After Facebook scrutiny, is Google next?
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This breaks my google home.
I do not want Google to save 20 years of search history so I can use a stupid google home. For the first time I'm considering Apple's device.
This is a dark pattern Google
Some of this can be counteracted with local processing, but that's not really hardware efficient, e.g. you wouldn't consider running a Google instance on everyone's phone.
Breakthroughs in how we do computation could change this, but it would need to be a significant breakthrough, e.g. in homomorphic encryption and differential privacy or huge progress in compute/storage price/density/energy usage.
That being said, using cryptography to protect information will probably always have some (albeit constant) overhead over unprotected computation, so it may be true that these platforms will still be the "least intelligent" even though they are intelligent enough.
If you want that to change, you have to be willing to offset that price difference from your own wallet.
Why? Because it makes them even more money...
Apple have been hammering Google on privacy for many years and they have an incredible track record on privacy when they’ve had their feet held to the fire with the FBI.
Yes in a world of infinite possibilities anything can happen, but realistically Apple is incentivized to maintain their privacy position.
This is what the current leadership believes. Tim Cook is a clearly brilliant manager. I have no hesitation in endorsing his record on privacy (and genuineness and truthfulness). However, he is mortal. The next CEO might see things differently. The unique selling point you mentioned will be on the table. There will be analysts who will crunch the numbers on what portion of prospective Apple customers will refrain from buying Apple for some particular transgression and how much such transgression will bring in additional revenue.
Apple can fend off these questions today because it has a huge chunk of the high end phone market. It would be stupid to ask Apple to do this not because it is immoral but rather because it will distract Apple from doing what it does very well: selling $1k iPhones.
"Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud users"
Apple sold all their users data in China. Should that not count?
Granted, that’s only a CEO change or two away, but the culture very much appears to be one where short term profit isn’t the be all end all.
I meant if they did not they have to leave China like Google chose to do. It was for a buck versus Google thought the bucks to give up their users data not worth it.
China.
Apple to China: What can we do for you, comrades?
China, on the other hand...
Not wanting to comply with a FBI request but then storing the iMessage private keys in Beijing.
Do purchasers of Apple hardware decide which "features" Apple should offer?
Do these purchasers decide what tradeoffs will be made between (a) not collecting user data (maximum privacy by design) and (b) collecting user data with the justification that a "feature" requires it (sacrafice user privacy as required by manufacturer's design)?
Apple's CEO calls privacy a "fundamental human right".
If by its design Apple hardware encourages or requires that right to be abridged (e.g. AppleID, AppStore, etc.), who makes the determination that the purchasers absolute fundamental right (hardware only, no data collection) is outweighed by the need to provide "features" that encourage or necessitate privacy tradeoffs (pre-installed software, ongoing "services", licenses to compile and install software, etc.).
Who decides when the "fundamental right" to privacy should be diminished to support a "feature" chosen by the manufacturer?
If there is (a) one type of hardware/software company that collects user data and sells advertisement, (b) a second type of hardware/software company that collects user data but does not sell advertisement, then is there (c) a third type of hardware/software company that does not collect user data?
What would be the most ideal company for the privacy-conscious consumer: (a), (b) or (c)?
My Apple health data is being used for science for instance, but I decided to opt-in and the data isn’t actually linked to me.
"Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud users"
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy...
They sold all their customers data in China to the government so they could stay in China. Versus Google did NOT and instead chose to leave instead of selling the data.
'Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud users"
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy...
Then removed the VPN software and cut their users off at the knees from being able to protect themselves. While the way to keep your data private in China is use Google Fi.
"Using Project Fi in China: Say goodbye to VPNs"
https://www.androidauthority.com/using-google-fi-in-china-85...
Have to look past marketing and what is real.
My biggest grip is Apple terms allow them to have a ton of your data but there is no transparency like with Google.
Google provides a dashboard with everytthing in one place were you can remove and download. Nothing similar from Apple.
So when I share my location with imessages how do I remove that? Where can I see it? Google is far better.
