But we should worry about google building advertising profiles on children, as they have been doing.
The privacy notice provided by Google for their G Suite for Education is available here: https://gsuite.google.com/terms/education_privacy.html
It clearly states "Google does not serve ads in the Core Services or use personal information collected in the Core Services for advertising purposes."
Is the evidence that indicates this is not true? Is this in relation to non-core services that school administrators may opt into?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/12/28...
I'm worried most of all that Google will use some sort of sentiment analysis or other machine learning tool to classify kids based on academic ability and build a sort of "cognitive profile" on children as they age.
The alternative, in this case using a Microsoft Surface Laptop instead, should raise many of the same concerns. With the tight coupling of online services and single account sign-on options that Microsoft offers, similarly extensive advertising and usage profiles can be built.
Children don't grasp the potential consequences of companies maintaining registries of people searching for really personal things.
I'm ok with google knowing my location every second, I'm ok with receiving targeted shopping ads about watches after I browse watches on Amazon. I block ads when I feel like it, it's no skin off my bones.
It's not like men in black suits accost me at bus stops and force fliers into my hands with targeted ads. It's in my mind, literally harmless.
I'm more worried about the future misuse of all the accumulated data from their access and version control logs for cloud-based documents, internet browsing behavior, multi-player gaming sessions, personal emails, and all of the other forms of trackable interactions that my kids (and the rest of us) generate with on a daily basis.
It doesn't keep me up at nights -- but the paranoid part of me thinks it should.
I.e. I see targeted ads regularly, so I know that I am being tracked by google et al, but this does not upset me. Can you help me understand why this should upset me?
Some enterprising startup fed that data into a simple ML algorithm and correlated it against other publicly available data. Turns out, your search history as a kid partially predicts adult outcomes like salary, grades in college, chance of bankruptcy, chance of arrest, etc. That startup sells this info to Experian, who adjusts their credit scores accordingly.
1. People are assuming I support advertising, and advertising to children
2. People are angered by that and thus downvote me.
All I'm intending to do is clarify why readers don't like the concept of advertising, or advertising to children. Is this offense, to ask for a clarification?
Not sure why the downvote brigade decided to drop by your comment.
Trouble is companies and law enforcement frequently abuse information, and even when they don't, they get hacked by other people who do.
Especially if we're talking about children and young adults, where even "you watch that tv show?" can be a source for social discomfort.
It's difficult to categorically ban advertising in a free society, but at least in the U.S. speech that does nothing more than propose a commercial transaction is subject to lower First Amendment protections, and the combination of harmful effects on children and the lack of any benefit probably get you over the First Amendment hump in that specific scenario.