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The article gives the impression that privacy doesn't matter otherwise. In the author's words, Google's behavior "has suddenly become dangerous", suggesting pr
by leereeves 4y ago
The article gives the impression that privacy doesn't matter otherwise.
In the author's words, Google's behavior "has suddenly become dangerous", suggesting privacy didn't matter before and would stop mattering again if not for abortions.
That's an attitude worth debunking.
- woodruffw 4y agoThe charitable reading is that the author sees a direct link between a lack of privacy here and imprisonment and forced birth for women. That’s a material sense in which Google “has suddenly become dangerous” for the target audience of the Washington Post. It’s manifest to every reader of this site that adtech has always been dangerous. But it should also be manifest that we’re not the sole audience.
- leereeves 4y agoIt's also perfectly fair to criticize the author for ignoring the dangers that only affected other people until now. Framing the issue solely in the context of abortion suggests Google's response should be to stop tracking a few health and pregnancy related data points and otherwise carry on business as usual.
- woodruffw 4y agoI could be misunderstanding what you mean, but do we actually have evidence that the author has ignored the dangers of adtech until now? All we have is this one topical opinion piece; we don’t know either the contents of their mind or their opinion piece history (unless you bothered to look it up; I didn’t.) I read this opinion piece as: “here is a topical example of the danger of surveillance capitalism.” The language if imminent danger reflects both the topic and the intended audience, not the more oblique and unlikely claim that privacy violation is okay so long as it doesn’t trample on this one specific issue.