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I'm not sure I trust Google enough to walk around my home wearing their cameras. The last thing I want to see are ads based on the contents of my home or specif

I'm not sure I trust Google enough to walk around my home wearing their cameras. The last thing I want to see are ads based on the contents of my home or specific details of my family. The police might like it though. They could find out from Google the layout of a home or see if they know of any guns in a home before they SWAT it.

LordDragonfang 2y ago
But (odds are) you trust them enough to walk around your home wearing their microphone. Letting them listen in on all your conversations and show you ads based on those, if the conspiracy theories are true. (Unless if you're an iPhone user, then you trust Apple - and make no mistake, they're building the exact same product, they just pathologically avoid talking about prototypes) It's boiling the frog. Unthinkable, until everybody is doing it and it's normal.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- acdha 2y ago
  The number of people buying Apple devices for privacy suggests that quite a few people do not trust them, and while the rumors have flown around for years they’ve never been confirmed. That’s a contrast with, say, smart TV content recognition so it seems unlikely that Android phones are secretly monitoring what you say without anyone noticing the data being transmitted or the battery drain.
  - elcritch 2y ago
    > so it seems unlikely that Android phones are secretly monitoring what you say without anyone noticing the data being transmitted or the battery drain. Ah! So that’s why Androids always have bigger batteries than iPhones. ;)
    - acdha 2y ago
      I get the joke but it actually works the other way: since Android devices had a 2-5 year lag behind Apple for CPU performance it would be harder to hide some hypothetical always-on analysis, especially on the cheaper and slower devices where most of the global growth had been.
- sroussey 2y ago
  The conspiracy theories of phones listening is not true. TVs absolutely do that however, and it’s the first thing to disable in settings for a smart tv. I even block the TV from internet since I use an Apple TV for the streaming.
  - LorenDB 2y ago
    I used to agree with you, but unfortunately the conspiracy is true (or at least was at one point): https://www.pcworld.com/article/2450052/do-smartphones-listen-to-everything-new-evidence-speaks-in-favour.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2450052/do-smartphones-liste...
    - acdha 2y ago
      The source of that article is very clear that the device types are not known: https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/ https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-list... Given that this a slide deck for a cable company’s advertising arm, it would be entirely plausible that this data comes from the hardware they give customers which is completely customized for their needs. If they were using phone apps, for example, we’d see people asking why the Cox cable app is using their iPhone’s microphone.
bsimpson 2y ago
I asked someone who had done high level work at TikTok what he thought of the CCP conspiracy theories driving the Trump/Biden ban pushes. He said something to the effect of "ByteDance isn't coordinated enough to pull off being that evil." Google has been incomprehensibly big for decades at this point. They know regulators are watching. Mistakes like the SSID logging controversy in Germany get interpreted as malice, and company-wide trainings go out drilling into people not to log more than they have a contemporaneous business reason for. If there's anyone I trust to be honest and upfront about what data they're collecting and how it might be used, it's Google. They have the experience, motivation, and resources to do it right. Companies with a lower pedigree - either from countries that don't take individual rights seriously, or from small teams that don't have the resources to cover all their bases - are the ones that give me pause.
- criddell 2y ago
  What does your contact at ByteDance think the CCP staff does in the ByteDance offices all day? Why does the CCP need a board seat? These companies are coordinated enough to keep out mentions of Tiananmen Square or Xi as Poo from Chinese users. If they can drop politically sensitive content in particular regions, they can boost political content in other regions, right? Whether or not they actually try to put their thumb on the scale today doesn’t really matter. That’s the nature of a security risk. The Conversation had a pretty good article earlier this year on how (in some ways) there's no real separation between the government and companies in China. https://theconversation.com/is-tiktoks-parent-company-an-agent-of-the-chinese-state-in-china-inc-its-a-little-more-complicated-225749 https://theconversation.com/is-tiktoks-parent-company-an-age...
wkat4242 2y ago
I thought I would bother me with meta, but it doesn't really. I leave my sex toys out and I really just don't care if it sees them :P I think personal conversations are much more revealing than the space of my home. But as I live alone I would never speak to anyone while I use the quest.