It looks more like poor engineering than a dark pattern.
Poor engineering and sensitive data are a bad combination.
To me it feels like they're deliberately making it painful when you minimise what you share with them.
They create things for the 99.9999% that don't care about privacy and will never touch those settings. When you leave that massive group, that's when bugs will be way more common.
We could argue that they intentionally only care about UX when you give them your data but then again that's capitalism, right?
They might have to give you choice to turn those things off, but nobody can force them to give you the same experience. Imagine any executive saying he will focus on giving a great experience for the users that they can't make money out of. He'll be out of a job very quickly.
Isn't that basically what GDPR says? You have to be able to opt out of anything, without breaking things except when absolutely necessary.
It's stupid to make such a wild proclamation, that, for example, only 70 odd people in the whole of the UK care.
For Google it's millions or 10s of millions of their consumers.
Apple does collect analytics, but those can be turned off in OSX at the very least. As a company, they are not currently geared towards data collection. They have publicly positioned themselves in favor of privacy.
They don't also fully encrypt all of that information and give it to government on request.
By being quite generic and broad in their targeting themselves, they can get away with just collecting non personal "OS data", and they do it since the 80s.
Their biggest enemy are companies that create an easier market for developers and businesses by passing down data that those businesses can use to reach users. FB getting into hardware (they will be a future competitor with AR) is possibly causing them sleepless nights.
Both companies have basically the same terms with privacy.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ Legal - Privacy Policy - Apple
More than anything I just want to be able to remove what Apple has on me as I want all my data in a single place when possible.
So I share my location with my family with Google Maps and do NOT want my location also to be at Apple for example.
But Apple is the worse like this. They are far less transparent than Google and that bugs me about Apple.
Plus considering Apple gave all their users data over to the China government versus Google fought the China government Apple has a horrible record with privacy and looks for a buck will give up your data.
Also, most likely you turning off tracking will impact your Google experience.
Google is different than Facebook in that they offer real value services without which you can't survive a day on the web. Just count how many times you rely on a Google service in a day. The least you can do is to support them in maintaining their ad ecosystem in return. Or be ready to pay for their servuces. Unlike Facebook, Google has never had a data breach/trust issue.
I would pay handsomely for Google Maps, but I have no such option. Again though, that is a service that works just fine without my individual data; they have my location and my search term, and any business that pops up is inherently relevant due to simple proximity.
Please do not call this entitlement. Please understand that my privacy is valuable to me. Please understand that I would gladly pay to keep it.
The world would be a whole lot different place (not necessarily any better) if Google services cost money instead of gathering data and selling it forwards.
A lot of people say this. You already can pay for Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, Photos, and YouTube. Are you paying for them?
Or, Drive storage by itself, which applies to most products with storage quotas such as Gmail and Photos: https://www.google.com/drive/pricing/
For YouTube, YouTube Red: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6305537
Another interesting experiment in the willingness of users to pay to remove ads is Google Contributor: https://contributor.google.com/
1. My Google identity is now my real email, the one tied to my real domain that I myself own. That's so much better. I can comfortably sign in/sign up with Google to other sites, have them tied to that email instead of my @gmail.com one.
2. I feel way more comfortable sharing every single detail of my life to Google. In fact, it turns what initially comes off as really creepy, into a useful life service because I'm now using things such as my map activity etc as a service I have a paid contract with Google for. And if I don't like it, I can hard disable the entire service.
3. I have access to a lot of stuff that regular free Google doesn't offer. Things such as undelete email/drive (which has been useful on a couple of accidental occasions), and, get this, support. Live chat and phone!
If only I could pay a monthly fee to include search and maps!
Also "G Suite's compliance with ISO/IEC 27018:2014 affirms our commitment to international privacy and data protection standards. ISO 27018 guidelines include not using your data for advertising, ensuring that your data in G Suite services remains yours, providing you with tools to delete and export your data, protecting your information from third-party requests, and being transparent about where your data is stored."
