8 ms·

Facebook is in the privacy spotlight but should Google be next

171 points by randomerr 8y ago

pepecantina 8y ago
Yes.
- sharemywin 8y ago
  And the I's have it.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    'Ayes'.
    - usernum3hundred 8y ago
      Nyes
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alecco 8y ago
Google is more dangerous than Facebook. In the later you usually have a persona you pretend to be. But Google knows you better than yourself. You can’t lie to Google. Is your teenage daughter pregnant? Do you have a disease that is socially rejected? Do you want to have an abortion? Are those pimples in your groin an STD? Are you secretly looking for another job? Google probably knows that before you do. And their business plan is making money out of that information. And let’s never forget Eric Schmidt: http://precursorblog.com/?q=content/googles-top-ten-anti-privacy-quotes-part-3-googles-own-words-series http://precursorblog.com/?q=content/googles-top-ten-anti-pri... "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place;" Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo 12-7-09. The "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it;" Said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic. "Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are;" Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the 2010 Techonomy conference. "We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about;" Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic. "It's a future where you don't forget anything…"In this new future you're never lost...We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time;" Explained Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at TechCrunch, 9-28-10. "No harm, no foul;" Concerning Google's unauthorized collection of WiFi signals from tens of millions of homes in 33 countries over three years, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the Times of London in May 2010.
- chinathrow 8y ago
  Sometimes I wonder what Schmidt is _really_ thinking when he's handing out these statements. "Dumb fucks" [1] as well? [1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  If we really want to deal with Google's enormous power, we'll need to tackle the issue at both ends: political and technical. As for politics, it doesn't look like Google is going to be attacked the way it happened to FB - the CA affair was almost an accident. And Google knows better and will do everything to avoid accidents. The second issue is technological. The competing search engines are not there yet, although they're continuously improving. Google got where they are not only by text search, but also extending the search categories horizontally. The competing search engine would need some smart minds to come up with something extra, something genuinely useful that would make people flock there. Then there are all other parts of Google ecosystem that people depend on: Gmail, Adwords, Adsense, GA. And millions of Android devices. How to eradicate all that from our lives? It will take decades to complete - if we started now, that is.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Using other search engines goes a long way to get them there - the more they are used the more advertising dollars they get (and the less google gets), which leads to dollars to invest. I find that duckduckgo is good enough for everything these days.
- millstone 8y ago
  Addendum to your creepy quote list: "I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." from 8/10/10 WSJ interview.
open-source-ux 8y ago
Google tracks online behaviour on an industrial scale. It's baffling how little scrutiny the company faces, least of all from the tech community who often rush to it's defence. (Does a multi-billion dollar company need your defence?) When you create a Google account, you're asked to provide your name, your gender, your date of birth, your location and your mobile phone number. Some of your most personal and private details, all of which will now be tied to your online behaviour. That ceaseless data capture starts right from school, where millions of students use a cloud-based OS called ChromeOS that records everything they do. It's quite horrible that this is happening - the kids don't even get a say, it's the adults who've decided this. It doesn't matter if that information is only collated in aggregated form and detached from user accounts, we don't know how that information could be mined or analysed either now or in the future. (In fact, I suspect that even Google hasn't figure all the possible uses of the ginormous quantity of user behaviour it has captured and continues to capture). And we've seen from Spotify and Netflix how even aggregated data can reveal very private and personal user behaviour. Google and many of it's supporters conflate security with privacy. Just because Google hasn't ever suffered a breach of user data, people say that Google can be trusted. You can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. You're still being tracked relentlessly by Google no matter how securely it's storing your online behaviour.
- teddyfrozevelt 8y ago
