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Experience tells us that any time a company feels they can make more money by doing something, legal or not, they will probably do that thing. The less likely i

Experience tells us that any time a company feels they can make more money by doing something, legal or not, they will probably do that thing. The less likely it is they'll be caught doing it, the more likely they are to do it. There's no way that Google isn't collecting massive amounts of children's data. The fact that we force children to sign up for Google accounts and use chromebooks in schools sickens me. I see zero reason to trust Google when they say they aren't using the data they collect to make inferences about our children. It would take a whistleblower (and one with extraordinary access within Google's org) for us to have clear picture of all the ways that data is kept and abused. I'm not sure what the solution to that is though. Random unannounced independent audits? Since they're likely there already, maybe we can have the government officials who work in the Google equivalent of Room 614A (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A) keep an eye on them?

CatWChainsaw 3y ago
A common sense observation downvoted on HN because it's critical of Big Tech? Say it isn't so.
- MiguelX413 3y ago
  It doesn't seem so.
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    Comment was originally nearly dead. (Only mostly dead though). The butthurt brigade is out in force on this post.
Daz1 3y ago
That applies to anyone. Not just 'companies' See: Piracy, Speeding, Lesser: Fraud, Theft
- autoexec 3y ago
  I haven't found that to be true. Plenty of people have the capability of shoplifting without getting caught, but very few people do it. Anyone could go on amazon and buy lockpicking tools to steal from their family friends and neighbors when they know they'll be away, but most people wont. Lots of people working with disabled or other vulnerable people could rape them and get away with it, but they usually don't do that either. Sociopaths aside, most people aren't all that comfortable hurting others and that discomfort grows with the severity of the harm. I think that a large part of what makes things different for corporations comes down to diffusion of responsibility and a lack of meaningful consequences. There's only a chance that a company will be caught at all, and when they are it often ends up still being profitable for them in the end. This makes crimes more attractive to companies than for most people who tend to suffer severe consequences for even minor infractions of the law. If I owe money to someone and I poison them to try and get out of paying what I owe I'd probably go to prison if I were caught. If a company knowingly poisons an entire city's water supply to avoid paying for properly cleaning up their waste products, and they spend years carefully conspiring to hide that fact from the people they're killing, they can get a fine smaller than what it would have cost them to clean up their mess responsibly in the first place. It's much easier to hurt people or to choose inaction when acting as part of a group and when you've been told to do something by someone perceived to be an authority or someone with a higher level of responsibility. There is also an aspect of self-preservation here too because again, individuals face disproportionately severe consequences. Being a whistleblower, or even just refusing to do what your boss tells you can be extremely costly. It can be career ending. It can mean not being able to support your family, being forced to live on the streets, or being unable to pay for medications you need to survive. Companies can be caught over and over again committing acts which cause real harm to hundreds or even thousands of people at a time, but still continue to operate more or less as usual. Perhaps the underlying impulse is sometimes similar (many individuals are opportunistic when it comes to small offenses) but the differences in scale, incentives, and the burden of guilt make the behavior of individuals and corporations very different.
throwthat1 3y ago
The NSA already has all of Google's data... Surely they could be a whistle blower if they wanted to.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  But why would they?

CatWChainsaw 3y ago

A common sense observation downvoted on HN because it's critical of Big Tech? Say it isn't so.

MiguelX413 3y ago
It doesn't seem so.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Comment was originally nearly dead. (Only mostly dead though). The butthurt brigade is out in force on this post.

Daz1 3y ago

That applies to anyone. Not just 'companies' See: Piracy, Speeding, Lesser: Fraud, Theft

autoexec 3y ago
I haven't found that to be true. Plenty of people have the capability of shoplifting without getting caught, but very few people do it. Anyone could go on amazon and buy lockpicking tools to steal from their family friends and neighbors when they know they'll be away, but most people wont. Lots of people working with disabled or other vulnerable people could rape them and get away with it, but they usually don't do that either. Sociopaths aside, most people aren't all that comfortable hurting others and that discomfort grows with the severity of the harm. I think that a large part of what makes things different for corporations comes down to diffusion of responsibility and a lack of meaningful consequences. There's only a chance that a company will be caught at all, and when they are it often ends up still being profitable for them in the end. This makes crimes more attractive to companies than for most people who tend to suffer severe consequences for even minor infractions of the law. If I owe money to someone and I poison them to try and get out of paying what I owe I'd probably go to prison if I were caught. If a company knowingly poisons an entire city's water supply to avoid paying for properly cleaning up their waste products, and they spend years carefully conspiring to hide that fact from the people they're killing, they can get a fine smaller than what it would have cost them to clean up their mess responsibly in the first place. It's much easier to hurt people or to choose inaction when acting as part of a group and when you've been told to do something by someone perceived to be an authority or someone with a higher level of responsibility. There is also an aspect of self-preservation here too because again, individuals face disproportionately severe consequences. Being a whistleblower, or even just refusing to do what your boss tells you can be extremely costly. It can be career ending. It can mean not being able to support your family, being forced to live on the streets, or being unable to pay for medications you need to survive. Companies can be caught over and over again committing acts which cause real harm to hundreds or even thousands of people at a time, but still continue to operate more or less as usual. Perhaps the underlying impulse is sometimes similar (many individuals are opportunistic when it comes to small offenses) but the differences in scale, incentives, and the burden of guilt make the behavior of individuals and corporations very different.

throwthat1 3y ago

The NSA already has all of Google's data... Surely they could be a whistle blower if they wanted to.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
But why would they?