Where 'you' is a minority subset of the Internet population.
I am in the UK and use Google Search and YouTube. The only way to pay is with my data.
The difference that I see between FB and Google is that I would trust Google to get that right. I would expect FB to say they sandboxed or protected my data and then have it turn out in court in ten years that they did no such thing...
This is just not true.
There are viable competitors in about every space that Google is in. Use local documents and sync via a different storage provider. Alternate email providers exist. The only place where they have a distinct advantage is search, and even then, DuckDuckGo is usually enough (and if it's not, just pass a !g flag).
YouTube is also a thing, but I've never felt that having an account really gave me anything over just bookmarking channels.
Even if someone comes in and beats Google at some point, they will do it by hiring a massive number of talented people and buying large quantities of data centers and servers. Those things can only be paid for through advertising and tracking, as few people will directly pay for search services. I suppose a socialist/communist government somewhere in the world might have the resources to build a search engine of Google quality that doesn't rely on advertising, but they would have their own hostile agenda - that would be far worse than having to put up with Nike trying to sell you some shoes while you search.
If they grow too big Google will just switch them off..
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/duckduckgo/comments/4lgda4/duckduck...
[2] https://www.ghacks.net/2016/07/01/duckduckgo-yahoo-partnersh...
I was just objecting to the sentiment that opening a Google account is a requirement for being productive on the internet.
But that doesn't stop Google's insatiable need for personal data and stalking people. Android is designed to leak like a sieve.
And this is yet another example for those who continue to make the false argument that if customers paid surveillance would go away. On the contrary companies will then make money from both sources.
This 'free' is not demanded by anybody but is the business model of some startups to gain market share. The fact that there are no regulations means they can operate without any ethical constraints.
The Android platform itself is designed to siphon as much data as possible: contacts, pictures, locations, wifi hotspot information, etc.
If you think that you can avoid Google's greed for data just by not using GMail you are way way behind in the game and your misleading comment is harming others which might now feel safe using what is essentially a very evolved spyware OS. Sure, Google are nice and won't steal your credit card number and purchase stuff with it. They just take every bit of info they can get their hands on.
I’m sure the majority of people do rely on Google quite a bit. But not everyone.
Primary difference between them and Facebook is that I feel Google has a lot more transparency with what data they hold on you. With Google I just deleted all my account activity which is older than a week. Facebook gave me no such option, I even had to write a fucking 600 line python script using OCR to spam click delete buttons on timeline because there's no way to delete activity using the API.
I also agree with you that Google actually provides a service that Facebook doesn't. There's dozens of Google services I use on a weekly basis. I deleted my FB account because of privacy issues but leave my location on my Android for Google Timeline, despite them keeping a log of where I've been every second of my life I a) trust them more with that data than I trust FB to know my hair colour and b) I actually use that feature and think the payoff is worth it.
Best part is I don’t miss it at all, grew up before evil google, didn’t get to rely on their evil parts when switched away
Store personal information on a device and not send it to the mothership? Unthinkable!
Source: literally just tried it.
Where the history would usually be, there's just this nagging message:
> To see your home and work, past searches, and other suggestions tailed for you, turn on Web & App Activity.
...Which, as mentioned already, misleadingly implies that local-history features are difficult or nonstandard.
It's some time ago I checked, but I want to do a comparison and report to some naming & shaming site. Anyone knows a good one?
Consequently, I am never nagged by Google apps or social media apps. I just don't have any problems like what I hear other people experience. Particularly amusing is seeing that my inferred location is way off.I've been on Firefox nightly Android for eight months now. While generally the browsing is better than chrome thanks to ad blocking, the Google services are pared down versions for no reason. Search, finance, news, so many. This is a clear case of abusing market dominance - and not due to Firefox missing any feature. If not for the revenue from Google, Mozilla would have sued I think.
It's a shame because I'd love to ditch chrome.
Which is also what's behind journalists, bloggers, etc. all hating on Facebook too, but nobody ever wants to hear that.
