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People seem to be conflating "tracking user behavior" with "tracking user behavior without consent or transparency". Yes, there are plenty of people opposed to

by gmisra 11y ago

People seem to be conflating "tracking user behavior" with "tracking user behavior without consent or transparency". Yes, there are plenty of people opposed to the former, but that is a moot point with respect to Google. The latter, however, is symptomatic of a much bigger issue: there is a pervasive belief amongst many of the silicon elite that users simply aren't capable of making effective decisions regarding tracking, and therefore it is best if they are not allowed to make those decisions. I have heard this directly from many people, and each time it leaves me surprised. If Google were to provide real transparency into the information they track about me, that would be fantastic. I likely wouldn't even look at it, but I would know that organizations like the EFF and ACLU would serve as ombudspeople for the public. Furthermore, whichever of the big internet players does this first will likely generate a tremendous amount of brand loyalty and free marketing. I suspect current behavior won't change without legal intervention, which will potentially be adversarial, which is a shame since there are people at these companies who are much more qualified than lawmakers to anticipate and plan for the future. It's amazing that a company (and industry) that self-identifies so strongly with taking novel approaches to solving hard problems can get mired in such status quo bias.

jpadkins 11y ago
https://myaccount.google.com/ https://myaccount.google.com/ you can see all the data google collects about you. You can export it or delete it.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  > you can see all the data google collects about you. You can export it or delete it. A) In no way do I believe that is all the data Google tracks about me. It's just what they choose to present to you. B) How do I have any guarantee that it's actually deleted?
  - asuffield 11y ago
    (Tedious disclaimer: not speaking for anybody else, my opinion only, etc. I'm an SRE at Google. I can't respond to most of the things in this thread, so don't bother asking.) "If Google were to provide real transparency into the information they track about me, that would be fantastic." "In no way do I believe that is all the data Google tracks about me." The second comment here is why there's no point in doing the first one. It doesn't matter how much information we release about this, when people are determined not to believe it. It is a frustrating experience for the people who work on them to pour time and effort into making sure a privacy policy is really precisely accurate about what is happening, and then see threads like this where people will go looking for loopholes that aren't there, and because English is fairly ambiguous they'll eventually find a way to misinterpret the words to support what they wanted to believe all along. Here's an interesting hypothetical question: if the primary effect of the conspiracy theorists is to throw bricks at the people who are trying really hard to make sure the bad things never happen, then which side are the conspiracy theorists really on? (I make no claims about whether this is what's happening, because I can offer no evidence, I just think it's an interesting question)
    - CaptSpify 11y ago
      Honestly, I used to trust Google a lot. Then things like the NSA leaks happen, and other questionable Google changes, and I'm sorry, but I lost that trust. I use as little closed-source stuff as possible now. I'm sure it is frustrating, but you'd have to thank the people in charge for that distrust. I wasn't born with it, the cloud-providers earned it. I used to think this was tin-hat territory myself. IMO, the solution is to stop storing things in the cloud, and start giving me the tools to do it myself. I have no idea how to work that out financially. If google made a "maps app" that was open-source and I could run on my own server, but charged for it, I would probably buy that because I like the service so much. But as it stands, I try to avoid using it as much as possible, because I simply can't trust Google. EDIT: Forgot to answer this > if the primary effect of the conspiracy theorists is to throw bricks at the people who are trying really hard to make sure the bad things never happen, then which side are the conspiracy theorists really on? At the end of the day, Google just doesn't do enough to make me think that they are "making sure the bad things never happen". I'm sure there are a lot of people who are trying hard to make that true, but how can I know that is true for everyone? What can you offer me other than root access to your servers? I'd honestly like a good answer to this, because I just don't have one. And the amount of data/power that Google has is just too much for me to think that they won't "get greedy" some day. If up until today, Google was a good company and wasn't abusing anything in any way, and suddenly tomorrow they turned evil, why would they erase my data first? They still have it, and I have no control over whether or not Tomorrow-Google will keep it. > ...then which side are the conspiracy theorists really on? The side of trying to validate whether or not things are as they say on face-value. Whether thats Google's side or not is up to them.
fgandiya 11y ago
There's history.google.com where you can see pretty much everything that you've ever done with a Google product. You can even delete everything and disable tracking if you need to.

by gmisra 11y ago

jpadkins 11y ago

https://myaccount.google.com/ https://myaccount.google.com/ you can see all the data google collects about you. You can export it or delete it.

CaptSpify 11y ago
> you can see all the data google collects about you. You can export it or delete it. A) In no way do I believe that is all the data Google tracks about me. It's just what they choose to present to you. B) How do I have any guarantee that it's actually deleted?
- asuffield 11y ago
  (Tedious disclaimer: not speaking for anybody else, my opinion only, etc. I'm an SRE at Google. I can't respond to most of the things in this thread, so don't bother asking.) "If Google were to provide real transparency into the information they track about me, that would be fantastic." "In no way do I believe that is all the data Google tracks about me." The second comment here is why there's no point in doing the first one. It doesn't matter how much information we release about this, when people are determined not to believe it. It is a frustrating experience for the people who work on them to pour time and effort into making sure a privacy policy is really precisely accurate about what is happening, and then see threads like this where people will go looking for loopholes that aren't there, and because English is fairly ambiguous they'll eventually find a way to misinterpret the words to support what they wanted to believe all along. Here's an interesting hypothetical question: if the primary effect of the conspiracy theorists is to throw bricks at the people who are trying really hard to make sure the bad things never happen, then which side are the conspiracy theorists really on? (I make no claims about whether this is what's happening, because I can offer no evidence, I just think it's an interesting question)
  - CaptSpify 11y ago
    Honestly, I used to trust Google a lot. Then things like the NSA leaks happen, and other questionable Google changes, and I'm sorry, but I lost that trust. I use as little closed-source stuff as possible now. I'm sure it is frustrating, but you'd have to thank the people in charge for that distrust. I wasn't born with it, the cloud-providers earned it. I used to think this was tin-hat territory myself. IMO, the solution is to stop storing things in the cloud, and start giving me the tools to do it myself. I have no idea how to work that out financially. If google made a "maps app" that was open-source and I could run on my own server, but charged for it, I would probably buy that because I like the service so much. But as it stands, I try to avoid using it as much as possible, because I simply can't trust Google. EDIT: Forgot to answer this > if the primary effect of the conspiracy theorists is to throw bricks at the people who are trying really hard to make sure the bad things never happen, then which side are the conspiracy theorists really on? At the end of the day, Google just doesn't do enough to make me think that they are "making sure the bad things never happen". I'm sure there are a lot of people who are trying hard to make that true, but how can I know that is true for everyone? What can you offer me other than root access to your servers? I'd honestly like a good answer to this, because I just don't have one. And the amount of data/power that Google has is just too much for me to think that they won't "get greedy" some day. If up until today, Google was a good company and wasn't abusing anything in any way, and suddenly tomorrow they turned evil, why would they erase my data first? They still have it, and I have no control over whether or not Tomorrow-Google will keep it. > ...then which side are the conspiracy theorists really on? The side of trying to validate whether or not things are as they say on face-value. Whether thats Google's side or not is up to them.

fgandiya 11y ago

There's history.google.com where you can see pretty much everything that you've ever done with a Google product. You can even delete everything and disable tracking if you need to.