4 ms·

That's funny, because I've been thinking, "They already know so much already anyway." Probably how they were hoping/expecting people would act.

Zikes 11y ago
I'm an Android user, they can already see my contacts, thus they can already deduce who I know. As someone on the internet, they can already crawl any publicly available data about me, including blog posts, tweets, forum posts, mailing list emails, and social network metadata like marital status, gender, etc. Google+, in theory, doesn't really tell them they don't already know, or can't easily figure out already, so it's purely value add.
- theseatoms 11y ago
  Exactly my reasoning. Also an Android user. They're the most prolific internet crawlers anyway. The Pandora's box of my personal information is blown wide open (to them), so I'm just trying to contain the blast. They also have my search history, which is a better diary than I could ever purposefully write.
  - amelius 11y ago
    > so I'm just trying to contain the blast Information becomes more powerful when you connect all the dots together. Hence, it is better to divide information among services, so they all know a bit, but cannot decipher the "big picture".
- fluidcruft 11y ago
  The difference is that Google+ seemed to go from a passive mostly private "collecting information about you so we can target ads" mode, to an intrusive "we're applying value judgments to you" and "broadcasting information about you to others" mode. It was just scary to do anything with them without researching the fuck out of every button press (and getting unclear and contradicting answers about what was going to happen). Lot's of flowery, content-less, lovey-dovey text on their landing pages explaining why you have to do XYZ and what the implications are, that then never were exactly what I understood them to be. It only takes being confused once to stop giving a shit what they are writing and never trusting them again. Whenever I read anything from them now, I always think they are sugar coating some new pain they've decided to inflict.
- ionised 11y ago
  You could just use keep your contacts locally. You don't have to sync to Google.

Zikes 11y ago

I'm an Android user, they can already see my contacts, thus they can already deduce who I know. As someone on the internet, they can already crawl any publicly available data about me, including blog posts, tweets, forum posts, mailing list emails, and social network metadata like marital status, gender, etc. Google+, in theory, doesn't really tell them they don't already know, or can't easily figure out already, so it's purely value add.

theseatoms 11y ago
Exactly my reasoning. Also an Android user. They're the most prolific internet crawlers anyway. The Pandora's box of my personal information is blown wide open (to them), so I'm just trying to contain the blast. They also have my search history, which is a better diary than I could ever purposefully write.
- amelius 11y ago
  > so I'm just trying to contain the blast Information becomes more powerful when you connect all the dots together. Hence, it is better to divide information among services, so they all know a bit, but cannot decipher the "big picture".
fluidcruft 11y ago
The difference is that Google+ seemed to go from a passive mostly private "collecting information about you so we can target ads" mode, to an intrusive "we're applying value judgments to you" and "broadcasting information about you to others" mode. It was just scary to do anything with them without researching the fuck out of every button press (and getting unclear and contradicting answers about what was going to happen). Lot's of flowery, content-less, lovey-dovey text on their landing pages explaining why you have to do XYZ and what the implications are, that then never were exactly what I understood them to be. It only takes being confused once to stop giving a shit what they are writing and never trusting them again. Whenever I read anything from them now, I always think they are sugar coating some new pain they've decided to inflict.
ionised 11y ago
You could just use keep your contacts locally. You don't have to sync to Google.