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>I am lost at what Google attempts to gain with this. Revenue. >Then, there's the PR disaster that's bound to come up once it gets official. Does the public

by x2f10 8y ago

>I am lost at what Google attempts to gain with this. Revenue. >Then, there's the PR disaster that's bound to come up once it gets official. Does the public care about privacy? Does the public understand or care about China's firewall? Does the public have an attention span long enough to ruin Google's reputation?

sametmax 8y ago
Those are the real questions. And the last decade has been answering unfortunatly "no" as soon as you get outside of tech saavy bubbles.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  Inside it isn't all that different.
protomyth 8y ago
"Does the public care about privacy?" Does the public care about anyone in China's privacy?
- mooman219 8y ago
  Do Chinese citizens even have privacy to protect anymore? At this point it's more of a question of what privacy they can reclaim unfortunately.
extralego 8y ago
> Does the public care about privacy? The answer is certainly “yes”. There’s a difference between caring and having any power to do anything about it. It’s time to move on from Consumer activism. This nonsense of blaming people for their purchasing decisions is so rotten and useless. Judging others this way requires vain assumptions and we can do so much better.
- sixstringtheory 8y ago
  You had me until the second paragraph. Who instigates change in society, if not for the people in it? Sadly, parent’s last question > Does the public have an attention span long enough to ruin Google's reputation? is a resounding ‘no’ to me right now. It is as if these days many people have the same attitude you do, wanting someone else to do the legwork to bring societal change. That’s a good way to wind up with totalitarianism, and that’s how you end up with a president for life dictating what information citizens can and cannot consume.
  - extralego 8y ago
    This sounds like a misunderstanding. ‘Consumer activism’ is, in so many words, not activism. It describes the effort of working towards greater change through purchasing decisions. It’s a liberal rationalization common in capitalist societies that fails to account for the systemic limitations of the consumer voice. The issues with it are many, but I’ll list a few: - It’s dependent on a person’s spending power, which is dependent on their capital wealth, which is dependent on their endorsement of the system as a whole. - It shames those in poverty who cannot afford to participate and generates greater class divide. - It relies on the transparency of the business entities to definite itself. If Google doesn’t tell us how evil it is, we cannot know the importance of avoiding their services. - It relies on the media to expose misgivings, but the media relies on the misgivers to pay their bills. You get the point. - It places a burden on the well-meaning by insisting they deny opportunities available to their competitors. - It pits individuals against one another, undermining the solidarity needed for lasting change.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    >You had me until the second paragraph. Who instigates change in society, if not for the people in it? Sadly, parent’s last question I think GP was downvoted because he criticized consumer activism and not just what he meant to criticize: Making change by purchasing decisions. I've generally switched to his perspective. For about a decade I felt (and acted) more like you. That experience taught me how poor a strategy it is. The success stories via boycotts are a fairly small minority. Most attempts at change via boycotts fail. It's incredibly hard even to start one. A lot of shaming is involved, and it rarely works. People don't like to feel ashamed. As he said in his response to you, it does quickly degrade to infighting amongst consumers and a lot of energy is wasted there that could be used in alternative strategies. It requires people to be very knowledgeable, and I saw mostly failures even amongst highly educated folks. To understand an issue, connect all the dots, etc takes a lot of effort. Most people want someone else (government agency, consumer watchdog, etc) to do all the work. That's not to say broad media campaigns are a bad idea - I think they are necessary. But much more often than not, companies will win on the purchasing decisions battle.
Skunkleton 8y ago
> Does the public care about privacy? Yes, but the there is a lot of ignorance and misinformation. I have faith that the public at large will eventually come to grips the surrounding issues.
- drivingmenuts 8y ago
  People in the US will eventually start to care about their own privacy (maybe even enough to do something about it), but the same people probably won't care about the privacy of Chinese citizens, ever. We pay attention to the big ticket events shown to us by the media (Tianamen Square, the occasional artist, etc.), but I seriously doubt very many people are concerned with the average person over there, since there's no easy way to package that up for a tweet.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    "but the same people probably won't care about the privacy of Chinese citizens, ever." I mean, I'd like them to be able to have it, but I have literally zero impact on any of those discussions. Since I can't really do anything about it, I don't fret about it.
hectorr1 8y ago
No, but Google needs to worry about a much more important constituency. There are not that many people who know how to build something like this. Most are probably wealthy, to the point they don't really need to work. All of them can figure out how to covertly contact journalists. And at least a few of them are starting to have qualms about the negative consequences of industry ignoring the social implications in pursuit of profit.
- ben_jones 8y ago
  Sophisticated software can be written by anybody and is not solely in the purview of Google's flawless hiring system. Operating systems, physics engines, 3d graphics applications, have been created by many not-a-stanford-degree-toting individual.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Anybody? Clearly not. But you are right that the people capable of doing that are not just from Stanford. That just doesn't change the parent's point.
  - kodablah 8y ago
    > Sophisticated software can be written by anybody Well that's just not true. > is not solely in the purview of Google's flawless hiring system Well that's not what was asserted at all. > [...] have been created by many not-a-stanford-degree-toting individual And neither was that.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 8y ago
      It's less likely sure, but possible is a very low hurdle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
      - 8y ago
open-source-ux 8y ago
>Does the public care about privacy? Does the tech community care about privacy? Google tracks users on an industrial scale. Yet most people in the tech community shrug their shoulders and say 'so what?'. Or they rush to Google's defence. (Does a giant multi-billion dollar company need your defence?) Google has a peculiar slant on privacy - they seems to think it's all about security and nothing else. You can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. It's the equivalent of saying we'll track you to death (and save it to our servers), but you can rest assured that your personal information will never leak. The tech community happily accepts that as perfectly fine.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Yes, privacy is almost antithetical to the "free" tech business model.

