6 ms·

What is the real, tangible improvement to someone's life with all this claimed privacy protection? IE, when my mom asks why she should switch from Google, what

What is the real, tangible improvement to someone's life with all this claimed privacy protection? IE, when my mom asks why she should switch from Google, what would I tell her that would actually make a difference in her life?

dazc 4y ago
She is far less likely to see an ad for a financial service which turns out to be a scam.
- gruez 4y ago
  I don't see the connection here. Does duckduckgo/bing have more ethical advertisers? Are ads for "financial service which turns out to be a scam" dependent on tracking?
  - dazc 4y ago
    You can see no ads. In default mode you see far less.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    I think the "financial service which turns out to be a scam" ads target older people, especially women. I certainly don't get those ads.
yegg 4y ago
We have a page specifically about helping people switch: https://duckduckgo.com/spread https://duckduckgo.com/spread To answer your question though, comprehensive privacy protection prevents data profiles from getting created about you, which in turn prevents ad and other content targeting. This targeting, regardless of how it's done, enables general manipulation (e.g., exploiting personal characteristics for commercial or political gain), filter bubbles (e.g., creating echo chambers that can divide people), and discrimination (e.g., people not seeing job opportunities based on personal profiles). More generally though, I view privacy as protecting you from coercion. Yes, it protects personal information, but that's not the real point. The real point is autonomy -- the freedom to make decisions without coercion. From this perspective in addition to helping reduce identity theft, commercial exploitation, ideological manipulation, discrimination, polarization, etc., it also helps reduce self-surveillance (i.e., chilling effects), and just general loss of freedom (e.g., mass surveillance).
- jeffbee 4y ago
  > prevents ad and other content targeting You want me to pitch my mom on un-targeted advertising? How do you phrase it in practice? "On Google, you get evil ads relevant to you, such as restaurants near you. On Duck Duck Go your privacy is protected, so you get ads for restaurants in Omaha, Nebraska. Therefore you should switch to Duck Duck Go". Something like that? This comment is based on the actual results I was served by DDG for "best burger".
  - guelo 4y ago
    Your mom will have a better experience and more control if she learns to search for "best burger in <city name>" instead of trying to give the wheel to Google's mind reading AIs.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      My mom is completely satisfied with Google, so we're discussing some theoretical mom. I honestly do not understand the pitch, that's why I want to hear it from the horse's mouth. Scare words like "tracking" and "profile" and "targeting" are used by the privacy fear industry to disparage the practice of having implicit terms in your search query. These implicit terms greatly improve search quality, which is why the results on Google are so much better. Advertisements are their own separate search corpus where good ranking is desired and the implicit elements of the search vector are also helpful there. To me there can be no rational case made that omitting the implicit terms improves the quality of the result.
      - oefrha 4y ago
        Same. Tried to sell my mom on some privacy stuff, zero care. Tried to sell her on unique passwords and a password manager, zero care. And so on. Lots of people (most people?) want to do the bare minimum with computers. Sacrificing convenience for privacy or whatnot isn’t something they would accept.
      - guelo 4y ago
        Google's search engine is awful. In case you hadn't noticed rants about it are increasingly popular. Part of the reason is that Google keeps taking away user's control of the tool, partly in the name of convenience but also to manipulate you, get you to click on favored links, show you ads or extend their search monopoly to other products. I'm not arguing that duckduckgo/bing are any better, just that these tracking convenience features have a dark side and many times work against your best interest.

dazc 4y ago

She is far less likely to see an ad for a financial service which turns out to be a scam.

gruez 4y ago
I don't see the connection here. Does duckduckgo/bing have more ethical advertisers? Are ads for "financial service which turns out to be a scam" dependent on tracking?
- dazc 4y ago
  You can see no ads. In default mode you see far less.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  I think the "financial service which turns out to be a scam" ads target older people, especially women. I certainly don't get those ads.

yegg 4y ago

We have a page specifically about helping people switch: https://duckduckgo.com/spread https://duckduckgo.com/spread To answer your question though, comprehensive privacy protection prevents data profiles from getting created about you, which in turn prevents ad and other content targeting. This targeting, regardless of how it's done, enables general manipulation (e.g., exploiting personal characteristics for commercial or political gain), filter bubbles (e.g., creating echo chambers that can divide people), and discrimination (e.g., people not seeing job opportunities based on personal profiles). More generally though, I view privacy as protecting you from coercion. Yes, it protects personal information, but that's not the real point. The real point is autonomy -- the freedom to make decisions without coercion. From this perspective in addition to helping reduce identity theft, commercial exploitation, ideological manipulation, discrimination, polarization, etc., it also helps reduce self-surveillance (i.e., chilling effects), and just general loss of freedom (e.g., mass surveillance).

jeffbee 4y ago
> prevents ad and other content targeting You want me to pitch my mom on un-targeted advertising? How do you phrase it in practice? "On Google, you get evil ads relevant to you, such as restaurants near you. On Duck Duck Go your privacy is protected, so you get ads for restaurants in Omaha, Nebraska. Therefore you should switch to Duck Duck Go". Something like that? This comment is based on the actual results I was served by DDG for "best burger".
- guelo 4y ago
  Your mom will have a better experience and more control if she learns to search for "best burger in <city name>" instead of trying to give the wheel to Google's mind reading AIs.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    My mom is completely satisfied with Google, so we're discussing some theoretical mom. I honestly do not understand the pitch, that's why I want to hear it from the horse's mouth. Scare words like "tracking" and "profile" and "targeting" are used by the privacy fear industry to disparage the practice of having implicit terms in your search query. These implicit terms greatly improve search quality, which is why the results on Google are so much better. Advertisements are their own separate search corpus where good ranking is desired and the implicit elements of the search vector are also helpful there. To me there can be no rational case made that omitting the implicit terms improves the quality of the result.
    - oefrha 4y ago
      Same. Tried to sell my mom on some privacy stuff, zero care. Tried to sell her on unique passwords and a password manager, zero care. And so on. Lots of people (most people?) want to do the bare minimum with computers. Sacrificing convenience for privacy or whatnot isn’t something they would accept.
    - guelo 4y ago
      Google's search engine is awful. In case you hadn't noticed rants about it are increasingly popular. Part of the reason is that Google keeps taking away user's control of the tool, partly in the name of convenience but also to manipulate you, get you to click on favored links, show you ads or extend their search monopoly to other products. I'm not arguing that duckduckgo/bing are any better, just that these tracking convenience features have a dark side and many times work against your best interest.