Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghostly_s | Hacker News Reader

The same dark pattern they document here trying to persuade you to enable "Web and App Activity" tracking is even worse in Google Maps for iOS, as I found when I disabled the feature after the press it received. No matter how many times you dismiss it, you'll again get a huge prompt on the homescreen urging you to turn it on in a few days. And they hold your home and work address hostage if you don't enable it, despite having nothing to do with the anti-feature in question. I hate this shite company.

View on HN

Whats worse is that if you own a google home mini and turn off the web and app activity it essentially becomes a useless brick.

For most commands literally everything is on the lines of "Sorry I don't have enough access to perform that command. You can change this in the Google Home app". Simple stuff like "Play some music" and "Whats the weather like?" is blocked.

I just wish there was more fine grained control over exactly what I give access to.

Yes, I found this as well. So now it is used as a broadcast system for Home Assistant notifications / reminders etc (super handy, actually).

They will never give you fine grained control because this is part of the quid-pro-quo. You want convenience, they want data about you. They withhold convenience until you give them the data. Every single Google product is built around this core principle and it drives many if not all of their UI decisions.

> You want convenience, they want data about you. They withhold convenience until you give them the data.

I already directly paid them a tidy sum for my phone. It's gauche for them to try weasel more out of me.

Indeed. And how much more did you pay for your car? Living in the future is usually pretty cool but there are some things, like this, that I just don't like about it.

https://www.autoblog.com/2018/11/19/ford-reorganization-cust...

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150211/10134429988/cars-...

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/otonomo-selling-car-data-...

This from the Simpsons comes to mind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE

Same with Android Auto. Voice commands need web and app activity, even though literally all I want to do with it is to make calls and send texts. It makes no f-ing sense, except as a dark pattern, since I can receive and reply to texts just fine without enabling the tracking.

I think there's only so much you can complain about a free service. I would bet that you couldn't convince 50% of the existing users to pay $5/month to get a fully private version of any Google service. In my experience, people value convenience (as in it's more convenient NOT to spend any money on something) more than they value privacy.

I'm not saying you don't have a valid point, you're just not in a position to make it.

We may not pay cash to use it. We pay dearly with our information.

It is not free.

You're overestimating the price of your information.

People complain about free service doing that and not that, but very few would actually pay monthly fee for the features they're asking for. I would say the percentage of paying customers would far lower than 50%, maybe less than 10% globally.

Google could introduce payed alternative with all user tracking off. But I understand it's not worth the money to implement and maintain such a product for limited group of people. The only benefit it could bring is that then they can say: "Hey, you don't like us to track you? Go with payed alternative.". And nobody can ever complain to not have an alternative.

<sarcasm> With same logic, people complain about the adds too, so I guess the youtube premium (red) subscriptions must be booming. </sarcasm>

And Maps also loses the ability to save your search history, like, it won't even save it locally, you just can't see recent places you've searched for.

I consider this a positive. If I ask Google not to save my data, I don't want them to save my data, not pick and choose where they should be saving it.

Fair point. But why not make it an option for "advanced" users.

E.g. A slider, 1 - we'll save your data everywhere, 2 - locally only, 3 - no history saved at all.

How can they make money off your data if they don't have it?

They just want data. They no longer want to make people's lives easier.

Here:

They just want data. They never wanted to make people's lives easier.

fixed it for you.

I’ve used Shortcuts (used to be Workflow) to “save” various favorite map locations without Google being asked to remember them. It’s actually better because I can program a complex sequence such as also immediately displaying a map with directions to that place, it can be in the widget area of the phone, etc.

My activity tracking is disabled and I don't see any prompt in the Google Maps app. Where should I be looking?

It popped for me at the bottom on Android.

maps on android is by far the neediest app on my phone, outpacing tinder by a pretty wide margin.

neediest ?

I think referring to needing and asking for system permissions.

always popping up notifications or "hey try this out" or "didja know?" or any amount of "how many clicks is it going to take to get my nav started this time?" friction.

I turned off app notification for maps (and every other app that has ever sent me an unwarranted notification) and my phone is refreshingly silent most of the time.

That's a good idea, but does it take care of all the in-app popup type distractions, too? Today I happened to go through Maps' settings and found about 15 notification items to turn off, but I imagine they'll keep adding this default-on trash until Google kills the service one day.

Ah, perhaps that's the difference. I use the iOS app and don't see a prompt.

It's not just that. You cannot even save a location manually without enabling tracking (not just your home/work address). It's a shame that Google Maps has such good data, because in every other way it's extremely user hostile.

I added my home and work addresses to my phone's dictionary under the shortcuts "hm" and "wrk". In some ways this is even faster since I don't have to rely on the maps UI to insert my address.

I discovered this when I moved. Fortunately Apple maps suffices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com