by x2f10 8y ago

sametmax 8y ago

Those are the real questions. And the last decade has been answering unfortunatly "no" as soon as you get outside of tech saavy bubbles.

jacquesm 8y ago
Inside it isn't all that different.

protomyth 8y ago

"Does the public care about privacy?" Does the public care about anyone in China's privacy?

mooman219 8y ago
Do Chinese citizens even have privacy to protect anymore? At this point it's more of a question of what privacy they can reclaim unfortunately.

extralego 8y ago

> Does the public care about privacy? The answer is certainly “yes”. There’s a difference between caring and having any power to do anything about it. It’s time to move on from Consumer activism. This nonsense of blaming people for their purchasing decisions is so rotten and useless. Judging others this way requires vain assumptions and we can do so much better.

sixstringtheory 8y ago
You had me until the second paragraph. Who instigates change in society, if not for the people in it? Sadly, parent’s last question > Does the public have an attention span long enough to ruin Google's reputation? is a resounding ‘no’ to me right now. It is as if these days many people have the same attitude you do, wanting someone else to do the legwork to bring societal change. That’s a good way to wind up with totalitarianism, and that’s how you end up with a president for life dictating what information citizens can and cannot consume.
- extralego 8y ago
  This sounds like a misunderstanding. ‘Consumer activism’ is, in so many words, not activism. It describes the effort of working towards greater change through purchasing decisions. It’s a liberal rationalization common in capitalist societies that fails to account for the systemic limitations of the consumer voice. The issues with it are many, but I’ll list a few: - It’s dependent on a person’s spending power, which is dependent on their capital wealth, which is dependent on their endorsement of the system as a whole. - It shames those in poverty who cannot afford to participate and generates greater class divide. - It relies on the transparency of the business entities to definite itself. If Google doesn’t tell us how evil it is, we cannot know the importance of avoiding their services. - It relies on the media to expose misgivings, but the media relies on the misgivers to pay their bills. You get the point. - It places a burden on the well-meaning by insisting they deny opportunities available to their competitors. - It pits individuals against one another, undermining the solidarity needed for lasting change.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >You had me until the second paragraph. Who instigates change in society, if not for the people in it? Sadly, parent’s last question I think GP was downvoted because he criticized consumer activism and not just what he meant to criticize: Making change by purchasing decisions. I've generally switched to his perspective. For about a decade I felt (and acted) more like you. That experience taught me how poor a strategy it is. The success stories via boycotts are a fairly small minority. Most attempts at change via boycotts fail. It's incredibly hard even to start one. A lot of shaming is involved, and it rarely works. People don't like to feel ashamed. As he said in his response to you, it does quickly degrade to infighting amongst consumers and a lot of energy is wasted there that could be used in alternative strategies. It requires people to be very knowledgeable, and I saw mostly failures even amongst highly educated folks. To understand an issue, connect all the dots, etc takes a lot of effort. Most people want someone else (government agency, consumer watchdog, etc) to do all the work. That's not to say broad media campaigns are a bad idea - I think they are necessary. But much more often than not, companies will win on the purchasing decisions battle.

Skunkleton 8y ago

> Does the public care about privacy? Yes, but the there is a lot of ignorance and misinformation. I have faith that the public at large will eventually come to grips the surrounding issues.

drivingmenuts 8y ago
People in the US will eventually start to care about their own privacy (maybe even enough to do something about it), but the same people probably won't care about the privacy of Chinese citizens, ever. We pay attention to the big ticket events shown to us by the media (Tianamen Square, the occasional artist, etc.), but I seriously doubt very many people are concerned with the average person over there, since there's no easy way to package that up for a tweet.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "but the same people probably won't care about the privacy of Chinese citizens, ever." I mean, I'd like them to be able to have it, but I have literally zero impact on any of those discussions. Since I can't really do anything about it, I don't fret about it.

hectorr1 8y ago

No, but Google needs to worry about a much more important constituency. There are not that many people who know how to build something like this. Most are probably wealthy, to the point they don't really need to work. All of them can figure out how to covertly contact journalists. And at least a few of them are starting to have qualms about the negative consequences of industry ignoring the social implications in pursuit of profit.

ben_jones 8y ago
Sophisticated software can be written by anybody and is not solely in the purview of Google's flawless hiring system. Operating systems, physics engines, 3d graphics applications, have been created by many not-a-stanford-degree-toting individual.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  Anybody? Clearly not. But you are right that the people capable of doing that are not just from Stanford. That just doesn't change the parent's point.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > Sophisticated software can be written by anybody Well that's just not true. > is not solely in the purview of Google's flawless hiring system Well that's not what was asserted at all. > [...] have been created by many not-a-stanford-degree-toting individual And neither was that.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 8y ago
    It's less likely sure, but possible is a very low hurdle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
    - 8y ago

open-source-ux 8y ago

>Does the public care about privacy? Does the tech community care about privacy? Google tracks users on an industrial scale. Yet most people in the tech community shrug their shoulders and say 'so what?'. Or they rush to Google's defence. (Does a giant multi-billion dollar company need your defence?) Google has a peculiar slant on privacy - they seems to think it's all about security and nothing else. You can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. It's the equivalent of saying we'll track you to death (and save it to our servers), but you can rest assured that your personal information will never leak. The tech community happily accepts that as perfectly fine.

emodendroket 8y ago
Yes, privacy is almost antithetical to the "free" tech business model.