Comment by olivierduval | Hacker News Reader

Comment by olivierduval | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's (almost) funny to see how Google "reframe" the concept of privacy to preserve its business model !!!

- "large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting"... so it means: one way or another, it's OK to gather as much information as possible to show relevant (targeted and weel paid) ads. But there are good ways (cookies) and bad ways (fingerprinting).

- "blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding". And what about delivering "standard" ads ???? Newspapers have shown non-targeted ads for years and nobody complained about that (I mean... except marketers maybe). If publishers stopped relying on targeted ads, maybe they may at last find some really new business model (like shared subscription) instead of just being lazy, using Google/Facebook products ?

- "If this funding is cut, we are concerned that we will see much less accessible content for everyone", meaning...? Oh... less things to show on google search engine and with AMP. As Google is not producing content by itself but using (stealing?) content produced by others, it's quite understandable that their bottom line is tied up to the content publishers providing free content. Actually, maybe Google should pay content provider to be able to include it in their serach engine ? (ok... link the link tax)

It seems to me that Google doesn't understand that users DON'T WANT TO BE TRACKED AT ALL. It has gone too creepy for years. It's not a matter of being tracked by one trick or another, it's not been tracked AT ALL. But, admitting this would mean the end of GoogleAds. And Google seem to has lost any creativity to find new solutions to replace that product that users can't bear anymore. Sad... "do no Evil" if really gone forever :-(

You're right. But, Google does understand that their users don't want to be tracked. They just don't care.

The real solution is to "Get off Google". If everyone reading this did that, would it impact them? No, they would be fine. But I think it's better to do something rather than nothing.

I still use some Google products because it's far too inconvenient to get rid of them (notably, Android and YouTube), but I got rid of pretty much anything else that "normal people" rely on: search, maps, Chrome (or any Chromium-based browser), analytics, calendar, drive, assistant, Gmail etc.

What's your Maps replacement? I tried getting off it but got too frustrated with the alternatives I tried (maps.me, something using OSM).

Part of the problem is that tracking at scale really does add convenience (automatic home to work detection, traffic pattern detection, real-time routing around events.) But then using that information for other purposes (advertising your nearest fast food restaurant) isn't seen by users as compelling compared to the user's purpose of sharing that information. That's one reason why GDPR and its enforcement has been so weighted towards the _purposes_ of data collection and enforcing adherence to stated purposes.

The problem, of course, is that incentives are misaligned and the company's purpose in collection and use is often different from the user's purpose. And the laws are still written to the service provider's purpose not the users' purpose. Its left to the company to align them.

I use Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps. Each has a perceptibly different balancing of those purposes.

OSM with a good theme is pretty good... But it's the other features people use Google Maps for. If you use Android, you might want to try Locus, it can do online and offline maps, online routing from multiple providers and a ton of other stuff.

Apple Maps is not too bad. I only fall back to Google Maps less than once a week.

Once a week is a pretty high rate for total failure forcing fallback to a different app entirely.

>If everyone reading this did that, would it impact them? No, they would be fine. But I think it's better to do something rather than nothing.

As with climate change, systemic problems can't be solved with individual action.

This seems like a cop-out to me. “What can I, as one person do? Just don’t bother since the impact is tiny.”

I think people leave out the word “only” in statements like yours. Systemic problems can’t be solved with only individual action but the actions of many individuals can very much set examples, serve as encouragement to others, shift norms, and make the political space for regulated or coordinated action more available.

We should not exempt ourselves from individual action, especially when it is inconvenient, simply because our small change won’t single-handedly solve the whole problem. This goes for browsers, “free” email, privacy, and environmental impact.

True. Customer boycott have worked in the past. DELETEUBER campaign was quite a big PR nightmare for Uber and this could be measured in their market share vs Lyft.

Same from buying power. You can either buy from small business and make a difference for a family. Or you can keep shopping at big box stores. Sure it feels like a small impact, but this isn't small at all for the small business. Those things add up.

We should not waste our time with individual action when that urge to do something should be directed at politics, policy, and law.

Dealing with a monopoly at an individual level is an exercise in futility.

They can. In the same way they were created: By individual action.

They were created by the ascribe of a few powerful individuals (not in some conspiratorial way, I just mean the actions of a few company heads / marketing gurus etc), not by the individual actions of some billions of users. They will have to be dismantled the same way.

No. They were created by the individual actions of some billinos of users who (like me) subcribed to those problems (not regarded as such at the time) due to - i will agree - the actions of a few company heads / marketing gurus. But just as nobody was pointing a gun to my head at the time, nobody is pointing a gun to my head now: "Thank you for your services, I think I 'll be leaving now"

An an individual, I don't remember bundling Chrome into downloads from SourceForge to trick my elderly mother into installing Google's products.

