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No, the only place I see the kind of rabid hatred of Google and Facebook for their data collection practices are here on HN. Of course these people want their s

No, the only place I see the kind of rabid hatred of Google and Facebook for their data collection practices are here on HN. Of course these people want their services, actually expect them for free, continuously at the same standard. They just don't want to be tracked, don't want to pay for them, don't want to be advertised too and don't have any real solutions on how they would be paid for other than some handwaving about breaking Google/Facebook up which apparently will solve everything. Everytime I've pointed out that most people simply don't care about the level of tracking Facebook and Google do I'm endlessly shouted down with words to the effect of "No! If they understand how much they were tracked they'd care!", but I don't believe that's the case, I think most people simply don't care based on the value they get from these companies.

itronitron 8y ago
>> don't want to be advertised too Most people probably don't mind seeing advertisements. It's just completely ridiculous that Google or FB think they need to track individuals in order to provide targeted advertising. If someone searches for 'football', then just show a fucking ad that is relevant to 'football' along with the search results.
- spaced-out 8y ago
  What makes companies like Google valuable is that they can tell whether the user searching "football" should be shown an ad for "American football" or soccer. For that, you need tracking.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    How are you (any everyone else in this conversation) defining "tracking", and how does it differ from profiling? I can't seem to tell what people mean by "tracking" anymore.
xvector 8y ago
Sweeping generalizations do not an argument make. > these people want their services, actually expect them for free, continuously at the same standard. Source? I'm sure most people would be willing to pay for a service in exchange for some reasonable level of privacy. > don't have any real solutions on how they would be paid for other than some handwaving about breaking Google/Facebook up which apparently will solve everything. The "breaking up Google/Facebook" argument is completely separate from the privacy argument. Strawman much? > most people simply don't care about the level of tracking Facebook and Google do Source? > "No! If they understand how much they were tracked they'd care!", but I don't believe that's the case Again, source? If you told the average person the amount of information that Facebook and Google have inferred from them, do you seriously think they would not care? --- There's no doubt that the data collection practices of Google and Facebook or pathologic. There is nothing stopping them from taking a more privacy-centric approach like Apple does and still make a ton of money. But people have the mindset that corporations should be exempt from morality and that this is grounds for tossing considerations like privacy out the window. I'm getting the feeling you feel similarly.

itronitron 8y ago

>> don't want to be advertised too Most people probably don't mind seeing advertisements. It's just completely ridiculous that Google or FB think they need to track individuals in order to provide targeted advertising. If someone searches for 'football', then just show a fucking ad that is relevant to 'football' along with the search results.

spaced-out 8y ago
What makes companies like Google valuable is that they can tell whether the user searching "football" should be shown an ad for "American football" or soccer. For that, you need tracking.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  How are you (any everyone else in this conversation) defining "tracking", and how does it differ from profiling? I can't seem to tell what people mean by "tracking" anymore.

xvector 8y ago

Sweeping generalizations do not an argument make. > these people want their services, actually expect them for free, continuously at the same standard. Source? I'm sure most people would be willing to pay for a service in exchange for some reasonable level of privacy. > don't have any real solutions on how they would be paid for other than some handwaving about breaking Google/Facebook up which apparently will solve everything. The "breaking up Google/Facebook" argument is completely separate from the privacy argument. Strawman much? > most people simply don't care about the level of tracking Facebook and Google do Source? > "No! If they understand how much they were tracked they'd care!", but I don't believe that's the case Again, source? If you told the average person the amount of information that Facebook and Google have inferred from them, do you seriously think they would not care? --- There's no doubt that the data collection practices of Google and Facebook or pathologic. There is nothing stopping them from taking a more privacy-centric approach like Apple does and still make a ton of money. But people have the mindset that corporations should be exempt from morality and that this is grounds for tossing considerations like privacy out the window. I'm getting the feeling you feel similarly.