After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next? • Hacker News Board

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#51

Post by trumped » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:52 PM UTC

oflannabhra wrote: post #24

The spark that triggered the current firestorm Facebook is facing has nothing to do with Facebook’s practices—those have been apparent and obvious since before Facebook is as even a company. The spark was the confluence of divisive political headwinds and an outrage-driven news cycle. I’m thankful that spark has resulted in sustained scrutiny of Facebook, but without a similar environment and controversy, I doubt Goo…

Do you think that this would have happened even if Hillary had won the election?

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#52

Post by tmoravec » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

justinzollars wrote: post #35

Concerned that google has so much info ( https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity ) I visited https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols to turn off Web & App Activity, but left Voice & Audio Activity on. This breaks my google home. I do not want Google to save 20 years of search history so I can use a stupid google home. For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. This is a dark pattern Google

I'd give them the benefit of the doubt here. It's probably just because of the voice control, which can be presumably used for web search. And they personalize the web search with your history.

It looks more like poor engineering than a dark pattern.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#53

Post by Zhenya » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

rlv-dan wrote: post #33

Zhenya wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. What's actually better than: * Gmail * Search * Docs And all of the Integration that works cross platform for all of those.

Define better. Does offline capability, ownership of data/applications, ability to modify your software and privacy concerns count, just as examples?

Simply using the terminology used by the OP and being refuted by the comment above.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#54

Post by wybiral » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #49

wybiral wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My feed often randomly recommends "SJW owned compilation" and "feminism fails". I had the same videos queue up in mine and nothing I watch seems even remotely related to that. My YouTube usage is pretty "family friendly" so it struck me as particularly odd to see such blatantly divisive hate videos. I've even seen weird ads about deep state conspiracy stuff on there too. Their algorithms seem totally broken because…

Where do these appear? If it's in the Recommendations, you can delete them, then a link appears called "Tell Us Why", and in that dialog you can see which video in your history influenced that recommendation (and tell it to stop recommending stuff based on it). It's always worked quite well for me. I have zero crap in my recommendations.

Usually the "Up next" queue where it supposedly suggests related videos. I don't pay much attention to the recommendations on the main page or anything.

And some have been ads. One that sticks out was selling some crazy deep state book, but the ads was mostly just selling a conspiracy theory about the FBI.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#55

Post by Sir_Substance » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

Zhenya wrote: post #28

Sir_Substance wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Their tools are 10x better than anything else for many cases, so you're simply doing yourself a disservice to not use them. I think that at this point that's basically only true for mapping, and they are losing ground on that, slowly. You've got stockholm syndrome.

I'll bite. What's actually better than: * Gmail * Search * Docs And all of the Integration that works cross platform for all of those.

>* Gmail

Protonmail. Encrypted, ad free, and no one reading your email.

>Search

Duck Duck Go. Google is actually well past it's prime on this front. Their per-customer result filtering is now so aggressive that the filter bubble they apply to you is now an active impediment to web use. I generally find that I cannot replicate a google search on a different computer with the same search term, and about 20% of the time it is impossible to find the same result on a second computer. DDG's results are much more accurate to your search terms as written.

>Docs

Any desktop office suite, be it libre- of microsoft-. Unless multiplayer documents are a core component of your work (my commiserations if they are), google docs is objectively less capable as a professional grade editing suite than any of the major desktop based options, due to its considerably smaller and web-ui centric feature-set.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#56

Post by TAForObvReasons » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

justinzollars wrote: post #35

Concerned that google has so much info ( https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity ) I visited https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols to turn off Web & App Activity, but left Voice & Audio Activity on. This breaks my google home. I do not want Google to save 20 years of search history so I can use a stupid google home. For the first time I'm considering Apple's device. This is a dark pattern Google

> For the first time I'm considering Apple's device.

Apple does collect analytics, but those can be turned off in OSX at the very least. As a company, they are not currently geared towards data collection. They have publicly positioned themselves in favor of privacy.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#57

Post by GauntletWizard » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

oflannabhra wrote: post #43

oflannabhra wrote: post #24

The spark that triggered the current firestorm Facebook is facing has nothing to do with Facebook’s practices—those have been apparent and obvious since before Facebook is as even a company. The spark was the confluence of divisive political headwinds and an outrage-driven news cycle. I’m thankful that spark has resulted in sustained scrutiny of Facebook, but without a similar environment and controversy, I doubt Goo…

I’ll add a thought: The great irony in Facebook’s situation is that it is purely the result of hubris. In 2010, Zuckerberg saw FB as the next great platform. The API was released to much acclaim. But the API essentially gave away the keys to the kingdom! Facebook either 1) didn’t realize that they weren’t a platform and the social graph was the most valuable information they possessed, and were blinded by ignorance,…

In 2010, Facebook's revenue was significantly driven by something other than ads - Social Games. Zynga and the like were raking in billions based on people clicking virtual cows, and Facebook was getting a cut. Promoting these kinds of uses was their goal. It's easy to see modern Ad-Driven FB and forget that there were other eras of the company.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#58

Post by dilyevsky » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

oflannabhra wrote: post #24

The spark that triggered the current firestorm Facebook is facing has nothing to do with Facebook’s practices—those have been apparent and obvious since before Facebook is as even a company. The spark was the confluence of divisive political headwinds and an outrage-driven news cycle. I’m thankful that spark has resulted in sustained scrutiny of Facebook, but without a similar environment and controversy, I doubt Goo…

+1 facebook helped to foster the “ze russians snatched hillary’s victory” hysteria abusing their power to pursue their partisan agenda and then suffered when they themselves got on the wrong side of it. Nothing to do with americans’ newfound hightened awareness of privacy really.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#59

Post by Mononokay » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #37

prolikewhoa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That CNN article they quote is nothing more than CNN disliking that Youtube is challenging them in viewers and ad money. CNN isn't exactly the bastion of legitimacy and journalistic standards either. They're also trying to take down true left wing media like Jimmy Dore, painting him as a 'conspiracy theorist' for not being certain about the Syrian gas attacks before the OPCW was even there , as real journalists shoul…

> nothing more than CNN disliking that Youtube is challenging them in viewers and ad money Which is also what's behind journalists, bloggers, etc. all hating on Facebook too, but nobody ever wants to hear that.

> Which is also what's behind journalists, bloggers, etc. all hating on Facebook too, but nobody ever wants to hear that.

Yeah, no. Generalisations are stupid. Doctorow's a perfect example of why what you're saying isn't true, for example.

Re: After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?

#60

Post by mrweasel » Sun, Apr 22, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

wybiral wrote: post #39

dijit wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have similar anecdotes regarding youtube. My feed often randomly recommends "SJW owned compilation" and "feminism fails". I may have watched one or two videos from prominent feminists and their supposed opposition in 2011 but google is really waiting for me to get back to that particular political fight for some reason. How long do I have to ignore something before it goes away? It reminds me of how in the UK the t…

> My feed often randomly recommends "SJW owned compilation" and "feminism fails". I had the same videos queue up in mine and nothing I watch seems even remotely related to that. My YouTube usage is pretty "family friendly" so it struck me as particularly odd to see such blatantly divisive hate videos. I've even seen weird ads about deep state conspiracy stuff on there too. Their algorithms seem totally broken because…

There's definitively something wrong with the Youtube recommendation algorithm, it is much less intelligent that people assume.

For some reason YouTube want's me to watch Bill Burr and John Oliver. I tried multiple times to tell YouTube that I'm not interested, only to have the same content pop up in my recommendations a few days later.

The again I have the same issues with Facebook. At this point I fairly sure there's zero intelligence, machine learning or AI behind the Facebook newsfeed.