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There's an interesting disease showing up here in the responses. I accept DDG's statement that this is about a favicon and that they "do not collect or share a
by throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
There's an interesting disease showing up here in the responses.
I accept DDG's statement that this is about a favicon and that they "do not collect or share any personal information", and despite that, I also agree with others that DDG should be on the safe side and just stop doing this small thing. It's just the safer and more moral thing to do (So DDG, as many are suggesting, plz stop doing it. Today is good).
But... the reaction here is "they made a mistake, let's pile on like kids in a playground" ignoring the genuinely huger issue of the amount of info and mining that google et al. do. There's no measure of proportion in the responses, someone is making a mistake then there's a wolfish, pack-like desire to get stuck in and hurt someone.
Which is why politicians rarely admit mistakes, because it's taken as a sign of weakness, not strength, to admit you were wrong. DDG isn't the big evil on the web but from reading some of these you'd think it was the 2nd google.
This isn't about DDG, just the proportionality of responses in public errors and what society you'd like to have.
(no affiliation to DDG)
- warpspin 6y agoI think what angered people was actually that a company saying to hold privacy high was simply refusing to change something after a mistake was pointed out and instead kept on defending it with a technical argument, which makes no sense at all. The reaction would have been actually a lot different if someone from the company admitted the mistake and promised it will be changed. Update: Gabriel Weinberg has promised to change it, linking it here so it does not get buried in the pile of comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23711597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23711597
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- asjw 6y agoYeah people burnt witches in the past ... If they are confident that this feature has no privacy implications they are right to defend the point, despite what people say or think People don't run DDG, the company People can use another search engine if they want I'll keep using DDG anyway
- marcinzm 6y agoDDG can do what they want and people can as a result publicly state their opinions on it. Freedom goes both ways.
- WillPostForFood 6y agoYou’ve described the race to the bottom we live in. Can we please try and break the cycle?
- esoterae 6y agoThose witches have a right to be on fire. Where's my pitchfork?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- koheripbal 6y agoRead your comment again. You are faulting someone for defending thier own argument. You suggest that people who do not cow and apologize to the mob deserve the anger and retribution the mob has to offer. People have a right to think differently and express themselves without threats, bullying, or shaming. The mob does not deserve apologies. The comment above is spot on - we've lost all sense of proportionality. It is an indication of the modern online mob sickness that they always demand others beg for forgiveness. What emotional void are mob participants trying to fill with the apologies of others?
- 411111111111111 6y agoi cant fully agree. you obviously should be allowed to make a mistake and be forgiven for it. that does not mean that i personally would ever forgive any `company` that markets itself as pro-privacy after its been caught gathering data on its users. i could forgive the people working at the company and would definitely expect future employers not to hold that against them, however. but if a `company` does something while claiming to stand morally opposed to exactly that.... proves that it doesn't actually care about the topic. it just wants the publicity for marketability, discrediting them entirely for all future communication. in this particular case, i wouldn't go that far however. they weren't gathering any data on their users if i understood it correctly. it was just a badly implemented feature, which will get changed
- koheripbal 6y agoYou seem to put great value on forgiveness. What is your forgiveness worth? What emotional chasm do you struggle with that you demand others to beg for your forgiveness? Why on Earth should anyone care if you forgive them. This is your emotional hangup - not a problem with DuckDuckGo.
- 411111111111111 6y agoNot particularly. I was specifically responding about your outrage how internet 'mobs' demand forgiveness from the people they've supposedly wronged. The whole comment was just me talking from the perspective of a possible self identified victim and how that person (me) would respond in such a case. Forgiveness would've to happen for me to trust that party again, which would be a requirement for me becoming a user/paying for the service again. If that possible other party doesn't care about wherever the people they've supposedly wronged use/pay for their services, then there is obviously no need for any interaction after that point. And as I said before: none of this applied to ddg, as they didn't spy on their user. They implemented a leaky feature, which they've committed to changing.
- SmokeyHamster 6y ago>defending it with a technical argument, which makes no sense at all. Well hold on now. If there's a valid technical argument, and it's not a violation of privacy, why doesn't that make sense? If people are so distrustful of DDG that they don't believe that argument, why use their browser under any circumstance?
