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Google is incentivized to do this, they make good money off of it. It’s boring and true. They’ll keep doing stuff like this until it reaches some publicly unacc

by kris-s 8y ago

Google is incentivized to do this, they make good money off of it. It’s boring and true. They’ll keep doing stuff like this until it reaches some publicly unacceptable limit. Until then use browsers like Firefox or Safari where the incentive to be creepy is far smaller.

aphextron 8y ago
> They’ll keep doing stuff like this until it reaches some publicly unacceptable limit Which as we know from things like Facebook, that limit will never be reached. These things are far too opaque for the general public to understand or care about. Even we software engineers barely understand the scope of what Google is capable of. It's going to take a principled stance from within the industry to push back against the encroachment of these corporations on personal privacy.
- lbriner 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's true. Facebook numbers have been falling for a while and I'm sure part of that is backlash over privacy abuses. https://www.recode.net/2018/2/12/16998750/facebooks-teen-users-decline-instagram-snap-emarketer https://www.recode.net/2018/2/12/16998750/facebooks-teen-use...
  - adjkant 8y ago
    And yet it's rising significantly when it comes to Instagram where they are employing the exact same business model.
- MarkMc 8y ago
  > These things are far too opaque for the general public to understand or care about. Or perhaps your preference is a minority opinion, and most people will trade privacy for convenience even when fully informed and aware of Google's behavior
  - aphextron 8y ago
    >Or perhaps your preference is a minority opinion, and most people will trade privacy for convenience even when fully informed and aware of Google's behavior That's kind of my whole point. Regular people don't really understand the implications of what's possible with all this data even when you tell them exactly what's happening, and so they gladly give it up in the name of convenience. They don't realize it has value, and is dangerous in the hands of bad actors when aggregated in large amounts. It's going to take people on the inside growing a spine and standing up for the rights of all users over advancing the monopoly on private data for whatever web based surveillance apparatus they're currently being paid to work on.
matt4077 8y ago
If Google's decision-making processes were as blatantly short-sighted as you seem to make them out to be, they would have prevented ad blockers years ago.

by kris-s 8y ago

aphextron 8y ago

> They’ll keep doing stuff like this until it reaches some publicly unacceptable limit Which as we know from things like Facebook, that limit will never be reached. These things are far too opaque for the general public to understand or care about. Even we software engineers barely understand the scope of what Google is capable of. It's going to take a principled stance from within the industry to push back against the encroachment of these corporations on personal privacy.

lbriner 8y ago
I'm not sure that's true. Facebook numbers have been falling for a while and I'm sure part of that is backlash over privacy abuses. https://www.recode.net/2018/2/12/16998750/facebooks-teen-users-decline-instagram-snap-emarketer https://www.recode.net/2018/2/12/16998750/facebooks-teen-use...
- adjkant 8y ago
  And yet it's rising significantly when it comes to Instagram where they are employing the exact same business model.
MarkMc 8y ago
> These things are far too opaque for the general public to understand or care about. Or perhaps your preference is a minority opinion, and most people will trade privacy for convenience even when fully informed and aware of Google's behavior
- aphextron 8y ago
  >Or perhaps your preference is a minority opinion, and most people will trade privacy for convenience even when fully informed and aware of Google's behavior That's kind of my whole point. Regular people don't really understand the implications of what's possible with all this data even when you tell them exactly what's happening, and so they gladly give it up in the name of convenience. They don't realize it has value, and is dangerous in the hands of bad actors when aggregated in large amounts. It's going to take people on the inside growing a spine and standing up for the rights of all users over advancing the monopoly on private data for whatever web based surveillance apparatus they're currently being paid to work on.

matt4077 8y ago

If Google's decision-making processes were as blatantly short-sighted as you seem to make them out to be, they would have prevented ad blockers years ago.