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> I’d immediately presume that they do use everything else for advertising. For one that's illegal in the EU at least. Due to GDPR Google cannot use your data

> I’d immediately presume that they do use everything else for advertising. For one that's illegal in the EU at least. Due to GDPR Google cannot use your data for profiling without explicit consent. Thinking about "what they don't tell you" is how conspiracy theories work. Such claims are either evidence based or they aren't. And don't get me wrong, if you don't trust Google for whatever reason that's fine, I just find your reasoning odd.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
> For one that's illegal in the EU at least. Due to GDPR Google cannot use your data for profiling without explicit consent. And presumably, EU users will get an extra consent screen going into details. But as far as I know, this doesn't imply these details have to be the part of the document called "privacy policy". > Thinking about "what they don't tell you" is how conspiracy theories work. Such claims are either evidence based or they aren't. Absence of evidence is only weak evidence of absence, but it's still evidence. In this case, you could call it "being suspiciously specific", which is a known technique of lying by omission. Privacy policies don't exist in a vacuum - they're formed by entities strongly incentivized to make money every possible way that's not explicitly illegal[0]. So a suspiciously specific privacy policy can be reasonably considered worrisome, especially for a company known to make money off their users' data. Conspiracy theories are excessively using the "what they don't tell you" reasoning, but that doesn't mean the reasoning itself is bad. It's just one requiring finesse and a somewhat more complete picture of an issue at hand. The best conspiracy theories are ones that balance this reasoning - any more, and they'd be trivially debunked; any less, and nobody would find them interesting. -- [0] - And some even achieve success by crossing the line into squarely illegal behavior - see e.g. Uber.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  The issue is saying "we don't use <these two things>" isn't suspiciously specific. What people actually want, which is "we don't use <these 87 things>" is.
- toyg 6y ago
  > EU users will get an extra consent screen going into details. That would explain the unescapable modal "These are our privacy terms" popup that every Google service displays the first time you hit it with a fresh browser... Obviously nobody reads anything, they just click "Agree". It's all so broken.

TeMPOraL 6y ago

> For one that's illegal in the EU at least. Due to GDPR Google cannot use your data for profiling without explicit consent. And presumably, EU users will get an extra consent screen going into details. But as far as I know, this doesn't imply these details have to be the part of the document called "privacy policy". > Thinking about "what they don't tell you" is how conspiracy theories work. Such claims are either evidence based or they aren't. Absence of evidence is only weak evidence of absence, but it's still evidence. In this case, you could call it "being suspiciously specific", which is a known technique of lying by omission. Privacy policies don't exist in a vacuum - they're formed by entities strongly incentivized to make money every possible way that's not explicitly illegal[0]. So a suspiciously specific privacy policy can be reasonably considered worrisome, especially for a company known to make money off their users' data. Conspiracy theories are excessively using the "what they don't tell you" reasoning, but that doesn't mean the reasoning itself is bad. It's just one requiring finesse and a somewhat more complete picture of an issue at hand. The best conspiracy theories are ones that balance this reasoning - any more, and they'd be trivially debunked; any less, and nobody would find them interesting. -- [0] - And some even achieve success by crossing the line into squarely illegal behavior - see e.g. Uber.

joshuamorton 6y ago
The issue is saying "we don't use <these two things>" isn't suspiciously specific. What people actually want, which is "we don't use <these 87 things>" is.
toyg 6y ago
> EU users will get an extra consent screen going into details. That would explain the unescapable modal "These are our privacy terms" popup that every Google service displays the first time you hit it with a fresh browser... Obviously nobody reads anything, they just click "Agree". It's all so broken.