That's outdated thinking; see my response to Mononokay. As much as a year ago, journalists might have seen it that way. What has changed, and why the tone has changed, is that almost no journalists today see Facebook as anything but a competitor. It doesn't even matter if they were right then or are right now, or both, or neither. That's just the zeitgeist.
Yeah, no. Generalisations are stupid. Doctorow's a perfect example of why what you're saying isn't true, for example.
The incentives for bloggers are similar, though lesser. The more income they derive from ads on their site, the more they see that ad revenue decreasing, the more similar their motivations become to those of the professional media. I'm sure Doctorow makes a bit from pushing products on Boing Boing, but most of his (and other contributors') income comes from other sources and the audience there was always rather Facebook-averse since forever so Facebook's (or Google's) increasing dominance of the ad space has probably not made a dent for them overall.
The real point, though, is that one can't point to self interest as a reason for criticizing Google and pretend that it plays no part in why people criticize Facebook. That's just favoring the devil you're in bed with over the one you're not.
FB wants to/already has sucked away money and locked in content providers by making themselves the de facto platform, when previously the platform was just "the Internet".
People like to accuse MS and Apple for "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics, but FB straight up did it for real, it's just they did it to content providers instead of developers and end-users.
Media companies now see the error in their ways and I'm honestly happy for them to attack FB.
The ability to run your "story" on Facebook as a paid ad basically pulled an end around on society's idea of a shared truth. It wasn't the only tool to that effect, maybe not even the most damaging, but it was a disaster nonetheless.
Everyone takes from this kerfuffle what they want. I tend to agree with you for myself, but for most people Facebook having egg on its face is just a stage to stand on to whine about whatever they think is important.
Which is to say: the answer to the question in the title is probably "no".
The spark was the confluence of divisive political headwinds and an outrage-driven news cycle.
I’m thankful that spark has resulted in sustained scrutiny of Facebook, but without a similar environment and controversy, I doubt Google will find itself in a hot seat.
Maybe such a controversy is waiting for Google. I hope so, they’ve gathered far more data about me and my interests than Facebook ever will.
The great irony in Facebook’s situation is that it is purely the result of hubris. In 2010, Zuckerberg saw FB as the next great platform. The API was released to much acclaim. But the API essentially gave away the keys to the kingdom!
Facebook either 1) didn’t realize that they weren’t a platform and the social graph was the most valuable information they possessed, and were blinded by ignorance, or 2) didn’t want to be “just” an advertisement business, and was blinded by hubris.
Maybe it was a bit of both, but given how engineering driven FB is, I’d guess there was a healthy dose of #2, and probably still is.
What Facebook has, and what they essentially gave away for free, is far more valuable than whatever revenue they generated as a “platform.”
The fact FB was generating revenue as a platform in 2010 has more to do with their strategy (which was lacking at the time) than with the value of the information they had.
I’m suggesting they Zuckerberg’s hubris prevented him from seeing the value of what FB already was, and how to monetize that.
You're suggesting Hollywood will abandon a decade-plus long effort to beat down the influence of big tech, and increase regulation of the Internet, now, when it's going so well?[1] Or that some integrity of governance, quality of public policy, or competence of journalism, will hold them in check?
> Maybe such a controversy is waiting for Google. I hope so,
Controversies against Google will continue to be nurtured, year after year. And one of them, instead of incremental erosion, may well end up being a similar political-media event.
Whether you think this process is a good thing or not, depends in part on what kind of Internet you would like to have.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180226/01415539302/mista...
It sounds like you set up a straw man to be able to assert your own narrative for “Why Google is next.”
It’s all well and fine to offer up an alternative explanation or additional information, but you don’t have to do it by putting words into people’s mouths.
As for the content of your message, I fail to see how Facebook’s current scrutiny is connected to Hollywood in any way whatsoever.
A fair criticism. I'd intended "You're suggesting [...] ?" as a "are you suggesting <implausible thing not-X>?" form of "what about X?" question, rather than as a "you said X" claim. I'd not noticed the second reading. :/ But a less personal phrasing would have avoided the potential for misunderstanding - and consequences. Sorry about that.
