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Google’s GDPR Workaround

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Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#281
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling this is much more prevalent than any of us realize. Would explain why most comments seem ridiculous.

It doesn’t even require a ‘paid agent’ theory to explain. Large companies actively court allegiance from their employees and spend serious effort to retain it by, for example, relentlessly offering mandatory courses in the company’s Cultural Values and evaluating promotions through that lens. So it’s not surprising that some BigTech employees are going to actively defend their employer’s values on forums. The best wa…

Ive even created an account to answer this. It's true that most of these companies have cultural values trainings and a bunch of policies, but it's naive to assume that the hired top 1% will follow these policies or even take them seriously. They are smart enough to not get caught (as if anybody cares to catch them), but that's about it.

The today's employment model is a no strings attached contract: the employment can be terminated for no reason at any moment without a notice. This is a double edged sword: not only it gives the company flexibility to fire anyone they don't like, it makes employees mostly indifferent about the company as long as it cuts the paycheck. A typical software engineer does a 4 year gig and when the stock vesting plan ends, he moves on to another gig. There is no reason to take seriously policies of a company he worked at 10 years ago. And regarding evaluating promotions thru the cultural values lens. Yawn. There's no money in promotions.

For a cult to be successfull, its members need to be bound by something more serious than a company values training they watch once a year.

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most interesting thing to me about that McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit is how different the narrative is in popular circles vs. in legal circles. It's a little bit like in Rashomon . In popular circles, the story is framed in a way that does make the lawsuit look frivolous. But this is also a case that has made it into the legal textbooks as an example of corporate negligence that's clear-cut enough to use for d…

The reason the McDonald's lawsuit is framed that way in popular circles is because it is easily fits the mold for a frivolous lawsuit. 1. A woman willingly purchased hot coffee from McDonald's. 2. She spilled it on herself. 3. She sued McDonald's because of her injuries. Those three things are true no matter which circle you ask. A lot of people I talk to, even when given all of the facts of the case still consider i…

[deleted]

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about systematic, deliberate, deceptive privacy violations in order to increase profits? That seems like a pretty distinct category from the cases you are concerned with.

> systematic, deliberate, deceptive I'll take your word for it, the evidence doesn't look clear cut to me, > privacy violations Again, who cares if it was just your shoe size? We should not send someone to jail for leaking who your favorite pop star is. Did it, or could it, do harm ? This is a nearly universal standard used to assess how someone is punished according to the law. > in order to increase profits Of cour…

> Again, who cares if it was just your shoe size?

Whoever cares, cares, and it's none of your business. Noone is suggesting that you should not be allowed to allow companies to collect your shoe size and sell that information, so you are mostly just missing the point.

There are people who do not want to allow that, and there is absolutely no reason why we should force them to allow it. Claiming that what you stole is of little value does not make your theft legal. It is simply not up to you to decide what has sufficient value to keep for other people. If you take something that is someone else's property without them transferring property rights to you first, that is theft, and it is completely irrelevant whether you think that they shouldn't value what you took.

> Did we stop living in a capitalist economy and nobody told me?

If anything, you seem to have a very confused understanding of capitalism. The one core idea of capitalism is strong individual property rights, because that is the basis for decentralized price discovery. Capitalism could not possibly work if the state simply declared that property rights for low-valued goods (based on a valuation decided by the state, presumably) a not enforceable, or if you could simply steal and use your competitor's machinery to produce goods as long as you didn't harm them (like, returned them repaired before their next production run, maybe?).

The fact that someone could make money by violating your property rights certainly never was a justification that allowed them to avoid punishment in a capitalist system.

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#285
Is it really a "workaround" if they're just breaking the law?

I mean, if the allegations are correct, Google didn't find any loophole, they're just hiding the fact that they're selling person identifiers.

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shills/ It's not going to be entirely legitimate but there's going to be some eye opening items in there for you I suspect.

Remember when Reddit investigated the Boston Marathon bombing and discovered that it was Sunil Tripathi? And then Mr. Tripathi went missing and his body was discovered several weeks later? Thank God we have Redditors to break the case.

[deleted]

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most interesting thing to me about that McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit is how different the narrative is in popular circles vs. in legal circles. It's a little bit like in Rashomon . In popular circles, the story is framed in a way that does make the lawsuit look frivolous. But this is also a case that has made it into the legal textbooks as an example of corporate negligence that's clear-cut enough to use for d…

The reason the McDonald's lawsuit is framed that way in popular circles is because it is easily fits the mold for a frivolous lawsuit. 1. A woman willingly purchased hot coffee from McDonald's. 2. She spilled it on herself. 3. She sued McDonald's because of her injuries. Those three things are true no matter which circle you ask. A lot of people I talk to, even when given all of the facts of the case still consider i…

It's mostly harmless to spill regular drinkable-temperature coffee on yourself, so she took appropriate level of precaution (i.e. very little) for that reasonable assumption. She shouldn't be to blame even if she showered in the coffee.

To bring it back on topic: when web users are told "we care about your privacy", they should be able to take it at face value. When the company then weasels out of the headline promise on technicalities (we don't share cookies — we share JSON, haha!), then it is violating that promise.

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most interesting thing to me about that McDonald's "hot coffee" lawsuit is how different the narrative is in popular circles vs. in legal circles. It's a little bit like in Rashomon . In popular circles, the story is framed in a way that does make the lawsuit look frivolous. But this is also a case that has made it into the legal textbooks as an example of corporate negligence that's clear-cut enough to use for d…

Are you a lawyer? Because this take is quite remarkable, especially given that the overwhelming public sentiment is that McDonalds was heinously negligent, coupled with a lot of supporting but not entirely factual claims to justify that position. I feel like the same people who were jeering at the victim just marched over to sainting her and demonizing McDonalds. The Internet extreme position machine. Everything has…

> the overwhelming public sentiment is that McDonalds was heinously negligent

Now, yes. Not 25 years ago.

Re: Google’s GDPR Workaround

#290
post #8

It's really funny to see that yesterday, I was branded as a 'privacy nut' after the release of Android 10 as I was concerned about the privacy issues that are in Android. Then the Go modules proxy issue around the Go Programming language that raised suspicions about tracking usage statistics around downloading modules turned on by default without any consent and now this. I think there are some folks at Google who ha…

> It's really funny to see that yesterday, I was branded as a 'privacy nut' after the release of Android 10 as I was concerned about the privacy issues that are in Android.

What are the privacy issues in Android 10? Anything new compared to previous versions?

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