6 ms·

Ubuntu unity sells your searches in the desktop environment by default

by edejong 10y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 10y ago
I thought they changed that?
ardaozkal 10y ago
Not since 16
- edejong 10y ago
  Oops, my bad. But at least they did, which was my point to begin with. I said goodbye to Ubuntu and their raking since the notorious community discussion, even before it was implemented. They lost my trust and goodwill with that move.
slgeorge 10y ago
No Ubuntu doesn't, and nor has it every done. It connects on-line and off-line searches, so it shows you the result in on-line locations. The underlying assumption was that users increasingly see on-line and off-line content as all part of the same world ("their content"). The commercial aspect was that it connected to places like Amazon. It made money for Canonical by using affiliate links if the user chose to make a purchase. That is not the same as collecting all the history of the user and (anonymising) then selling that to a third-party or presenting adverts based on that data. The default is off as users felt searches by default connecting to external services was an invasion of privacy - that's different to "selling searches". Frankly, this closed-off the last viable manner for desktop Linux to secure a wider revenue stream of sufficient size to drive employing enough full time developers to keep up with the other platforms, in my personal opinion. FOSS doesn't change the dynamic that full-time developers cost real money. Source: I worked at Canonical from the early days of the desktop, for ~10 years.
- edejong 10y ago
  I'm sorry, but I think I trust Canonicals' privacy policy as a source more than you: "Unless you have opted out, we will also send your keystrokes as a search term to productsearch.ubuntu.com and selected third parties so that we may complement your search results with online search results from such third parties including: Facebook, Twitter, BBC and Amazon. Canonical and these selected third parties will collect your search terms and use them to provide you with search results while using Ubuntu." Source: Ubuntu's third party privacy policy. * The default was not off in 12.10. I'm fine if you want to make money this way! That's why you're a company, people need to make money. My argument was that some OSS software sells your search results, one way or another. I didn't take a position in this argument (but you can hopefully guess my position). Now, you mention that your users complained, which was true. It caused a huge amount of backlash from your established user-base, many of which contributed to OSS themselves and have seen their contributions being monetized by Canonical (which is fine too, no worries). But besides the users, it was the pressure from EFF which caused Canonical to buckle to the pressure [1]. So, I don't care what Canonical underlying assumptions were, I don't care whether it is disabled now, I don't care whether Unity showed affiliate links or not. It's all just distracting from the main point: search terms entered in Unity were send, by default, to third-party servers! [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-am...
  - taneq 10y ago
    Wow, that's yuck. Thanks for the heads up. :(
  - smacktoward 10y ago
    > The default was not off in 12.10 Which was four years ago. It's off now, and has been since 16.04 (the most recent LTS release, which shipped last year). I agree the Amazon integration in the Dash was a mistake, but it's a mistake that has been fixed. It's simply not true anymore that "Ubuntu unity sells your searches in the desktop environment by default," and continuing to tell people so is deeply misleading.
wtbob 10y ago
Ubuntu is trying very hard to abide by the letter of Free Software but not the spirit. Is there a solution? Simple: don't use it. There are many other distros out there which do abide by the spirit as well as the letter. Canonical have tried to do some very good things to, and deserve some credit for successfully making Linux more end-user-friendly. They're not terrible people, just folks with a different set of perspectives & incentives from me.
angry_octet 10y ago
It was a definite breach of trust. Back when it happened I had to get people to go through a lot of command line fiddling to fix it. I'm still mad that Canonical didn't publish an apology and a hotfix which made the behavior opt in. https://fixubuntu.com/ https://fixubuntu.com/

Ubuntu unity sells your searches in the desktop environment by default

by edejong 10y ago

Ubuntu unity sells your searches in the desktop environment by default

yjftsjthsd-h 10y ago

I thought they changed that?

ardaozkal 10y ago

Not since 16

edejong 10y ago
Oops, my bad. But at least they did, which was my point to begin with. I said goodbye to Ubuntu and their raking since the notorious community discussion, even before it was implemented. They lost my trust and goodwill with that move.

slgeorge 10y ago

No Ubuntu doesn't, and nor has it every done. It connects on-line and off-line searches, so it shows you the result in on-line locations. The underlying assumption was that users increasingly see on-line and off-line content as all part of the same world ("their content"). The commercial aspect was that it connected to places like Amazon. It made money for Canonical by using affiliate links if the user chose to make a purchase. That is not the same as collecting all the history of the user and (anonymising) then selling that to a third-party or presenting adverts based on that data. The default is off as users felt searches by default connecting to external services was an invasion of privacy - that's different to "selling searches". Frankly, this closed-off the last viable manner for desktop Linux to secure a wider revenue stream of sufficient size to drive employing enough full time developers to keep up with the other platforms, in my personal opinion. FOSS doesn't change the dynamic that full-time developers cost real money. Source: I worked at Canonical from the early days of the desktop, for ~10 years.

edejong 10y ago
I'm sorry, but I think I trust Canonicals' privacy policy as a source more than you: "Unless you have opted out, we will also send your keystrokes as a search term to productsearch.ubuntu.com and selected third parties so that we may complement your search results with online search results from such third parties including: Facebook, Twitter, BBC and Amazon. Canonical and these selected third parties will collect your search terms and use them to provide you with search results while using Ubuntu." Source: Ubuntu's third party privacy policy. * The default was not off in 12.10. I'm fine if you want to make money this way! That's why you're a company, people need to make money. My argument was that some OSS software sells your search results, one way or another. I didn't take a position in this argument (but you can hopefully guess my position). Now, you mention that your users complained, which was true. It caused a huge amount of backlash from your established user-base, many of which contributed to OSS themselves and have seen their contributions being monetized by Canonical (which is fine too, no worries). But besides the users, it was the pressure from EFF which caused Canonical to buckle to the pressure [1]. So, I don't care what Canonical underlying assumptions were, I don't care whether it is disabled now, I don't care whether Unity showed affiliate links or not. It's all just distracting from the main point: search terms entered in Unity were send, by default, to third-party servers! [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-am...
- taneq 10y ago
  Wow, that's yuck. Thanks for the heads up. :(
- smacktoward 10y ago
  > The default was not off in 12.10 Which was four years ago. It's off now, and has been since 16.04 (the most recent LTS release, which shipped last year). I agree the Amazon integration in the Dash was a mistake, but it's a mistake that has been fixed. It's simply not true anymore that "Ubuntu unity sells your searches in the desktop environment by default," and continuing to tell people so is deeply misleading.

wtbob 10y ago

Ubuntu is trying very hard to abide by the letter of Free Software but not the spirit. Is there a solution? Simple: don't use it. There are many other distros out there which do abide by the spirit as well as the letter. Canonical have tried to do some very good things to, and deserve some credit for successfully making Linux more end-user-friendly. They're not terrible people, just folks with a different set of perspectives & incentives from me.

angry_octet 10y ago

It was a definite breach of trust. Back when it happened I had to get people to go through a lot of command line fiddling to fix it. I'm still mad that Canonical didn't publish an apology and a hotfix which made the behavior opt in. https://fixubuntu.com/ https://fixubuntu.com/