- WClayFerguson 6y agoA performance optimization around a trivial thing like a favicon is no reason to destroy everyone's security. Let's assume DDG is a great and honest company and will collect all the info, but never use it for anything bad. Guess what, they can get still hacked and all the info leaks out. This is a horrendous breach of trust that they WERE collecting it however, and I'm glad they got caught. It will not be tolerated. They'll have to change this or face a revolt.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hanspeter 6y ago> ignoring the genuinely huger issue of the amount of info and mining that google By using DuckDuckGo you're doing the opposite of ignoring privacy issues in Google products. And hence the reaction. Why use DDG at all, if they're not safely protecting your private data 100%?
- raziel2p 6y agoYou're okay with them having data on what you're searching for, but them potentially having data on the domains you're visiting from those search pages is where you draw the line? I mean, I agree with the principle of storing as little data as possible but this isn't a huge deal in my eyes.
- TheUndead96 6y agoThis is my feeling exactly
- asjw 6y agoBecause some protection is better than no protection Why use a condom which doesn't protect you 100%?
- bartread 6y agoOr why wear a motorcycle helmet since there's still a chance you'll sustain a serious head injury and die if you crash? Like you, I find the extremity of the GP's point of view lacking in wisdom.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoGoogle: stripmines everything. Would collect your soul if it could[0]. DDG: favicon fuckup. And you can't see the difference? > Why use DDG at all, if they're not safely protecting your private data 100%? Says the man who's willingly chosen to spunk his real name, the company he works for, his position within said company, his photograph and I'm sure I could find much else besides, over the web. Then asks for 100% privacy. [0] which some people would give up willingly for a little silver, but that's another matter.
- nsomaru 6y agoGoogle don’t sell privacy. Anyways, what’s this got to do with Google? “Privacy browser violates basic privacy to do something useless” is actually ridiculous. And the response is even more ridiculous! How does literally every single other browser do it? I’m disappointed because I put my reputation on the line to recommend DDG to users based on...privacy. But here we see they actually do not hold true to their stated values. And they don’t even seem to care.
- anyzen 6y ago> Google don’t sell privacy. Of course they do. They sell users' privacy for advertising dollars. I am not defending DDG here, as they are clearly in the wrong - but let's not pretend that their error is even close to what Google does.
- minitech 6y agoIt’s an explanation of why complaints are being directed at DuckDuckGo (privacy is their raison d’être) even when Google is worse (privacy is not their product – or, in wording that’s more ambiguous in isolation, Google don’t sell privacy).
- bamboozled 6y agoDo they sell PII data ? Because I don’t think they do.
- mda 6y agoCan you explain how they sell "privacy"? This is thrown around all the time but I don't think it means what people think it means.
- jariel 6y ago"Google don’t sell privacy." What does DDG 'sell'? Which is to say, how much have you paid them? If you're not paying for it, then you are the product, that's the inevitable trade. There is no free lunch.
- TLightful 6y ago
- pelliphant 6y agoI disagree, or maybe we read different responses, but the ones I read where more critical of how (a) ddg (employee) handled this. Didn't see anyone claim that this was on a google-level of bad, more like pointing out that google started out as a small company wanting to "do no evil", but slowly turned into what it is today. Is it really that weird that people are worried that this might be the first of many small steps down the slippery slope?
- afiori 6y ago> Didn't see anyone claim that this was on a google-level of bad The point is that people are reacting as if it was.
- arkades 6y agoI didn't have to go through the posted link for long to find people reacting as though this was more than a slippery slope issue: > But instead to react professionally and contritely you made it worse to stamp on the shards to make sure no useful piece of trust will survive. > I've just de-installed the Duckduckgo app and also won't be using their search engine anymore. Trust is lost. Their CEO can put his statement where the sun doesn't shine.
- bartread 6y ago> But... the reaction here is "they made a mistake, let's pile on like kids in a playground" ignoring the genuinely huger issue of the amount of info and mining that google et al. do. There's no measure of proportion in the responses, someone is making a mistake then there's a wolfish, pack-like desire to get stuck in and hurt someone. Sadly people simply derive satisfaction from piling on like this. The pop psychology explanation is that it's because people are dissatisfied with their own lives and are lashing out at anything that allows them to vent that underlying frustration. It sounds plausible, but it also sounds like it might be an over-generalisation. I think it's certainly fair to say - as depressing as it is - that it may be somewhat in our nature to behave in this way, that most or all of us may possess this characteristic to a greater or lesser extent, and that the current political, cultural, economic, and media climate is only serving to amplify that tendency.