True, but it is not the way the problem was created. It is a part, but nothing compared to the conscious choice of installing chrome or signing up for gmail etc. The massive adoption of google products was not achieved the way you describe. To be clear, i agree with you. What you describe, is true and indicative of the situation. But I just want to point that individual action can solve the problem just as it was the main drive that created it

The problems were created because incentives aligned for people to make decisions that lead to the problem. The only way to revert it is to change the incentives. And that can't be done by just me or you.

>The only way to revert it is to change the incentives. Or people could change their decisions.

Yes, but you aren't going to get enough people to change their decisions to have an impact without changing their incentives.

Right now people are incentivized to use these "free" services because they feel like that's what is in their best interest. And to be honest, they are probably right in the current state of the world. I would be significantly worse off if I refused to use any Google services. I literally wouldn't be able to do my current job.

Making any type of change isn't going to come from us, but from regulators who force change.

> Yes, but you aren't going to get enough people to change their decisions to have an impact without changing their incentives.

It is not my purpose to change anyone's decision but mine. That alone is enough impact for me.

> I would be significantly worse off if I refused to use any Google services. I literally wouldn't be able to do my current job.

You have a tough choice indeed (I am in the same situation). But the choice is yours. And yours alone.

This conversation was started about addressing the systematic problem of Google tracking users despite their wishes. You responded saying that could be solved through individual action. Now you are changing the topic to be about Google tracking you.

> As with climate change, systemic problems can't be solved with individual action.

But they can certainly be improved.

"Get off Google" or "Get off the Internet"?

Where by "Internet" I mean "running 3rd party code talking back to a server over a global network". One way is going back to the original WWW design of hyperlinked documents, removing cookies and javascript altogether. Tracking becomes limited to the set of hyperlinked documents accessed, which could be proxied by a 3rd party for anonymization purposes. However, there are a few downsides.

* No authentication to remote servers. Forget web email, shopping or banking. On the plus side, forget social media as well.

* No business model for content publishers.

* No rich web UIs, for example maps.

Is there a middle ground?

> One way is going back to the original WWW design of hyperlinked documents, removing cookies and javascript altogether.

While it doesn't seem likely to be viable even for a single person (primarily because of the government and banking services), it sounds rather nice to me, and such a sentiment pops up here and there.

> No authentication to remote servers.

No certain types of custom authentication, but standard HTTP authentication doesn't require executing freshly loaded code. Even custom forms-based authentication doesn't require to do that, or to use cookies.

> No business model for content publishers.

This is probably meant to be exaggerated; surely there are content publisher business models not reliant on JS-powered advertisement (e.g., subscriptions, tracking-free advertisements, donations, perhaps merchandise).

> No rich web UIs, for example maps.

I find this example rather interesting: it's a common and old application of pushing the limits of web browsers, and a seemingly common example of the need to do so (perhaps because maps are useful to many people, and the need in a specialized UI for those is hardly controversial). But it also seems quite sensible to me to use a dedicated program (which doesn't run on top of a web browser, that is) for mapping.

Thank you. The business model is likely faulty reasoning by my part: Observe that in current world the most effective business model is advertisement, out-competing alternatives, then incorrectly concluding it is the best in all possible worlds.

I think that’s an unfair reading of the blog post. They seem to suggest that advertisers can do targeting client side, using cookies, and without sending the cookies out. There are issues with this of course (enforcement, bandwidth), but it sound like a good compromise.

Didn't they try that approach with DNT?

As long as there is no enforcement and zero punishment for these sites that continues to track, this isn't a compromise at all.

Google is biased in this situation because a large chunk of their revenue is based on these ads.

There is enforcement though. I think the idea is that once a standard for privacy-respecting ad personalization is in place, Google will be free to start taking more aggressive measures towards blocking more invasive tracking systems (like cookies and fingerprinting) without hurting their own advertising business.

The next evolution of the internet is most probably the internet of value. Google is in the position to push this and be the largest player in that new internet but reading their ideas on how to fix the current internet I don't think they are ready for real change.

I would like to suggest a great talk about this topic from David Schwartz. https://youtu.be/FUtlTgWyX5w?t=5223 Use this URL for the web monetization part he come straight to the point. Whats broken, why and how to fix it in less than 2 minutes. He then explains more technically how the internet of value can/is be created. Very interesting for anyone who know the basic about IP and the different layer that made our internet really usable.

I someone wanna watch his full talk use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUtlTgWyX5w&t=4200s

If people want fewer ads and tracking then more content will be paywalled. This is bad for a few reasons. For one, people who can't afford to pay their way thru paywalls go get their news from Facebook or sources backed by people like the Kochs or Breitbart.

Awesome, we killed advertising and fixed privacy but now what have we gained? A walled-garden on the truth?

Read a newspaper?

Constructive! So a solution to this Internet issue is to stop using the Internet?

Sure,yeah.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com