  G Suite for Education very clearly doesn't track students using it. https://edu.google.com/k-12-solutions/privacy-security/ https://edu.google.com/k-12-solutions/privacy-security/
  - open-source-ux 8y ago
    Where does it say that it doesn't track students on that page? The G Suite for Education Privacy Notice [1] clearly states that Google collects device information, unique device identifiers, mobile network information (including phone number of the user). Also logged are IP addresses, location information, and app usage using unique application numbers. Even if this information is detached from individual accounts and aggregated, it equals a phenomenal amount of data captured by Google on millions of students in the US. [1] https://gsuite.google.com/terms/education_privacy.html https://gsuite.google.com/terms/education_privacy.html
matlin 8y ago
The difference is that Google doesn't share that information with other firms. Having centralized information for a user is important to many (you can always spread it across multiple emails and accounts) but I think violation of privacy is the main reason Facebook is under investigation not centralization of data.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Google is its own third party: There is no appreciable difference between Facebook sharing your data with an ad company and Google sharing your data with their own built-in ad company.
  - matlin 8y ago
    There definitely is... That's the whole point of Facebook's Senate hearing. If it stays within company and can't be used by directly by third parties for their own agendas like influencing elections. I 100% think that we should be weary of over centralized information but we are talking about two very different scenarios: even a small social network with relatively little information can be very dangerous if it leaks personal data.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      Please stop spreading factually wrong information, especially on a subject as important as this one. Maybe research the material for a bit? The best place to start is doubleclick and their profiling options as well as the RTB spec. That will give you a pretty shocking (if I understand the level to which you are still in the dark correctly) insight into what kind of data is freely shared between ad tech companies amongst each other and their customers (agencies, advertisers).
      - matlin 8y ago
        I understand that you are angry about the Cambridge Analytica revelations, I am too. But I am not spreading misinformation, I am participating in a discussion. I have repeatedly try to communicate that I am not talking about targeted advertising. In the senate hearing, the counsel is honing on some important points. What is the alternative to Facebook (i.e. a real competitor)? What information is Facebook gathering on non-users? What is Facebook doing to shield users' from the outside world? How much metadata is Facebook gathering/surmising outside of a user's direct input? These are way bigger questions than does Facebook allow Advertisers to target you based on certain demographics (a similar but different debate). Google is poised to abuse / misuse personal data in the same way but regulating and persecuting are very different processes and should not be conflated in these discussions. I simply want to draw those distinctions between Google and Facebook.
dschuetz 8y ago
Fun fact: Google collects much more data from Android devices than from iOS devices. This might be unsurprising, and even obvious, but I was surprised how precise and intrusive that data is. The whole time I was using an Android phone with my google account logged in on the device, google recorded and retained basically everything. My location, without even me using the maps app. My old contacts which I deleted from my contacts lists were still in the records. Any IPv4 or IPv6 address my phone was assigned to. This was even more creepy than facebook's data trove. I deleted my data on facebook as far as I could and also the account (not just deactivated) and I deleted most of the data google had on me. The problem is that I only can assume that all the data is now gone, but how can I be sure? Google might constantly assure that they handle everything with care, but the extent of their intrusion into my private life is really scary.
- mtgx 8y ago
  It also annoys the hell out of me how often companies get away with something if they just say "Whoops, it was a mistake/bug." Google was recently found to track Android users' location even when they didn't have their GPS on. And they said it was a "bug". Like I'm just going to believe that from a company whose main objective is to track as much about us as possible. But my point is the FTC should have slapped them with a major (at least tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, depending how long they've been doing it and to how many people) even if this was a bug. If you tracked or collected data without users' consent, you get fined - bigly. No ifs or buts about it. Enough with the BS excuses and apology tours while they pocket billions from the "error" or "mistake."
