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Comment by econ4all | Hacker News Reader

It matters because the manner in which any "findings" are presented has a big role in shaping public opinion and in this case the opinion shapers are purpofuly distorting finding to attack an advesary.

See the WSJ's false report that google let's developers read user emails, it's technically true but that only happens after the user allows it via an explicit permission screen.

Or the AP's claim that google keeps track of user location ever after location history is turned off, which again is technically true but that is because location history is just a location feature and not the master switch for all location features.

In both cases other media outlets repeated the claims without further commentery of research and this cartel might be the reason.

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Wasn't the entire point of this location privacy redesign Google did a few years ago that they wanted to have a single master switch, for internal and consumer clarity?

Because that's the line they sold us inside the company when we complained that it was now asking for broad permissions too often. "It's broad, but it's all controlled in one place now."

If they're now claiming that users are confused and that's not what it means, well, fuck Google management. They don't give a damn. They'll lie to their employees, and they'll lie to their users.

Swipe down from the top of the screen and tap the location tile and all location services will turn off.

There's a master switch it's just not what the AP decided it was.

Even that seems to get periodically re-enabled on my Galaxy S7 without my permission. I reasonably expect that if I launch an app that requires location to get asked for it, but in my experience the system level software is collecting it anyway, perhaps traffic mapping?

Given Samsung, I wouldn't be surprised if that issue was related to their software. There's just so much going on in Android, and so much third party software, that you really can't assume much anymore.

Do you work for Google?

I'm unemployed.

I do and the only time you'll get a straight word from leadership is when Sergey appears on stage drunk (which is often. dude has a problem). The rest are consistently awful.

There’s nothing that makes the location history issue only ‘technically true’. It is simply true.

If you present a switch saying don’t record location history, and still record the history, you are not respecting the switch.

Saying “That switch is just to turn off tracking the location history for the end user to use. We’re still going to track them for our own purposes.” is fine, but it’s a lie to say that the switch turns off location history. The switch should make it clear that all it’s doing is turning off the user facing version and that Google is going to keep tracking you whether you like it or not.

That would be honest, but presumably people wouldn’t like it if they knew, so Google wasn’t truthful about it.

The reporting is true, and Google deserves the consternation they are getting for misleading users.

The description of the location history setting is

"Creates a private map of where you go with your signed in devices".

Conveniently not mentioning the private map of where you go that Google creates for itself.

Ok, since you claim that "the opinion shapers are purpofuly distorting finding to attack an advesary", name one false claim from the PDF document's executive summary. Should be quite easy, right?

You're letting Google really easy of the hook regarding the location history PR disaster. Google uses dark UX patterns to trick their customers into sharing more data, and this is one more instance of that. The fact that "technically" location history is not a master switch is just a flimsy excuse.

Can I name some tautological claims instead? The last three bullet points are all basically conjecture. "Google could do this" or "Google has the capacity to do that".

The article uses dark patterns to make you think they're making strong claims when they're just saying things that might be the case, or that the researchers don't have the ability to rule out. And it doesn't help that this article goes to great lengths to word things in more nefarious ways than the underlying research paper.

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