> how Facebook’s current scrutiny is connected to Hollywood
Regards "current", tactical politics, perhaps someone else can comment. But the strategic context, part of those "political headwinds", is a long-term lobbying and press campaign to "correct" the "excessive approval" of Facebook et al, and to establish "rules of the road" for the "Wild West" Internet. One can of course agree with part of that, and disagree with the other. But... given a political bandwagon, it seems worth noting the principal conductors, and their intended playlists.
I know many who get a lot more value out of staying in touch with friends/family than they do with Google products.
I think that at this point that's basically only true for mapping, and they are losing ground on that, slowly. You've got stockholm syndrome.
What's actually better than:
* Gmail
* Search
* Docs
And all of the Integration that works cross platform for all of those.
Protonmail. Encrypted, ad free, and no one reading your email.
>Search
Duck Duck Go. Google is actually well past it's prime on this front. Their per-customer result filtering is now so aggressive that the filter bubble they apply to you is now an active impediment to web use. I generally find that I cannot replicate a google search on a different computer with the same search term, and about 20% of the time it is impossible to find the same result on a second computer. DDG's results are much more accurate to your search terms as written.
>Docs
Any desktop office suite, be it libre- of microsoft-. Unless multiplayer documents are a core component of your work (my commiserations if they are), google docs is objectively less capable as a professional grade editing suite than any of the major desktop based options, due to its considerably smaller and web-ui centric feature-set.
Google search had one killer feature that would have me come back a few times a month, but they discontinued it:
Things like “12573238458 bytes / 22 days in Mbps” used to do the unit conversions and print the answer.
Docs’ only killer feature for me is inline comments (and not requiring windows update...). Even atlassian has that now.
I hate the gmail UI, and just access it via ldap; to each their own, I guess.
All the things I mentioned work great on all the platforms that are currently alive, and integrate as much as I’d like via smtp, so there’s that checkbox too.
Some tools break on Firefox at times. There doesn't appear to be any offline mode for me to store and work on my documents locally when I am on the road and don't have a reliable internet connection.
Gmail. I pull into thunderbird via imap. It's just another back-end from my perspective.
https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat/ Google Maps's Moat - Justin O'Beirne
I am fine with you using whatever you want.
But Facebook, Google, and all these other shady companies that collects massive personal data, in ways that were never envisioned of being collected. They need to be reigned in. They have overstepped their boundaries of what is socially acceptable.
Facebook should just call themselves the FBIbook, because they have amassed such huge amounts of private data on us. And they have also done unethical things like creating fake dark profiles of you, or your children, and tracked them on their usage of the internet. This is egregious.
The creepiest thing by far, is their usage of facial scanning, to create a facial biometric of you. Their technology is probably something that the FBI has wet dreams of having. And they use this to identify you in any and all pictures on the internet.
Their next move, might be to actually partner up with brick-and-mortar stores, or CCTV surveillance cameras, to get a real time biometric identification on people. All the CCTV cameras at Walmart, Target, and in the malls, will get fed into the Facebook brain, and Facebook can build a real time tracking system as you wander through their digital surveillance system.
I just want to go to the mall and enjoy an ice cream with my loved ones. I'm not interested in getting tracked by Facebook's creepy surveillance system. This is akin to walking around in a digital virtual prison, that we can never escape from. And once this technology is built, then it will get expanded everywhere. To every single street corner camera, and combined with your smartphone's GPS, it's the perfect thing to track you everywhere. Just to sell you an ad, for something that you don't want to buy.
If you thought they make a lot of money now, by selling ads on their platform. Just imagine when they decide to go down this route. Their revenue and profit potential will explode! And they will be unstoppable.
"Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud users"
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy...
Versus Google chose to not sell their user data in China and left.
In all seriousness, this is just sad.
And then you let some other people get those photos because "Chad who was at that party said it was OK with him".
