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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

You can't turn it 'off', you can 'pause' it. That's a linguistic difference, sure, but it is quite telling that there is no respect at all for a users desires even in the language that is hardcoded in. It's as annoying as 'not now' for 'no' or '10 different things you should know about "x"', when you really should not.

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I think 'pause' is a better word than 'off'. The reason is that a person is more likely to think that turning 'off' location history deletes the old location history, which it does not. 'Pause' makes this differences clearer to the user who might not be as familiar with technology.

> 'Pause' makes this differences clearer to the user who might not be as familiar with technology.

I'd love for the Googles of this world to really make things easier for people not as familiar with technology. For instance lightswitches do not have a pause button.

To be fair, nor do they have a history. Though simplification can make things easier, it can also result in obfuscation, and it's often not obvious which is the better bargain in general.

Historically they didn't have a history, but there are "smart grid" electric meters that track energy usage on a smaller time scale, and privacy is an issue for those.

If the lights in your living room total up to 85.5W, someone with access to fine grained power consumption logs can infer when you turned that light switch on or off.

Similarly, there's going to be a telltale power consumption profile for when you're in the shower, when you run your washing machine, when you turn on your television, etc.

This isn't widespread, but it's something to look out for going forward.

This is exactly what sense does https://sense.com/

I agree, the language is annoying and they've also been guilty of dark patterns for getting users to re-enable it.

But being an EU citizen, I'm confident that they can't turn it on, legally, without explicit permission.

They can't legally, but for them to stop someone has to go through the process of proving this in court.

Where I live there are consumer protection state agencies that handle the suing for you, if the case is strong enough. You just have to file a complaint and I've had great success in the past.

And GDPR is taken seriously, the EU requiring and sponsoring agencies that check for compliance in all EU countries.

Don't know how it is in the U.S. but I imagine that at the very least you can group with others in class action lawsuits, such that the effort of any one individual will be lower.

As long as it is illegal of course, otherwise you don't have a case. I heard California is adopting something similar to the GDPR too.

In Hungary for instance, one can simply send an e-mail with the necessary details of the complaint to NAIH, the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, and within the legally mandated period of 60 days, they will carry out the necessary investigation and enforce both national law and GDPR.

Where is the "pause" wording?

https://myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols

All over the page.

Paused this, paused that.

For those still wondering: the word "pause" appears in the pop-up information window when you toggle off one of the activities and appears next to "paused" activities.

Thanks; I was reading the docs, which do say "turn off".

https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?visit_id=...

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