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    As long as money and politics are strongly intertwined it is unlikely this will happen within the country of origin of the company. Lobbyists are just too powerful. And that's before we get into the kind of tricks and entity like Google or Facebook could pull if they decided to become an active participant rather than just a channel for advertising. If that hasn't already happened.
    - 8y ago
notbeevil 8y ago
It is totally ridiculous. If people really care, why some apps like WeChat controlled by Dictatorship are allowed in America?
- ralusek 8y ago
  Because some people, like myself, are perfectly happy to just not use them. There are alternatives to authoritarianism, and America was supposed to be one of them.
notacoward 8y ago
Google is on the list, but I'm going to break away from the flock and say they shouldn't be next. Credit agencies and data brokers, who facilitate the worst kinds of third-party privacy violation and about whom most people know very little, should go next. Then the government itself. Then Google, and then Amazon. BTW, if you want to have some fun, just try to imagine that the the government's interest in Facebook's data practices is not so much to regulate it as to copy it - either for the government itself or for election campaigns. IMO that makes a lot of their otherwise nonsensical or inconsistent behavior much more understandable. Creepy. They totally want to know more about us than Facebook and Google put together; they just don't know how.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  "...Google is on the list, but I'm going to break away from the flock and say they shouldn't be next. Credit agencies and data brokers ... should go next... Why can't it be both? Serious question.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Not only can it be both it should be both (or more correctly: all).
  - notacoward 8y ago
    Resources, including most relevantly attention, are finite. That's why the attention is only on Facebook now, when it should already be on these others as well. Much as I'd love for people to see all of the picture at once when they're trying to make policy, I don't think that's what really happens.
  - phonebucket 8y ago
    "Why can't it be both?" In fairness to the OP, the notion of someone being next is coming from the headline, not the comment.
  - schnevets 8y ago
    Because a "loss" can disrupt the momentum and public support that is snowballing with these Facebook headlines. Think about the failed attempt to break up Microsoft in the 90s. Regardless of how you felt about the breakup idea, Congress was spurned at that decision and avoided taking action on other emerging monopolies.
mtgx 8y ago
I expect we'll see some major leaks about Google by the end of the year, too.
modi15 8y ago
The biggest reason Google's name hasnt come up yet is probably because most of these senators are on Google's payrolls. That Google pays for favourable research is already well established. The fact that no one has even raised a finger at Google, which by all accounts does a more pervasive job at monitoring people, speaks volumes on how well entrenched it is in media circles. The fact that Google can more or less kill any media outlet literally at a flick of a button is reason enough that it should be shut down hook, line and sinker.
wepple 8y ago
My personal gut feel is that in the fairly long history (for a tech co), we’ve seen surprisingly little malicious use of data come from google. In a company of their size I’d expect a lot more screw ups and scandles, so perhaps they deserve a little more trust? At the same time, they’re at the size and momentum that they should always be under scrutiny even if the answer keeps coming back “yeah they seem to be acting responsibly”. We don’t want to have an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
sixothree 8y ago
The problem I have is the lack of transparency. Google lets you download "all of your data". But it's nothing near the entirety of what they collect about you. It's insulting. It's time we learn what they know about us. I want to know.
troyvoy88 8y ago
I absolutely agree Google has a much wider ecosystem they cover: social media with google plus or whatever is left of it, video via YouTube, Images via google Photos, cloud infrastructure via Compute Engine, google work via G Suit, ISP via Google Fiber etc... All these have Term of Services with very broad language they can dragnet collect whatever they want. I don't mind sharing the information and I don't want the government involve and regulate how private entities work. But I also wouldn't mind having this companies put on the spot and have to explain how they handle the data they gather. How they handle ToS and/or Data breach. Facebook is a speck of dust compare to google.
- sixothree 8y ago
  You say you don't mind sharing information. Do you mind them collecting information about you outside of what you share?
  - troyvoy88 8y ago
