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Regardless of content, scanning your private files is breaking trust

nomel 4y ago
Fictitious trust, born from the haphazard clicking of the terms of service and privacy policy “I agree” button. It’s spelled out clear enough that being a lawyer isn’t a requirement.
- Brian_K_White 4y ago
  Perfectly real trust, in that the user really does trust, and also real in that G really is happy to allow the user to trust them. It's nonfictional trust, just misplaced.
- clnq 4y ago
  Yes, but we can't expect people to read ToS (much less keep up with ToS changes) for all the software they use. That would be madness - books and volumes worth of legalese just to get basic work done. Not to mention that some of ToS legalese is too open to interpretation. Each of us probably depends on some bit of software with ToS we'd find objectionable, in certain interpretations at least. Regarding Google Drive, I think that the expectation of privacy comes from the name and the way it is marketed and appears to the user. You wouldn't expect a hard drive, or a flash drive, or some other drive to police what content is on it. That is not in the function description of a storage device - networked or not. Perhaps that expectation is now changing, but I think a lot of people still have it. All in all, I don't think that we can blame the users for haphazardly agreeing to ToS. They (probably) need the software, the software is marketed as if it serves simple function while in practice it does quite a bit more, and its ToS can be modified or interpreted as product owners wish. There's not too much users can do but not use it. But what about those users who need it for work, or aren't knowledgeable enough to use other office suites, or self-hosted/NAS backups, or X, Y, Z? It feels as if cloud storage providers are offering an ultimatum to them - either comply with our views or be deprived of what you need.

Fictitious trust, born from the haphazard clicking of the terms of service and privacy policy “I agree” button. It’s spelled out clear enough that being a lawyer isn’t a requirement.

Brian_K_White 4y ago
Perfectly real trust, in that the user really does trust, and also real in that G really is happy to allow the user to trust them. It's nonfictional trust, just misplaced.
clnq 4y ago
Yes, but we can't expect people to read ToS (much less keep up with ToS changes) for all the software they use. That would be madness - books and volumes worth of legalese just to get basic work done. Not to mention that some of ToS legalese is too open to interpretation. Each of us probably depends on some bit of software with ToS we'd find objectionable, in certain interpretations at least. Regarding Google Drive, I think that the expectation of privacy comes from the name and the way it is marketed and appears to the user. You wouldn't expect a hard drive, or a flash drive, or some other drive to police what content is on it. That is not in the function description of a storage device - networked or not. Perhaps that expectation is now changing, but I think a lot of people still have it. All in all, I don't think that we can blame the users for haphazardly agreeing to ToS. They (probably) need the software, the software is marketed as if it serves simple function while in practice it does quite a bit more, and its ToS can be modified or interpreted as product owners wish. There's not too much users can do but not use it. But what about those users who need it for work, or aren't knowledgeable enough to use other office suites, or self-hosted/NAS backups, or X, Y, Z? It feels as if cloud storage providers are offering an ultimatum to them - either comply with our views or be deprived of what you need.