If someone is watching "non-extreme" material and suddenly gets a conspiracy, far right, or propaganda video suggested to them, what responsibility does Google have for that reccomendation? To what extent is it possible for people to "self radicalise" from Youtube?
(I've experienced this myself; an innocuous gaming video had a column of reccomended videos all relating to the same game .. and a livestream of Tommy Robinson. Why? Is Google radicalising gamers accidentally?)
How long do I have to ignore something before it goes away? It reminds me of how in the UK the tabloid newspapers have audacious headlines but you're forced to read them because they are in the entrance of every store. I dont want to read about this. Leave me alone and stop filling my head with garbage.
I had the same videos queue up in mine and nothing I watch seems even remotely related to that. My YouTube usage is pretty "family friendly" so it struck me as particularly odd to see such blatantly divisive hate videos.
I've even seen weird ads about deep state conspiracy stuff on there too. Their algorithms seem totally broken because I'm definitely not the right target for that stuff.
It's always worked quite well for me. I have zero crap in my recommendations.
And some have been ads. One that sticks out was selling some crazy deep state book, but the ads was mostly just selling a conspiracy theory about the FBI.
(Also, I don't get the information on why a video is reccomended to me - is it country-specific? I was googling for how to find it and ironically came across a huge thread of complaints: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/7Sf7E...)
No argument there.
Also, I don't get the information on why a video is reccomended to me - is it country-specific?
I don't know; it worked in all European countries I've used it in. You mouse over the video, it shows the three-dots menu (⋮), then you choose "Not Interested", then the thumbnail is replaced by text saying "Video Removed" and "Tell Us Why".
Example: https://imgur.com/a/zlUtCfc
For some reason YouTube want's me to watch Bill Burr and John Oliver. I tried multiple times to tell YouTube that I'm not interested, only to have the same content pop up in my recommendations a few days later.
The again I have the same issues with Facebook. At this point I fairly sure there's zero intelligence, machine learning or AI behind the Facebook newsfeed.
And I've never seen an ad for something that actually inspired me to click it or buy anything.
This site shows Youtube's most recommended videos. It is quite revealing.
fines and enforcement must present a significantly larger liability than profit opportunity for any real changes to ever take place. else it's just written down as another expense of doing business as usual.
Counterfactual: finance, another high-margin industry with a penchant for bad decision making, funds a proactive and multi-pronged regulatory apparatus. We are all safer for it.
data on the other hand is a much more diverse & fluid asset that travels via a million unmonitored/encrypted channels and can be copied easily. if all money could be easily copied and most transactions were in cash, proactive regulation would be too expensive. i think.
Securities are quite diverse. And people regularly try to get around securities regulation by calling their securities "stamps" or "tokens" or "coins" or whatever. A regulator for social media companies over a certain size might not be a bad idea. (My preference is consumer controls with strict penalties for non-compliance, à la how Illinois governs biometric data [1].)
[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-facebook-taggi...
Just let ad networks pay for it. Ad networks had a chance of self-regulation but they failed.
Also, how are you going to catch them if you don't watch them?
In order to get decent ad targeting for most industries, they need more than enough information than is needed to target a drone strike.
They are legally obligated to share this information with multiple governments (including the US) that openly and routinely engage in extra-judicial killings of civilians.
The only solutions to this moral quandary are to either (a) change multiple governments, some democratically elected, some not, or to (b) simply not gather the information in the first place.
Google has already tried and failed at option (a), and option (b) would eliminate the vast majority of their revenue.
Rather, free people should be allowed to choose. And free people are the ones making these companies too.
This and security is why I try to centralize my data at Google.
In the US an ISP can sell your data without you even knowing.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/04/04/isps-can... ISPs can now collect and sell your data: What to know ... - USA Today
For example, let's say a bad actor creates a Google ad for pizzas, directed at gay people. Now if you see and click that pizza ad, the bad actor will know your sexual orientation.
The first step is that you are only shown the ad if you are gay. This means that if somebody clicks the ad, then they must be gay.