    Yes that is the VERY reason why I said wouldn't mind having them put on the spot that way we can ask. Provided the right people are asking the questions. If it comes up through the questioning that they are grabbing information I chose not to share with them. I'll stop using the services and go somewhere else no one has a gun to my head.
kozikow 8y ago
Not saying Google is a saint, but it's orders of magnitude better at privacy than Facebook: - Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app. - Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time. - Mostly compliant with GDPR for years prior to the regulation being released. The same can't be said for Facebook. - Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations. - I don't work on either right now, but at the time I did Google had way much better internal access controls for employees. Amassing personal data can be considered unethical on some levels, but amassing personal data can't be equated with being bad at privacy. Among "personal data hoarders" Google is by far the most coginzant about keeping that data private.
- sametmax 8y ago
  > - Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app. If I remember well, Google was part of PRISM. And it did give data to a malicious state actors. Plus it has analytics, which you can pay to have data on people (although no personal, but personal data from facebook is aggregated and used the same way in the end). Also google let you literally google people to find any data that other service would leak. It's not as bad, yes. But it's still a lot. > Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time. I'm not an insider, but I would imagine that with android, gmail, chrome, various search tools and google Web APIs (fonts, graphs, analytics...), Google tracks you everywhere, whether you are logged in or not. It doesn't even need a cookie with all the behavioral data it has to fingerprint you. And it's so big I doubt that any employee inside knows how everything works and everything that is done. > Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations. Now. But they've been at it for more time. I remember the early days of Google, and it was black SEO everywhere. It became only hard to game the system recently. Even when StackOverflow came out, we had so much spammy clones, and it's not that old. It also came out at the cost of less relevant results: now I can always find instantly what I know I want, but rarely discover something I'm happy I found about that is related to my current search. The bubble is very strong.
anoplus 8y ago
In the age of information, Google obviously has disproportionate power. Society must raise awareness about concentration of power, post more about this topic, demand justice and transparency from the rulers. I think Google workers have special ethical responsibility to demand transparency and trust, organize and resist evil orders. We all have responsibility as a society to demand justice if we want a promising future.
hlecuanda 8y ago
Reprising my comment from a few weeks ago: Facebook never gave me anything of value in exchange for constantly monitoring and profilingmy behavior online. in fact, as it became ubiquitous,it added a new chore for me: maintaining ever changing privacy options on a defensive profile on their network. So it takes peoples time, attention, and details on top of behavioral monitoring. In contrast, Google provides me with a very competent productivity suite, a superb photo-managing software navigation, maps, aggregate traffic data,and a host of tools to actually build a business and educate myself and others. Plus i get enterprise class security for my account and -arguably- the best web email service. The day theres a data breach or in this case a breach of trust, im more likely to view google in a better light and give them the benefit of the doubt. Facebook gets my contempt and scorn. >Inb4 "well then don't use Facebook": I don't. But that doesn't stop FB from building a shadow profile on me, so if I want some measure of control over my digital footprint, I have no choice or recourse but to open and maintain a defensive profile whose only purposes are a) claim my username / URL used on most services where I'm provided with such a srfvixe, b) "squat" my name and likeness so I can't be unknowingly impersonated on their network and c) keep up with their ever changing privacy controls >Inb4 "sounds like cringe material from Google's social team": -I don't work for Google. I admit I'd love to, but I'm too old, perhaps. OTOH, I don't see how it's "cringe" since I succinctly describe the services the company does provide for me in exchange for my data and observing my behaviour; services I've used in making a living lately. Try making a living by developing on the FB platform, where every API Iteration makes you re-evaluate your business model.
stewofkc 8y ago
Facebook is the perfect company to take all the heat. Mainly because Mark Zuckerberg is such an icon. https://hackernoon.com/why-facebook-is-the-perfect-representative-of-techs-privacy-problem-5e5c29063d47 https://hackernoon.com/why-facebook-is-the-perfect-represent...
yuhong 8y ago
It is funny that my essay on this exact topic don't seem to get much coverage, even though I have been working on the problem for a while now.