- baud147258 6y agoAlso with the current social media platforms, it's really easy to find and participate in such pile up.
- Fiveplus 6y agoThe current social media climate favors disagreement. This is directly in correlation with 'engagement' around which platforms are designed. Call it banking on outrage/hacktivism/quarrelling or simply engaging in peaceful debates. Companies and their algorithms have come to a funny conclusion that this is what increases said engagement (I'm not questioning their business model). User retention is crucial in this era, so is the intention of getting them to check back in ever so often. Thus, dark patterns emerge. Point is, once you get used to 'that' online-aura, you unwillingly carry it with you wherever you go. Human brain does not have buttons to switch between modes. It's comically easy to get into this mindset and hard to shun it.
- classified 6y agoAfter we have been stung for the umpteenth time patience starts to wear thin.
- slightwinder 6y ago> But... the reaction here is "they made a mistake, let's pile on like kids in a playground" It's not one mistake, but several. Other then the initial mistake there is also the sloopy reaction and the fact they just closed the issue without bothering to fix it. And this was 1 year(!) ago. Nothing changed in the meanwhile. Now someone pushed it to public and after just some hours they reopen the issue and promise to fix it. This is the reason why people react loud, because it works. And often it's even the only way that works.
- afiori 6y agoPart of the point is that likely this has zero privacy implications (except potentially disclosing to someone monitoring your traffic that you are using their browser). The mistake is rather an area of improvement where they can change something that respect privacy by policy to something that respect privacy by design.
- marcinzm 6y ago>Part of the point is that likely this has zero privacy implications (except potentially disclosing to someone monitoring your traffic that you are using their browser). It has zero implications if you trust DDG and good privacy is not based on blind trust. Keep in mind that you also need to trust the government under which DDG acts to not require them to disclose this data, trust the government to not put black boxes in the DDG data center, trust DDG's security apparatus against external state actors, trust any rogue DDG employee to not use this data and so on.
- afiori 6y agoI agree, I still think it is relevant to treat actual privacy violations differently from engineering choices that might make privacy violations easier in the future. My opinion is that DDG should have never made this choice in the first place, but as far as I am concerned this is at the level of an implementation detail that can be improved, not as if DDG was intentionally using user data in some non-private way.
- the_cramer 6y agoMany argue that "other things are worse". This argument is invalid in my opinion. We're talking about this special case and if people feel like they need to openly show their opinion about it this is okay. Even if the response is big in numbers. That just shows how much also the small things matter. If you only care about "the biggest" or "the worst" you'll never get anywhere...
- christophilus 6y ago> There's no measure of proportion in the responses Man. You just described 2020. Anyway, I’m now using the DDG browser, which until today, I didn’t know existed. I think DDG will do the right thing, ultimately.
- jsnell 6y agoOh, please. There's a million threads on HN complaining about Google and Facebook. Doesn't even matter if they did something, any post will still have those comments. You can't consider the proportionality of the response by just one thread. It's really quite amazing that when a company that's hitched it's brand entirely to privacy first commits a big privacy faux pas, hides it for a year, and then doubles down on it not being a problem, you have somehow managed to turn the top voted thread to a discussion on the failings of other companies instead. Bravo.
- Theizestooke 6y agoIt's because DDG has been shilling on HN for quite a while.
- stepstop 6y ago> It's because DDG has been shilling on HN for quite a while. We’re they caught shilling or something, or are you just upset about just normal promotion?
- dang 6y agoThis breaks the HN guidelines against accusations of astroturfing or shilling without evidence. If there's one thing I've learned from looking at the data for countless hours, it's that internet users are far, far too quick to jump to this interpretation of what they perceive on the internet. The overwhelming majority of such accusations are purely bogus, and they poison the community, so we don't allow them here. Actual evidence is a different story, of course, but then you should be emailing it to hn@ycombinator.com so we can take it seriously and investigate. Lots more explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... going back years now. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Theizestooke 6y agoWhat would "actual evidence" look like? Proof that the comments in question originate from a known social media marketer? Do you think they all share a specific IP?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- fierarul 6y agoYou're right mr throwaway, let's be adults here and stop using DDG.
