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Google Fights Back

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Re: Google Fights Back

#351

Post by pdimitar »

ansible wrote: post #348
pdimitar wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only met techies who cared about continuing to use a phone if they could only boot from their SD card. Regular people don't know about the option. So consider that this niche feature you find useful is of almost no consequence to anybody. Additionally, iPhones and Samsung devices have really durable internal storage. Almost always the battery craps out first.

It's not about trying to boot off the micro-SD card, it is being able to just pop out the card, and get all the data that was stored on it.

Well sure but most smartphones -- both iPhones and Androids -- do periodic automatic cloud backups.

The ability to do offline salvaging does not seem like such a big selling point to me.

Re: Google Fights Back

#352

Post by holy_city »

joefkelley wrote: post #178
holy_city wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blatant disregard for privacy is what bothers me the most. Like when I started getting push notifications from Android for my credit card payment with my exact balance due, which they could only have gathered by parsing my emails from the bank. It's easy to resolve that by changing the contact info/settings with the bank, but just the fact that engineers at Google thought users would appreciate having their priva…

Wait, so you trust them to store the email, and parse it for something like spam detection, but not for some smarter feature? What specifically are you concerned about that is a problem with this and not with them having the email in the first place? Sounds like you shouldn't be using Gmail at all tbh.

>What specifically are you concerned about that is a problem with this and not with them having the email in the first place

My issue is that federal law regulates what information my bank can share with 3rd parties and allows me to opt out. The ethical thing to do is at least hold oneself to a similar standard. If I had worked on those projects I would have made it policy to ignore emails from healthcare providers and financial institutions outright, since there is far more harm that can be done than good.

I have no problem with data collection when it's done responsibly. But I get the feeling that most developers/engineers working on these features have warped senses of ethics and don't consider the large scale implication of what they're doing, or if they do they just ignore it. Either way, it's the blatant disregard for privacy that bothers me.

Re: Google Fights Back

#353

Post by MildlySerious »

The first thing that comes to mind here is Google trying to remove the edge they themselves required to get into the position they are now in. They used and abused data for two decades (and will continue to do so) to become an absolute behemoth.

If they now play the "privacy" card it will stifle competition even more, as there will forever be a compromise on either the amount of data they are able to gather, or the public perception due to being less "privacy" focused than big G.

Re: Google Fights Back

#354

Post by turingbike »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #132
pdimitar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree, I made the switch a few years ago when I couldn't find a single good Android phone that wasn't huge (and yes, I tried the Sony Z3 Compact, it had way too many issues). The iPhone SE had just come out with flagship specs and one of the best cameras on the market, so I made the jump. It was painful for a while but now I'm sure I'd feel the same pain switching back. My main complaint about iOS is text entry. Bo…

> plus then you lose voice typing completely which is not acceptable to me

I use GBoard on iOS, and on the iPhone XS with iOS12, you can still use the native voice typing while using GBoard

Re: Google Fights Back

#355

Post by dreamcompiler »

SquareWheel wrote: post #316
dreamcompiler wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you think Google "sells everyone's personal information to advertisers", then you are mistaken about their business model as umeshunni said. Google themselves explain it clearly and openly. https://safety.google/privacy/ads-and-data/

I know Google doesn't literally sell my personal information. They collect it and use it to match a demographic that advertisers want. But the fact remains that Google collects my personal information -- they couldn't match my demographic otherwise. And that means that Google itself is a giant repository of everyone's personal information, even if they choose (today) not to sell it, not to give it to governments on demand, and not to misuse it in any other way. But should we trust them forever not to do so? And why?

Re: Google Fights Back

#356

Post by bepvte »

pdimitar wrote: post #281
bepvte wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Protonmail advertises special end to end encryption thats only available when sending emails to other protonmail users. Others get the standard TLS that every provider uses. Recently they added a feature convert emails a link to a page that asks the non-protonmail user for a password (not a private key or login) and then decrypts the email in the browser, which I find pretty worthless.

Re: Google Fights Back

#357

Post by throwing838383 »

I changed my default search engine and homepage to DuckDuckGo. Two weeks later, I didn't even realize I was still using DuckDuckGo -> it's that good. Once people realize this, and how easy it is to switch, google may be in trouble.

i don't have anything against google. I just think, having only 1 search engine is too much power for any 1 company, no matter how benevolent.

Re: Google Fights Back

#358

Post by falcolas »

bduerst wrote: post #321
falcolas wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First and foremost - ads do not require personal information. Newspapers, television, and blogs have thrived on non-personalized ads for decades. The advent of targeted ads (the dam getting blown to hell) is what made general ads unfavorable (personalization and the absolute saturation of ads in every aspect of our lives). /rant That said, given that ads are a psychological trick to get you to purchase something (oft…

Newspapers, television, blogs, direct mail, billboards, etc. all rely on a modicum of audience targeting. Don't pretend that P&G would naively pay for laundry detergent ads in Playboy magazine because they didn't know who the magazine's audience was. As with all things, it scales with technological advancements, which also includes new responsibilities (that this article is mentioning).

There’s a marked difference between targeting ads based on the surrounding content and targeting ads based on my age, gender, location, browsing history, purchasing history, religion, job, income, and social network.

Claims that they are equivalent feel like an attempt to normalize such invasive ad targeting.

Re: Google Fights Back

#359

Post by bepvte »

bepvte wrote: post #356
pdimitar wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Protonmails worthless encryption Can you elaborate on that, please?

Protonmail advertises special end to end encryption thats only available when sending emails to other protonmail users. Others get the standard TLS that every provider uses. Recently they added a feature convert emails a link to a page that asks the non-protonmail user for a password (not a private key or login) and then decrypts the email in the browser, which I find pretty worthless.

Oh, and they dont support PGP with non protonmail users, locking you into their proprietary junk.

Re: Google Fights Back

#360

Post by bduerst »

falcolas wrote: post #358
bduerst wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers, television, blogs, direct mail, billboards, etc. all rely on a modicum of audience targeting. Don't pretend that P&G would naively pay for laundry detergent ads in Playboy magazine because they didn't know who the magazine's audience was. As with all things, it scales with technological advancements, which also includes new responsibilities (that this article is mentioning).

There’s a marked difference between targeting ads based on the surrounding content and targeting ads based on my age, gender, location, browsing history, purchasing history, religion, job, income, and social network. Claims that they are equivalent feel like an attempt to normalize such invasive ad targeting.

Nothing in my comment said they were equivalent - As with all things, it scales with technological advancements, which also includes new responsibilities (that this article is mentioning).
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