171 points by randomerr 8y ago

pepecantina 8y ago

Yes.

sharemywin 8y ago
And the I's have it.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  'Ayes'.
  - usernum3hundred 8y ago
    Nyes
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alecco 8y ago

Google is more dangerous than Facebook. In the later you usually have a persona you pretend to be. But Google knows you better than yourself. You can’t lie to Google. Is your teenage daughter pregnant? Do you have a disease that is socially rejected? Do you want to have an abortion? Are those pimples in your groin an STD? Are you secretly looking for another job? Google probably knows that before you do. And their business plan is making money out of that information. And let’s never forget Eric Schmidt: http://precursorblog.com/?q=content/googles-top-ten-anti-privacy-quotes-part-3-googles-own-words-series http://precursorblog.com/?q=content/googles-top-ten-anti-pri... "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place;" Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo 12-7-09. The "Google policy is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it;" Said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic. "Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are;" Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the 2010 Techonomy conference. "We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about;" Google Chairman Eric Schmidt 10-1-10 per the Atlantic. "It's a future where you don't forget anything…"In this new future you're never lost...We will know your position down to the foot and down to the inch over time;" Explained Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at TechCrunch, 9-28-10. "No harm, no foul;" Concerning Google's unauthorized collection of WiFi signals from tens of millions of homes in 33 countries over three years, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt told the Times of London in May 2010.

chinathrow 8y ago
Sometimes I wonder what Schmidt is _really_ thinking when he's handing out these statements. "Dumb fucks" [1] as well? [1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
If we really want to deal with Google's enormous power, we'll need to tackle the issue at both ends: political and technical. As for politics, it doesn't look like Google is going to be attacked the way it happened to FB - the CA affair was almost an accident. And Google knows better and will do everything to avoid accidents. The second issue is technological. The competing search engines are not there yet, although they're continuously improving. Google got where they are not only by text search, but also extending the search categories horizontally. The competing search engine would need some smart minds to come up with something extra, something genuinely useful that would make people flock there. Then there are all other parts of Google ecosystem that people depend on: Gmail, Adwords, Adsense, GA. And millions of Android devices. How to eradicate all that from our lives? It will take decades to complete - if we started now, that is.
- bluGill 8y ago
  Using other search engines goes a long way to get them there - the more they are used the more advertising dollars they get (and the less google gets), which leads to dollars to invest. I find that duckduckgo is good enough for everything these days.
millstone 8y ago
Addendum to your creepy quote list: "I actually think most people don’t want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next." from 8/10/10 WSJ interview.

open-source-ux 8y ago

Google tracks online behaviour on an industrial scale. It's baffling how little scrutiny the company faces, least of all from the tech community who often rush to it's defence. (Does a multi-billion dollar company need your defence?) When you create a Google account, you're asked to provide your name, your gender, your date of birth, your location and your mobile phone number. Some of your most personal and private details, all of which will now be tied to your online behaviour. That ceaseless data capture starts right from school, where millions of students use a cloud-based OS called ChromeOS that records everything they do. It's quite horrible that this is happening - the kids don't even get a say, it's the adults who've decided this. It doesn't matter if that information is only collated in aggregated form and detached from user accounts, we don't know how that information could be mined or analysed either now or in the future. (In fact, I suspect that even Google hasn't figure all the possible uses of the ginormous quantity of user behaviour it has captured and continues to capture). And we've seen from Spotify and Netflix how even aggregated data can reveal very private and personal user behaviour. Google and many of it's supporters conflate security with privacy. Just because Google hasn't ever suffered a breach of user data, people say that Google can be trusted. You can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. You're still being tracked relentlessly by Google no matter how securely it's storing your online behaviour.

