what do you think is the objective value of privacy?

Re: Google Fights Back

#287

Post by Notorious_BLT »

kerkeslager wrote: post #6

> The implicit message was clear: “Yes, we have all of your data, but the fact we have all of your data is a good thing, because it allows us to make your life easier.” This is why a) free/libre software and b) Moore's law are important. Trading privacy for convenience is a real trade you can make right now, and nobody benefits from pretending it isn't--the first step to fixing that problem is to admit it exists. But…

The average user isn't willing to pay more for their devices just to avoid the seamless sharing of their data with google. There's a reason people stopped buying desktop computers and are relying on mobile devices and cheap laptops for more: its cheaper and they don't care about the hidden "costs" of their data being shared.

In addition, sure, people could absolutely create local, non-cloud ways to accomplishing a lot of this. But who is footing that bill? Where's the value proposition to anyone who has the manpower

Re: Google Fights Back

#288

Post by Nition »

areoform wrote: post #7

Google owns my soul. Their boxes know when I sleep, when I wake, how much I exercise, what I listen to, my innermost thoughts, my chats with loved ones, what I watched on Netflix last night, what my company does, the flu I have at the moment, what the hypochondriac in me looks up in the middle of the night, what I buy, whom I call, what I spend money on, where I spend it... I nominally pay for these services, but I s…

This already happened to me. Around 14 years ago I created a MySpace musician page and apparently I put in my real birthday. It must have been public although I surely didn't intend it to be, and some sort of large data aggregator site picked it up. Later I deleted my MySpace page but the data aggregator still had my info.

The data site had tools to remove your data, but before I knew my data was even there, Google bought the site sometime around 2011 and shut it down, and added the data to their own system.

Today, if you search my full name on Google, it shows an infobox on the side with my real birthday. Google considers birthdays non-private enough that they won't let me remove it. I'm no celebrity but I get that info box because I had a MySpace musician page once over a decade ago.

My birthday now appears nowhere on the internet except that Google search infobox. MySpace, the original aggregator, all gone - but the data lives on.

We don't have a Right To Be Forgotten law where I live but if we ever get one, I know where I'll be going first.

Re: Google Fights Back

#289

Post by paavoova »

pdimitar wrote: post #80
loudtieblahblah wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is already not Google. The "Don't Be Evil" corporation that valued open source rather than open-washing, that valued openstandards over "oops, we didn't mean to break that for you!" isn't here anymore. The company that bends over backwards, much farther than the law requires, to enable the surveillance state. I despise Apple. Especially on mobile. No SDCards, no headphone jack, walled garden app stores. Ugh ug…

I fully switched from Android to iOS when iPhone X came out in November 2017. I realised in the next months that the perceived "freedom to tinker" on Android is something hugely overrated. I could achieve almost everything I wanted on my iPhone -- it just took a bit of time to find the proper apps. Later Apple added the Shortcuts which is a very solid automation app. Many Android users also lament the lack of a visib…

> and supposedly more "locked down") ecosystem

Is it not? Your entire post only argues "It is, but here's why it works for me...". Removing the "freedom to tinker" is taking two steps back from what a computer should be. And smartphones are growing to be the primary computing device for many, so in my mind it's ridiculous to argue them being locked-down a merit. Relying on apps from a walled-garden app store is not a solution even if it works for you or others. Many legitimate apps are banned from the Apple app store entirely, and users cannot install them even if they choose to because iOS prevents installs outside of the app store (unlike Android). I want to run my own code on my own device, freedom to do so is not "hugely overrated".

And as for privacy: what is privacy if its decided for the user and not the other way round? You cannot have true privacy without freedom, you only have Apple's definition of it. Tell Chinese Apple users about privacy, why Apple stores data in China.

And freedom extends to hardware, too. You purchase an iPhone and Apple tells you it's too dangerous for users to fix it themselves, and lobbies against right-to-repair [1]. Do you also consider freedom to repair your own devices overrated?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19791438

Re: Google Fights Back

#290

Post by fauigerzigerk »

gowld wrote: post #243
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm afraid you are mistaken: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202303

Reading that article, the confusion is easy to explain and looks intentional. It reads "For certain sensitive information, Apple uses end-to-end encryption. This means that only you can access your information" and then immediate shows a giant table of data that is NOT end-to-end encrypted, but not labelled as such -- it's only inferrable by its omissions from the next section of the document.

I agree. It doesn't look like Apple was particularly keen on letting people know that they can actually read most data that people consider private.
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