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Downvote if you want, but billions of people get value every day out of Facebook, Google, and Amazon knowing them. Saying scary words about advertising isn't go

Downvote if you want, but billions of people get value every day out of Facebook, Google, and Amazon knowing them. Saying scary words about advertising isn't going to keep people from abandoning Apple's premium priced lower quality photo service.

threeseed 11y ago
People get value from the core service of Facebook, Google and Amazon not their machine learning driven advertising/recommendation engines. And I would argue that given that since those engines are used to drive company profit first and user experience second they are of limited value to the user. And if you are talking about Google Now style functionality well I haven't seen that changing the world same with Siri, Cortona etc. But Apple did aquire Spotsetter and Cue so Apple will be coming out with an equivalent soon enough.
- resu_nimda 11y ago
  Personally I do get value from Facebook ads, I very often see ads for vendors and events that I am interested in and did not know of before. Regardless, what is the value of Facebook being free? Would most people rather pay with their money or with their data? Can you make a definitive argument that giving my data to Google or Facebook costs me anything?
  - threeseed 11y ago
    I am not disputing that people may get value from advertising but (a) it is not the reason people use the service and (b) it is not even close to being a popular feature of the service. And giving data costs you when something goes wrong. Dealing with identity theft, stolen credit cards etc is not fun a experience to deal with.
    - fpgeek 11y ago
      How, exactly, has Google's collection of personal information contributed to identity theft? I suppose, on paper, you're more vulnerable to Google employees or contractors using internal access to steal identities, but is that a problem in practice (if so, I'd love pointers)? Or are Google's internal security measures and controls effective in preventing it? Meanwhile, Google's done more than most companies to protect the information they have from third-party attacks (HTTPS, two-factor authentication, certificate pinning, and so on), probably partly because it is so important to their business model. Apple, on the other hand, has often been slow to implement new security features out of concerns it will compromise the user experience, leading to well-known breaches like this one: http://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/ http://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/
      - threeseed 11y ago
        I think you completely misread what I said. The downside of a company collecting data is the risk of what happens if that data leaks. There was an example of a very popular site here in Australia being hacked 3 years ago that only just notifed customers (of which I was one). Credit card numbers and other PII data was stolen. I had to dig through credit card transaction list and there is still the ongoing concern of identity theft. The risk of Google, Facebook being hacked is small but that is the risk of handing over your data. Most people including myself are happy to take that risk but not everyone is.
        nemothekid 11y ago
        The risk of you being personally targeted and hacked is greater than Google being hacked. The only entity I'm concerned about that might access Google's data is the US government. OTOH, If you don't trust Google with your data, I don't see how you can trust anyone else - at that point you might as well be writing your own PGP implementation.
        anon1385 11y ago
        This is a rather strange comment since we already know for sure that Google has already been hacked by both the British[1] and Chinese[2] governments. And of course the US government access information from Google without hacking: they just make legal requests, even when that means Google is breaking the law in other countries that they operate in. The difficulty of compromising Google is to a large extent offset by the juiciness of the target. Google actually get compromised more often than the average savvy home user (which for most people I know is zero, compared to several times for Google). Not because Google is less competent, but because they are a hugely valuable target. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_program... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
- traek 11y ago
  I get value from Google's personalized search and Facebook's customization of my News Feed. I'm not saying those services don't exist to drive company profit, but I do think that machine learning and personalization can add value for the end user.
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
So I downvoted your original comment not because people get value out of machine learning (which I agree with) but that you purport that Apple is incapable of delivering something based on machine learning. Unless you're a core Apple engineer I don't see how you could know this for sure; it sounded more like an opinion that didn't further the discussion. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they use machine learning for a few things (they do collect data after all just not as much).
- krisgenre 11y ago
  But you can't improve your machine learning without collecting huge amounts of data right? Google Now wouldn't be possible without their data. If Apple is against collecting data then how would they be able to build a service that relies on data?

threeseed 11y ago

People get value from the core service of Facebook, Google and Amazon not their machine learning driven advertising/recommendation engines. And I would argue that given that since those engines are used to drive company profit first and user experience second they are of limited value to the user. And if you are talking about Google Now style functionality well I haven't seen that changing the world same with Siri, Cortona etc. But Apple did aquire Spotsetter and Cue so Apple will be coming out with an equivalent soon enough.

resu_nimda 11y ago
Personally I do get value from Facebook ads, I very often see ads for vendors and events that I am interested in and did not know of before. Regardless, what is the value of Facebook being free? Would most people rather pay with their money or with their data? Can you make a definitive argument that giving my data to Google or Facebook costs me anything?
- threeseed 11y ago
  I am not disputing that people may get value from advertising but (a) it is not the reason people use the service and (b) it is not even close to being a popular feature of the service. And giving data costs you when something goes wrong. Dealing with identity theft, stolen credit cards etc is not fun a experience to deal with.
  - fpgeek 11y ago
    How, exactly, has Google's collection of personal information contributed to identity theft? I suppose, on paper, you're more vulnerable to Google employees or contractors using internal access to steal identities, but is that a problem in practice (if so, I'd love pointers)? Or are Google's internal security measures and controls effective in preventing it? Meanwhile, Google's done more than most companies to protect the information they have from third-party attacks (HTTPS, two-factor authentication, certificate pinning, and so on), probably partly because it is so important to their business model. Apple, on the other hand, has often been slow to implement new security features out of concerns it will compromise the user experience, leading to well-known breaches like this one: http://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/ http://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/
    - threeseed 11y ago
      I think you completely misread what I said. The downside of a company collecting data is the risk of what happens if that data leaks. There was an example of a very popular site here in Australia being hacked 3 years ago that only just notifed customers (of which I was one). Credit card numbers and other PII data was stolen. I had to dig through credit card transaction list and there is still the ongoing concern of identity theft. The risk of Google, Facebook being hacked is small but that is the risk of handing over your data. Most people including myself are happy to take that risk but not everyone is.
      - nemothekid 11y ago
        The risk of you being personally targeted and hacked is greater than Google being hacked. The only entity I'm concerned about that might access Google's data is the US government. OTOH, If you don't trust Google with your data, I don't see how you can trust anyone else - at that point you might as well be writing your own PGP implementation.
        anon1385 11y ago
        This is a rather strange comment since we already know for sure that Google has already been hacked by both the British[1] and Chinese[2] governments. And of course the US government access information from Google without hacking: they just make legal requests, even when that means Google is breaking the law in other countries that they operate in. The difficulty of compromising Google is to a large extent offset by the juiciness of the target. Google actually get compromised more often than the average savvy home user (which for most people I know is zero, compared to several times for Google). Not because Google is less competent, but because they are a hugely valuable target. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSCULAR_(surveillance_program... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora
traek 11y ago
I get value from Google's personalized search and Facebook's customization of my News Feed. I'm not saying those services don't exist to drive company profit, but I do think that machine learning and personalization can add value for the end user.

BinaryIdiot 11y ago

So I downvoted your original comment not because people get value out of machine learning (which I agree with) but that you purport that Apple is incapable of delivering something based on machine learning. Unless you're a core Apple engineer I don't see how you could know this for sure; it sounded more like an opinion that didn't further the discussion. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if they use machine learning for a few things (they do collect data after all just not as much).

krisgenre 11y ago
But you can't improve your machine learning without collecting huge amounts of data right? Google Now wouldn't be possible without their data. If Apple is against collecting data then how would they be able to build a service that relies on data?