teddyfrozevelt 8y ago
G Suite for Education very clearly doesn't track students using it. https://edu.google.com/k-12-solutions/privacy-security/ https://edu.google.com/k-12-solutions/privacy-security/
- open-source-ux 8y ago
  Where does it say that it doesn't track students on that page? The G Suite for Education Privacy Notice [1] clearly states that Google collects device information, unique device identifiers, mobile network information (including phone number of the user). Also logged are IP addresses, location information, and app usage using unique application numbers. Even if this information is detached from individual accounts and aggregated, it equals a phenomenal amount of data captured by Google on millions of students in the US. [1] https://gsuite.google.com/terms/education_privacy.html https://gsuite.google.com/terms/education_privacy.html

matlin 8y ago

The difference is that Google doesn't share that information with other firms. Having centralized information for a user is important to many (you can always spread it across multiple emails and accounts) but I think violation of privacy is the main reason Facebook is under investigation not centralization of data.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Google is its own third party: There is no appreciable difference between Facebook sharing your data with an ad company and Google sharing your data with their own built-in ad company.
- matlin 8y ago
  There definitely is... That's the whole point of Facebook's Senate hearing. If it stays within company and can't be used by directly by third parties for their own agendas like influencing elections. I 100% think that we should be weary of over centralized information but we are talking about two very different scenarios: even a small social network with relatively little information can be very dangerous if it leaks personal data.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    Please stop spreading factually wrong information, especially on a subject as important as this one. Maybe research the material for a bit? The best place to start is doubleclick and their profiling options as well as the RTB spec. That will give you a pretty shocking (if I understand the level to which you are still in the dark correctly) insight into what kind of data is freely shared between ad tech companies amongst each other and their customers (agencies, advertisers).
    - matlin 8y ago
      I understand that you are angry about the Cambridge Analytica revelations, I am too. But I am not spreading misinformation, I am participating in a discussion. I have repeatedly try to communicate that I am not talking about targeted advertising. In the senate hearing, the counsel is honing on some important points. What is the alternative to Facebook (i.e. a real competitor)? What information is Facebook gathering on non-users? What is Facebook doing to shield users' from the outside world? How much metadata is Facebook gathering/surmising outside of a user's direct input? These are way bigger questions than does Facebook allow Advertisers to target you based on certain demographics (a similar but different debate). Google is poised to abuse / misuse personal data in the same way but regulating and persecuting are very different processes and should not be conflated in these discussions. I simply want to draw those distinctions between Google and Facebook.

dschuetz 8y ago

Fun fact: Google collects much more data from Android devices than from iOS devices. This might be unsurprising, and even obvious, but I was surprised how precise and intrusive that data is. The whole time I was using an Android phone with my google account logged in on the device, google recorded and retained basically everything. My location, without even me using the maps app. My old contacts which I deleted from my contacts lists were still in the records. Any IPv4 or IPv6 address my phone was assigned to. This was even more creepy than facebook's data trove. I deleted my data on facebook as far as I could and also the account (not just deactivated) and I deleted most of the data google had on me. The problem is that I only can assume that all the data is now gone, but how can I be sure? Google might constantly assure that they handle everything with care, but the extent of their intrusion into my private life is really scary.

mtgx 8y ago
It also annoys the hell out of me how often companies get away with something if they just say "Whoops, it was a mistake/bug." Google was recently found to track Android users' location even when they didn't have their GPS on. And they said it was a "bug". Like I'm just going to believe that from a company whose main objective is to track as much about us as possible. But my point is the FTC should have slapped them with a major (at least tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars, depending how long they've been doing it and to how many people) even if this was a bug. If you tracked or collected data without users' consent, you get fined - bigly. No ifs or buts about it. Enough with the BS excuses and apology tours while they pocket billions from the "error" or "mistake."
- jacquesm 8y ago
  As long as money and politics are strongly intertwined it is unlikely this will happen within the country of origin of the company. Lobbyists are just too powerful. And that's before we get into the kind of tricks and entity like Google or Facebook could pull if they decided to become an active participant rather than just a channel for advertising. If that hasn't already happened.
  - 8y ago

notbeevil 8y ago

It is totally ridiculous. If people really care, why some apps like WeChat controlled by Dictatorship are allowed in America?