- Frost1x 6y agoMy guess is that DDG is being held to a higher standard because it's the liferaft competitor in a world of Google data harvesting, targeted manipulation and selling customer data. Most complaining or being heavily critical about DDG are probably already upset to the point of abandonment with other services and they don't want the same trend to happen to this competitor (DDG). This sort of reaction is, IMHO, due to poor diversity of viable competitors. In our societal structure, competitive options are the only things that keep power in check. I'm personally not entirely convinced you can have a reasonable amount of diverse competition in our economic system and there are some inherent equilibria that we tend to converge on over and over again in a market space (without corresponding massive social equalibria shifts). If you do have any sort of faith left in our economic system, then you certainly want competitors like DDG to be different and be successful. Even if you don't have much faith, outside of say stringent regulation, supporting these sort of competitors is really the only practical option we have in the current state of affairs.
- neya 6y agoIf you claim to fight for privacy and rise to popularity by shaming your competitors' evil anti-privacy (or shady) practices and do something exactly what the rest do, you deserve every bit of criticism. Why should you receive a free pass and the competitors shouldn't? Simply because of your marketing stance?? And for the record, collecting your browser history just to display a stupid favicon is the most ridiculous excuse I've heard in a long while. And I am not going to blindly believe them because they said that's what they use it for.
- xvolter 6y agoI agree with this. As a privacy-first company, for them to make any decision that is for performance but adds additional privacy risk shows they make the wrong decisions. They also left this for over a year after being told about it and part of the only reason it was caught was that their browser app is open-source. What about all their closed-source services, like their favicon service their browser apparently relies on. We shouldn't blindly trust any company and a privacy-first company should be willing to assume we don't trust them and therefore it is up to them to prove everything they do. I get a few of the responses on their Github page are now non-helpful, but the big point here is that by DuckDuckGo taking this series of actions (implementing the browser like this, ignoring a valid bug report about it, and only reopening the issue after massive push from users) it shows that DuckDuckGo isn't as privacy-focused as I thought, nor many others. I've been using DuckDuckGo as my sole search provider for several years now, on all my devices, but I'm concerned about what else they may have done in the sake of "performance" over privacy.
- OptionX 6y ago"collecting your browser history just to display a stupid favicon is the most ridiculous excuse I've heard in a long while" Though I agree the the implementation could be better, they should just check the head and the root for the icon and if not found that's that. But the possibility of something be used for malicious ends does not entail confirmation of it being used that way. Just because we have knifes in our kitchen does not make us automatically guilty of stabbing people. I find it easier to believe that this was actually, if misguided, an attempt to solve a problem rather than a nefarious plots to track users across the web.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dwild 6y ago> But... the reaction here is "they made a mistake, let's pile on like kids in a playground" ignoring the genuinely huger issue of the amount of info and mining that google et al. do. What about genocide too? Please people, stop with these "but the other bigger unrelated issue should get more visibility". > Which is why politicians rarely admit mistakes, because it's taken as a sign of weakness, not strength, to admit you were wrong. Can you point me where DDG admitted they were wrong doing this? They didn't... they just explained why they did it but completely ignore the greater issue because they consider themselves "good". Just like that politician you may talk about, or Google, or whatever. This is about DDG.
- dwild 6y ago> But... the reaction here is "they made a mistake, let's pile on like kids in a playground" ignoring the genuinely huger issue of the amount of info and mining that google et al. do. What about genocide too? Please people, stop with these "but the other bigger unrelated issue should get more visibility". > Which is why politicians rarely admit mistakes, because it's taken as a sign of weakness, not strength, to admit you were wrong. Can you point me where DDG admitted they were wrong doing this in their first response? They didn't... they just explained why they did it but completely ignore the greater issue because they consider themselves "good". Just like that politician you may talk about, or Google, or whatever. They are part of that bigger issue you mentions. This is about DDG. Luckily that pile of kids in a playground made them realize that mistake, they would have ignored otherwise (like they did on their first respond).