The second step is that if you click the ad and order the pizza, the pizza company (=bad actor) will ask for your details (e.g. name, address). This information can then be coupled to your sexual orientation.
And this happens without you knowing. All you think is that you are ordering pizza.
Part of ISPs justification for removing privacy protections via bribes was to allow them to compete with Facebook/Google.
As seen with removing ISP privacy protections from the FCC to help them get net neutrality removed, ISPs don't give up when it comes to using their local monopolies and bribing their way into markets rather than competing with products built on it that people want like Facebook/Google.
Right now ISP money isn't being spent on innovation or expansion of their network capabilities, it is being spent to combat competition in areas they want to move into such as the ad network/tracking space, network throttling/data caps and more.
ISPs also want to be the implementers of the internet filters that will be arriving soon to be broad censorship and stifle competition [1]. They are also big on helping the surveillance state and will get shared data to use in their ad networks [2].
The ISPs are helping build the network that will be more like hotel wifi than the internet we know and love today. If the ISPs do one thing well it is stifling competition to create near monopolies because they don't like to compete building actual quality or products to compete next to market leaders, they bribe and use their local monopolies to get in.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2017/04/internet-censorship-is-advanci...
Americans have the attention span of fruit flies, which is why none of this actually matters long term.
COPPA has unfortunate consequences. My 7 year old child watches youtube. He can't have an account, so he uses my account. Youtube thinks an > 18 year old is watching the videos, and so places ads for gambling and alcohol on the videos he watches.
There's no mechanism to tell Google that:
i) My child is under 18 and so cannot legally buy the products being advertised (and in the UK it's illegal to target alcohol to children)
ii) I campaign against alcohol and gambling adverts, and that's the only reason they think I have an interest in the product. I'm never going to buy these products.
The Youtube Kids product isn't available on my laptop, and he's not interested in many of those videos.
And the fix seems simple enough: allow a toggle for "viewer is under 18".
So you letting your kid watch YouTube as an 18 year old is a personal decision and not much to do with coppa existing or not existing.
I've not seen any reason to log in unless you're going to upload a video or leave a comment and he could get you for that.
Now, will these services be on par with Google's? Of course not, but if they're good enough, it could be a game changer.
Providing a "good enough" service in a sustainable way is very, very difficult. Maybe you can make the service happen, but services require a continuing revenue stream, and that is hard. Especially when you don't own the platform, you don't own the hardware, and your only selling point is that you'll promise to ignore the biggest potential revenue source.
Google has been pretty good at preserving the illusion of "anonymous browsing".
Their product to you may not be, but their primary revenue stream sure is based on the premise of knowing your genuine identity (including habits.)
The byproduct is ad blockers work by blocking the call back.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy... Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud ...
(That is to say: I now only trust Google with pedestrian queries.)
Apple privacy agreement allows them to collect a ton of private data but that is it. You agree and no idea what they are doing with your data. Read the agreement.
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/en-ww/ Legal - Privacy Policy - Apple
I do not like big gov but would be good with Apple forced to create a dashboard exactly like Google provides.
I'm genuinely confused here. Are you implying that you are OK with Google-scale intrusive data collection as long as you get a convenient dashboard with it?
While it might seem magnanimous of them to allow you to download from their system, (your own data no less), I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that arrangement. The way the T&C of all these companies are written, you have no way of validating the deletion of your data in a comprehensive fashion, there are no provisions for you to look under the hood, and there are explicit reservations outlined with respect to government related obligations.
I'm not comfortable with any of these companies, but knowing that Google has all of my searches, (desktop AND mobile), for the past 10 or 15 years, youtube view history, etc etc etc worries me a bit more than the fact that Apple knows what apps I've downloaded. Personally, I would rate them as follows:
HIGH PRIORITY CONCERNS: Google and Facebook
PRIORITY CONCERNS: AT&T Amazon
SECONDARY CONCERNS: Netflix Apple Pandora etc
To put it in layman's terms:
Apple knows what apps I've downloaded. AT&T knows where I've been. But Google and Facebook know all of that PLUS what porn I like, what I REALLY think of my boss, what I've been posting "anonymously" to different web forums, and they have a pretty good idea which of my S/O's friends I think are hotter than her.