LordDragonfang 2y ago

But (odds are) you trust them enough to walk around your home wearing their microphone. Letting them listen in on all your conversations and show you ads based on those, if the conspiracy theories are true. (Unless if you're an iPhone user, then you trust Apple - and make no mistake, they're building the exact same product, they just pathologically avoid talking about prototypes) It's boiling the frog. Unthinkable, until everybody is doing it and it's normal.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
acdha 2y ago
The number of people buying Apple devices for privacy suggests that quite a few people do not trust them, and while the rumors have flown around for years they’ve never been confirmed. That’s a contrast with, say, smart TV content recognition so it seems unlikely that Android phones are secretly monitoring what you say without anyone noticing the data being transmitted or the battery drain.
- elcritch 2y ago
  > so it seems unlikely that Android phones are secretly monitoring what you say without anyone noticing the data being transmitted or the battery drain. Ah! So that’s why Androids always have bigger batteries than iPhones. ;)
  - acdha 2y ago
    I get the joke but it actually works the other way: since Android devices had a 2-5 year lag behind Apple for CPU performance it would be harder to hide some hypothetical always-on analysis, especially on the cheaper and slower devices where most of the global growth had been.
sroussey 2y ago
The conspiracy theories of phones listening is not true. TVs absolutely do that however, and it’s the first thing to disable in settings for a smart tv. I even block the TV from internet since I use an Apple TV for the streaming.
- LorenDB 2y ago
  I used to agree with you, but unfortunately the conspiracy is true (or at least was at one point): https://www.pcworld.com/article/2450052/do-smartphones-listen-to-everything-new-evidence-speaks-in-favour.html https://www.pcworld.com/article/2450052/do-smartphones-liste...
  - acdha 2y ago
    The source of that article is very clear that the device types are not known: https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/ https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-list... Given that this a slide deck for a cable company’s advertising arm, it would be entirely plausible that this data comes from the hardware they give customers which is completely customized for their needs. If they were using phone apps, for example, we’d see people asking why the Cox cable app is using their iPhone’s microphone.

bsimpson 2y ago

I asked someone who had done high level work at TikTok what he thought of the CCP conspiracy theories driving the Trump/Biden ban pushes. He said something to the effect of "ByteDance isn't coordinated enough to pull off being that evil." Google has been incomprehensibly big for decades at this point. They know regulators are watching. Mistakes like the SSID logging controversy in Germany get interpreted as malice, and company-wide trainings go out drilling into people not to log more than they have a contemporaneous business reason for. If there's anyone I trust to be honest and upfront about what data they're collecting and how it might be used, it's Google. They have the experience, motivation, and resources to do it right. Companies with a lower pedigree - either from countries that don't take individual rights seriously, or from small teams that don't have the resources to cover all their bases - are the ones that give me pause.

criddell 2y ago
What does your contact at ByteDance think the CCP staff does in the ByteDance offices all day? Why does the CCP need a board seat? These companies are coordinated enough to keep out mentions of Tiananmen Square or Xi as Poo from Chinese users. If they can drop politically sensitive content in particular regions, they can boost political content in other regions, right? Whether or not they actually try to put their thumb on the scale today doesn’t really matter. That’s the nature of a security risk. The Conversation had a pretty good article earlier this year on how (in some ways) there's no real separation between the government and companies in China. https://theconversation.com/is-tiktoks-parent-company-an-agent-of-the-chinese-state-in-china-inc-its-a-little-more-complicated-225749 https://theconversation.com/is-tiktoks-parent-company-an-age...

wkat4242 2y ago

I thought I would bother me with meta, but it doesn't really. I leave my sex toys out and I really just don't care if it sees them :P I think personal conversations are much more revealing than the space of my home. But as I live alone I would never speak to anyone while I use the quest.