Google won’t be able to resist listening in on your conversations
m.signalvnoise.com
m.signalvnoise.com
That said, in my experience, people willingly give their data to Google and Facebook. I assumed people were not cognisant but this is not the case. Most people are very conscious of their decision and argue that their data is safer with Google and it's a good trade off. This seems like a PR issue and hard to fix even if selfhosted solutions reach maturity.
Do others share my thoughts? Would love to hear from privacy enthusiasts as to how we can promote better architectures for the web.
Currently I avoid Google as much as possible because I don't want them to have my information in exchange for a service; I'd rather pay some money for a service that won't siphon my data and use it for various, advertisement based purposes (it's not surprising but it's kinda terrible that they put ads on a device you paid a bit of money for). The reason I stick with Facebook is that there isn't as much of a solution otherwise, but I do try to use alternative messaging apps (Line, Wechat, Kakao, iMessage) when possible.
Why is it a problem if Google knows more about you? Doesn't it just mean that you will be served content more relevant to you?
Right now, I can't imagine that being served content "more relevant to me" is so valuable as to warrant a corporation systematically recording my doings. My current reaction is: I'm perfectly capable of finding relevant stuff on my own, thank you very much.
But I'd be happy to be proved wrong.
I do not want somebody else to choose what is relevant for me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/5zq60f/my_google_ho...
Video: https://twitter.com/brysonmeunier/status/842358950536318976
Could this possibly be a tipping point for adtech as a revenue model? (Although I've been reading about it for almost a year now [1], [2], [3]) I'd like to hope so, and am also curious: how invasive can companies be before consumers start to push back?
[1] http://digiday.com/marketing/copyranter-ad-tech-bubble-explo... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/41zyoo/why_i_bel... [3] https://kalkis-research.com/google-end-of-the-online-adverti...
It just boggles my mind that anyone could read nonsense like this and not immediately say "I want nothing to do with that". This is evil corporatist greed along the lines of Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, or Halliburton. Alphabet needs to start getting called out forcefully, especially by their own employees and other tech leaders, whenever they pull this crap.
And really are we any different? Any YC entrepreneur should know how to cold call, and the only way to bring yourself to do it is to believe in your heart that the person you're calling really will be happier with the information you provide, delighted that you called, so you aren't interrupting them at all.
Picture a scummy 20 year old college guy who chases what he wants without considering that the other side has no interest.
"Ask first? Why? They want it. Even if they say they don't, subconsciously, they really do. I'm different, once they get it, they'll see."
The narrative in marketing circles focuses "content" and "engagement" and all kinds of gymnastic descriptors that omit the sections of reality where the answer is "no" and stays no regardless of further pleas. That version of reality doesn't make any money, and so there is no incentive to acknowledge it.
Upton Sinclair nailed it: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
> The Authority will protect businesses from misleading advertising by other companies and establishes the conditions under which comparative advertising is diffused by any means.
> Advertising is misleading when it is able to mislead the undertaking to which it is addressed, jeopardizing the economic behavior, or when it is likely to injure a competitor. The deceptiveness may relate to the characteristics of the goods or services, such as their availability or date of manufacture, the price and conditions of supply.
> Comparative advertising is instead that mode of advertising in which a company promotes its own goods or services comparing them with those of competitors. This type of advertising is permitted only when it is not misleading, compares homogeneous goods objectively, it does not create confusion among businesses, or cause discredit to the competitor.
[https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pubblicità_ingannevole] [http://www.agcm.it/consumatore/consumatore-competenza/4525-d...]
Seems like a nice ground for a lawsuit or a class action.. (at least in EU)
Google's follow up statement after that markety statement:
> This wasn’t intended to be an ad. What’s circulating online was a part of our My Day feature, where after providing helpful information about your day, we sometimes call out timely content. We’re continuing to experiment with new ways to surface unique content for users and we could have done better in this case.
So I'm unfamiliar with how exactly this is evil corporatist greed?
Disney have a new movie out, "Promotional content" doesn't have to explictly say "but tickets here" to be effectively an advert, and I'd be seriously surprised if Disney didn't pay Google for that placement.
What's the difference between "advertisement" and unpaid product promotion the user is likely to be highly interested in knowing has been released?
Also really not sure why you don't think Disney paid for this, Google's wording was ambiguous on that topic at best and the idea they're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts stretches belief more than a little.
Google knows I like Pokémon - just from my search results - would telling me the new Pokémon games are out be an advertisement?
Where do we draw the line?
I'm of the opinion, that based on Google's wording, they were not paid for this placement - which is why they'd be refusing to call it an advertisement.
Google are not generally known for providing free promotional content for other large commercial companies, so whilst you can choose to believe that it was unpaid that, combined with the fact that both news articles referenced and users whe received it referred to it as an advert, would suggest to me that on the balance of probabilities, you are incorrect.
Edit: And though it's obvious I'll say it: at Google advertising means data gathering.
seriously, fuck em. if they go broke, they'll ask you to pay for their service. that might be what needs to happen to restore privacy: throw money at them so that they don't need to sell you out.
its kinda nice, but it was pretty easy to replace it with some static mail routing rules (and the added benefit of a wildcard email address, making $whatever@domain.tld possible, consequently making these rules even easier).
“This isn't an ad; the beauty in the Assistant is that it invites our partners to be our guest and share their tales.”
But then the second sounds like no, it wasn't so much an ad as something an algorithm dug up.
"What’s circulating online was a part of our My Day feature, where after providing helpful information about your day, we sometimes call out timely content."
Giving them the benefit of the doubt here, those 2 statements seem to describe things that can be different. One "came from a partner" the other was just "timely content".
It's triggered by the phrase "Good Morning" or other phrases that launch into the "what is going on today" prompt.
* The weather is currently blahblahblah * Your commute will be x minutes * Beauty and the Beast came out in theaters today * [the rest of your news]
The problem with ads on Google Home this week is serious, but it isn't related to "Google spying on me" at all. It's to do with the fact that reading out ads in my home is super creepy, despite — in fact, because of — the fact that the ads aren't targeted to me.
If the money that changes hands doesn't influence the search result, then the money won't change hands. An advertisement customer won't pay in order to not influence what the audience gets to see.
Also, the theoretical possibility that money doesn't necessarily influence decisions is not exactly a good reason to accept the risk that it does after all. If that were a sensible argument, you could just throw out all anti-corruption legislation, because it is very much theoretically possible for a bribed person to still make a decision that's not influenced by the bribery.
This incorrect and short-sighted. The private conversations that you have are with someone else, who might have not opted into Google mining their conversation.
In that sense your conversation partners' only option to "opt-out" of using gmail is to stop conversing with you, which I find to be a perverse choice.
However, claiming that I'm violating your trust if you send me an email is a bit of a strong statement, don't you think.
I am not sure what your argument is? If I am sending you an email, you cannot possibly violate my trust by sharing it with other people?
>I might be misplacing my trust and share things with people who end up sharing it with third parties, violating my trust
I take that as
"If I send an email to someone and they share it with third parties, they are violating my trust...Google/gmail is one such third party."
My point is: Yes, it is obvious that other people can violate my trust by sharing information with third parties, and I might not even know, as that doesn't even require email or computers. People could be sending copies of snail mail letters I send them to some company offering them 10 cents per piece or something ...
IMHO:
Reading out non-targeted ads in my home: annoying
Reading out targeted ads in my home: annoying AND creepy
The hardware costs money, just as a radio does. The service is free, just as radio stations are.