Comment by yuvadam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yuvadam | Hacker News Reader

Approaching the "to google or not to google" question is impossible without stating your casus belli.

If you care about opsec, there are many reasons why you would want to use google services: e.g. a hostile actor will have an extremely hard time stealing your emails from Gmail while there's a might higher chance you fucked up a config on your self-hosted setup. Usually, as always, it comes down to smart compartmentalization and using the right tool for the job.

Personally, the ethical perspective is a much stronger reason why to stray away from data behemoths like Google and Facebook. First of all I believe the "usefullness" of many of these services is over-exaggerated: Facebook noawadays is more of a brainwashing service to expose you to "content" that does nothing more than dull your mind and keep you mindlessly scrolling and endless stream of irrelevant advertisements. But even if this isn't the case for all online services, some come at a price I am personally not willing to pay.

We are entering an era of digital slavery where our entire lives are managed by data monopolies that are bound by no rules other than those they create for themselves. I don't care how convenient these commercial services are, if the price is giving up the sovereignty of my data, and the core liberties of my human existence. I make a conscious choice to not be part of this system, and we will all have to face this choice sooner or later.

For more on this topic, I highly suggest Aral Balkan's talk from re:publica this year [1].

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh8supIUj6c

Useful to you != useful to others. That kind of generalization does no good.

These companies don't have billions of users because they produce nothing of value.

If that value exchange doesn't work for you, just stop using it. But these strange posts about "slavery" and "liberties" just seem out of place. It's a corporation, like any other. What are you expecting?

Your second sentence isn't strictly shown to be true. Heroin has millions of users, but would you argue it provides value to people's lives?

If you're going to bring it down to that kind of strange technicality then yes - those people are using it because it provides them value in whatever form.

It's not up to you to judge what that value is and whether you think it's good for them.

This is just playing games with microeconomic terms. However you choose to define "value", using heroin is self-destructive and usually (always?) irrational. If you choose to include that kind of behavior in your definition of value then the word loses most of its useful connotations.

No it doesn't - because that's the definition of "value". Anything beyond that is your subjective interpretation.

It absolutely does provide value. Many (ab)users of illegal substances use them to provide relief from the emotional pain of traumatic experiences or mental illnesses.

You might not like to hear this perspective, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Many corporations produce lots of value that is based on corrupt moral values: from companies doing arms sales in third-world countries (i.e. profiting from destruction and death in impoverished areas of the globe) to corporations selling animals parts as products (i.e. profiting from the ownership and abuse of sentient beings).

I'm not directly comparing Google to other truly evil corporations, but I will damn right call out ethically and morally flawed business models when I see them.

Morals are a personal thing, not innate to a corporation but rather your subjective filter for the world. What you might consider moral, others can find opposite.

Regarding ethics: There is nothing ethically flawed about what Google is doing. They aren't selling arms or abusing animals so where does this line get crossed for you? They are in it for profit and can provide many of these services for free through advertising. Necessarily this requires an exchange of your general data profile for all the utility of their tools. If you pay them directly, then the privacy rules are different (as it works with many such corporations).

And you might not like to hear this perspective - but many really don't care. People share data about themselves at an exponential rate because the experience of sharing and the utility of the companies outweighs other concerns.

But you are perfectly free to go do your own thing. There's no secret Google police out to get you. You are not revealing some big conspiracy here, it's a well-understood exchange and many are just fine with it and many like you aren't. And it's all ok.

... except for when it's not all ok. It's not ok for a private corporation to play by its own rules and have total control over digital identities, about how you get presented online, about if you are or aren't allowed to be forgotten, about which speech is acceptable and which isn't (hint: when it doesn't line up with the corporations agenda).

Monopolies are a market failure - capitalism says this very clearly. In the case of data behemoths, I fear we are losing more than just some extra $$$ each month, but some of the core liberties that make up how current modern societies functions. As you mentioned yourself, I am far from being the only one who notices this problem.

They aren't playing by their own rules - there are laws and regulations. Our government (which is meant to serve the people) is the proper channel to set boundaries for people and companies. If you want change, then start there and be the change you want to be.

Markets are imperfect and monopolies are naturally bound to happen as they give the corporation efficiencies of scale and allow them to provide more value that's demanded by consumers at lower cost. This is the good part, with the bad being the anticompetitive issues. It's something we'll deal with either with new companies who can do better or with government regulation to keep things in check.

And again, you seem to be missing the part of how you are not required to use Google. It seems like you are able to get all your needs met through other services so what exactly are you worried about? That other people choose to use Google vs. follow your path? Is it not up to them to decide this?

The original article deals with the issue of contamination and references that even running your own email servers, around 50% of your mail will still go through google servers.

The people opting out here are the digital equivalent of those attempting self-sufficiency, growing all their own food and making all their own clothes. It's inconvenient, clunky, and you still need to buy stuff.

The issue here is that due to network effects, Google (+ FB, Ebay, Twitter, Amazon) provide more utility as the monopolies they have inevitably grown into. That means they are a form of vital infrastructure, not competing businesses in a diverse marketplace. (If we don't like the idea that they are 'too big to fail' and actually should be protected, a glimmer of an alternative is provided by China which seems to have stood up functional alternatives to these in a fairly short period, albeit mandated by regulation.)

Then the government is how we handle this. I'm always surprised at how the companies get all the blame as "evil" when they're just doing what they're allowed and supposed to do.

Do these people also hate the massive companies that provide them the internet, oil, electricity, laptops, houses, and everything else they use to basically live their life?

The law is the final line and that's what should be worked on - if people want change they should focus their energy here.

> There's no secret Google police out to get you. You are not revealing some big conspiracy here, it's a well-understood exchange

I'm not sure Google's funding and mission is widely understood in the west, even amongst the tech-literate. In China and Russia they are acknowledged as a front organisation funded by national security. Here are a few more - http://www.businessinsider.com/25-cutting-edge-companies-fun..., http://www.wired.com/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/

But it would be more amazing if this wasn't the case. Google have grown very fast into being part of vital infrastructure - and security services wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't have significant inside presence (I'm sure they can't be the only ones either). However, this leaves us with massive unresolved problems of oversight (how do we ensure we don't end up with a Stasi or McCarthy situation), and compartmentalisation (where enough data is aggregated across enough areas to represent a security threat to individuals e.g. politicians and judges becoming open to blackmail).

A very strong second on Aral's talk. He hits a lot of themes I've been mulling in different contexts, mentioned briefly on my Ello.

https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/9YU-Z4UJXUqQe5xOjexEjA

Yes, Facebook isn't very "useful", but I think you'd have a hard time making the same case about Google's services. Maps, Gmail and Android(assuming iOS/Windows Phone isn't an option) are all hard to beat.

They all have viable alternatives. I don't miss any of Google's services.

"It is not the only useful thing" is a different statement from "It is not useful."

> assuming iOS/Windows Phone isn't an option

Well, they are options. If one judges every alternative that might include the tiniest bit of inconvenience as "not an option", any try would be hopeless.

In fact, I would argue Android is the easiest Google product to replace, because it has a perfectly polished competitor like iOS.

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