Which one do you think I'm more worried about?
I try to keep all my data at Google and no where else when possible but I have both a Pixel and an iPhone and do not know what is at Apple. I do use Google DNS and Google services including Chrome.
I use Google DNS everywhere, 8.8.8.8, to keep my internet browsing away from my wireless and isp providers. I also use chrome data saver to keep browsing data at Google. We now have YouTube TV so now keep my viewing data away from our cable provider.
We have Google WiFi which made the DNS easy as how it comes. I have a pixel book and wife CB+ and kids Acer 14s and 15s so keep my data away from MS and all at Google.
We switched our Echo to the Google home so my home auto data at Google. We have Nest for everything they offer a product. We do have Phillips lights but wish Google would do bulbs.
Then we use Gmail. Maps, YT, and Duo. The areas we leak our Netflix as nothing from Google. Also Amazon for shopping but try to limit. Really almost nothing with MS.
But Apple has my iMessages and data from me using my iPhone which is an issue for me as I do not know what they have and that bugs me and is not right.
Our biggest issue is I have 8 kids and can not use Fi because of cost so my location data is at my wireless provider. This is a big one where you could use Google and protect your data as Google fi is anonymous to the underneath carriers. Trouble is the cost is too much.
How do you KNOW that Google, and all of the people Google has allowed access to your data, have deleted it?
Do you see where I'm going?
You have absolutely no way of knowing whether Google deleted your data or not. You just get an email maybe saying that your data was deleted. But that email is only warranting deletion within the parameters of the original T&C you agreed to.
Now compare that to Netflix or Apple. They have NO WAY AT ALL of knowing what I searched for on my home or work machines. If I'm using Google Chrome, as the vast majority of users are, then Google knows not only what I searched for, but also which web pages I went to. When I went to them. And what I did when I was there. Netflix, Apple and Pandora/Spotify etc have almost no way to determine that level of detail about me.
MAYBE AT&T does, which is why I listed them as a priority concern. But very few companies outside of the ISP's, Google and Facebook would even have access to that information. Not even Microsoft and Apple would have access to that level of detail about you. Let's face it, not many people use Edge or Safari.
Even on your phone, Google will ALWAYS have access to more data about you than Apple does. I was getting lots of ads for health insurance on my desktop. They claimed that if I could run a sub-7 minute mile I could get a break on my insurance. A friend of mine told me it was because I used Youtube on my runs in the morning. So Google knew how fast I could run. So we did an experiment where I slowed down for a week, sure enough, the number changed to 8 minute miles. Apple, Spotify, Netflix etc would not have even known that I was searching for health insurance on my machines. But Google not only knew that, but was smart enough to watch me while I was out running to give me an ad that would seem more attractive to me.
Yeah... I stopped using Youtube.
Another example is Apple handed over all their user data in China over to the government while Google instead left China. Kind of saids it all.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy... Campaign targets Apple over privacy betrayal for Chinese iCloud ...
You never know if any company deleted your data but trust Google far more because as they have more to lose and Apple giving up their users data in China proves my point. Apple gives your data away and my daughter is still buying a iPhone.
Let me give a specific examples of my issue with Apple. I try to keep all my data at Google. They are not going to give it up for dollar like Apple in China and Google has the best security by a huge amount.
We were recently on holiday and several of my kids have iPhones. I permanently share my location on Google maps. But when we are traveling I use iMessages with my iPhone kids. They need to find me when out and about and will share my location in iMessages as easy to do.
But I do not have a way to clearly remove from Apple as I do not want that data at Apple. I do not want my data spread around. Apple is the worse like this. Google offers on their own and we will need the gov to force Apple to do the same.
Hope that helps.
Do not think Google has the same issues as FB.
Wish they would be, but probably not.