ralusek 8y ago
Because some people, like myself, are perfectly happy to just not use them. There are alternatives to authoritarianism, and America was supposed to be one of them.

notacoward 8y ago

Google is on the list, but I'm going to break away from the flock and say they shouldn't be next. Credit agencies and data brokers, who facilitate the worst kinds of third-party privacy violation and about whom most people know very little, should go next. Then the government itself. Then Google, and then Amazon. BTW, if you want to have some fun, just try to imagine that the the government's interest in Facebook's data practices is not so much to regulate it as to copy it - either for the government itself or for election campaigns. IMO that makes a lot of their otherwise nonsensical or inconsistent behavior much more understandable. Creepy. They totally want to know more about us than Facebook and Google put together; they just don't know how.

bilbo0s 8y ago
"...Google is on the list, but I'm going to break away from the flock and say they shouldn't be next. Credit agencies and data brokers ... should go next... Why can't it be both? Serious question.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Not only can it be both it should be both (or more correctly: all).
- notacoward 8y ago
  Resources, including most relevantly attention, are finite. That's why the attention is only on Facebook now, when it should already be on these others as well. Much as I'd love for people to see all of the picture at once when they're trying to make policy, I don't think that's what really happens.
- phonebucket 8y ago
  "Why can't it be both?" In fairness to the OP, the notion of someone being next is coming from the headline, not the comment.
- schnevets 8y ago
  Because a "loss" can disrupt the momentum and public support that is snowballing with these Facebook headlines. Think about the failed attempt to break up Microsoft in the 90s. Regardless of how you felt about the breakup idea, Congress was spurned at that decision and avoided taking action on other emerging monopolies.

mtgx 8y ago

I expect we'll see some major leaks about Google by the end of the year, too.

modi15 8y ago

The biggest reason Google's name hasnt come up yet is probably because most of these senators are on Google's payrolls. That Google pays for favourable research is already well established. The fact that no one has even raised a finger at Google, which by all accounts does a more pervasive job at monitoring people, speaks volumes on how well entrenched it is in media circles. The fact that Google can more or less kill any media outlet literally at a flick of a button is reason enough that it should be shut down hook, line and sinker.

wepple 8y ago

My personal gut feel is that in the fairly long history (for a tech co), we’ve seen surprisingly little malicious use of data come from google. In a company of their size I’d expect a lot more screw ups and scandles, so perhaps they deserve a little more trust? At the same time, they’re at the size and momentum that they should always be under scrutiny even if the answer keeps coming back “yeah they seem to be acting responsibly”. We don’t want to have an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

sixothree 8y ago

The problem I have is the lack of transparency. Google lets you download "all of your data". But it's nothing near the entirety of what they collect about you. It's insulting. It's time we learn what they know about us. I want to know.

troyvoy88 8y ago

I absolutely agree Google has a much wider ecosystem they cover: social media with google plus or whatever is left of it, video via YouTube, Images via google Photos, cloud infrastructure via Compute Engine, google work via G Suit, ISP via Google Fiber etc... All these have Term of Services with very broad language they can dragnet collect whatever they want. I don't mind sharing the information and I don't want the government involve and regulate how private entities work. But I also wouldn't mind having this companies put on the spot and have to explain how they handle the data they gather. How they handle ToS and/or Data breach. Facebook is a speck of dust compare to google.

sixothree 8y ago
You say you don't mind sharing information. Do you mind them collecting information about you outside of what you share?
- troyvoy88 8y ago
  Yes that is the VERY reason why I said wouldn't mind having them put on the spot that way we can ask. Provided the right people are asking the questions. If it comes up through the questioning that they are grabbing information I chose not to share with them. I'll stop using the services and go somewhere else no one has a gun to my head.

kozikow 8y ago

Not saying Google is a saint, but it's orders of magnitude better at privacy than Facebook: - Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app. - Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time. - Mostly compliant with GDPR for years prior to the regulation being released. The same can't be said for Facebook. - Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations. - I don't work on either right now, but at the time I did Google had way much better internal access controls for employees. Amassing personal data can be considered unethical on some levels, but amassing personal data can't be equated with being bad at privacy. Among "personal data hoarders" Google is by far the most coginzant about keeping that data private.

sametmax 8y ago
> - Malicious actors can't access most Google data has on you. Especially not by releasing psychological quiz app. If I remember well, Google was part of PRISM. And it did give data to a malicious state actors. Plus it has analytics, which you can pay to have data on people (although no personal, but personal data from facebook is aggregated and used the same way in the end). Also google let you literally google people to find any data that other service would leak. It's not as bad, yes. But it's still a lot. > Google is not tracking logged out users. New id is assigned to logged out users only for very short periods of time. I'm not an insider, but I would imagine that with android, gmail, chrome, various search tools and google Web APIs (fonts, graphs, analytics...), Google tracks you everywhere, whether you are logged in or not. It doesn't even need a cookie with all the behavioral data it has to fingerprint you. And it's so big I doubt that any employee inside knows how everything works and everything that is done. > Search results are much harder to manipulate by malicious actors than Facebook news feed ranking - based on the history of such manipulations. Now. But they've been at it for more time. I remember the early days of Google, and it was black SEO everywhere. It became only hard to game the system recently. Even when StackOverflow came out, we had so much spammy clones, and it's not that old. It also came out at the cost of less relevant results: now I can always find instantly what I know I want, but rarely discover something I'm happy I found about that is related to my current search. The bubble is very strong.

anoplus 8y ago

In the age of information, Google obviously has disproportionate power. Society must raise awareness about concentration of power, post more about this topic, demand justice and transparency from the rulers. I think Google workers have special ethical responsibility to demand transparency and trust, organize and resist evil orders. We all have responsibility as a society to demand justice if we want a promising future.

hlecuanda 8y ago

Reprising my comment from a few weeks ago: Facebook never gave me anything of value in exchange for constantly monitoring and profilingmy behavior online. in fact, as it became ubiquitous,it added a new chore for me: maintaining ever changing privacy options on a defensive profile on their network. So it takes peoples time, attention, and details on top of behavioral monitoring. In contrast, Google provides me with a very competent productivity suite, a superb photo-managing software navigation, maps, aggregate traffic data,and a host of tools to actually build a business and educate myself and others. Plus i get enterprise class security for my account and -arguably- the best web email service. The day theres a data breach or in this case a breach of trust, im more likely to view google in a better light and give them the benefit of the doubt. Facebook gets my contempt and scorn. >Inb4 "well then don't use Facebook": I don't. But that doesn't stop FB from building a shadow profile on me, so if I want some measure of control over my digital footprint, I have no choice or recourse but to open and maintain a defensive profile whose only purposes are a) claim my username / URL used on most services where I'm provided with such a srfvixe, b) "squat" my name and likeness so I can't be unknowingly impersonated on their network and c) keep up with their ever changing privacy controls >Inb4 "sounds like cringe material from Google's social team": -I don't work for Google. I admit I'd love to, but I'm too old, perhaps. OTOH, I don't see how it's "cringe" since I succinctly describe the services the company does provide for me in exchange for my data and observing my behaviour; services I've used in making a living lately. Try making a living by developing on the FB platform, where every API Iteration makes you re-evaluate your business model.

stewofkc 8y ago

Facebook is the perfect company to take all the heat. Mainly because Mark Zuckerberg is such an icon. https://hackernoon.com/why-facebook-is-the-perfect-representative-of-techs-privacy-problem-5e5c29063d47 https://hackernoon.com/why-facebook-is-the-perfect-represent...

yuhong 8y ago

It is funny that my essay on this exact topic don't seem to get much coverage, even though I have been working on the problem for a while now.