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Comment by kevingrahl | Hacker News Reader

Here’s an analogy I like to use for people who don’t care about privacy; Its similar to not caring about free speech just because you have nothing to say. It’s not just about you the regular joe who is of no particular interest to companies/governments but about those people who absolutely need it.

You not caring about what they do with your data is totally fine but in my opinion you should care that they (in this case Google) have not only yours but everyone’s data. It’s astonishing what you can do with just some metadata. You can influence groups of people like never before. Swing Elections & change governments. Influence public opinion about literally everything to no small degree.

You’re not just giving them your uninteresting data you’re also giving them an enormous amount of power.

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> You can influence groups of people like never before. Swing Elections & change governments. Influence public opinion about literally everything to no small degree.

Right, so, has Google done this? Asking because from what I remember the answer has been largely no, but I remember FB selling data to Cambridge Analytica in 2016.

Google has not directly intervened in elections as far as we know. Will they ever if we don't take away their power to? Only one way to find out!

(Preface - agreeing with you) - And we really can't know it, either. There's some "evidence" that they're willing to tweak search results in favor of their politics of the day but I'd even take that with a grain of salt - mostly because of the original problem: Google is not transparent.

It has always worked out well for us to give power to completely opaque entities right? Guys? Guys?

Even this commonly parroted "fact" isn't true. Cambridge Analytica exploited a Facebook misfeature that let them scrape a frankly ridiculous amount of data from users who took their quiz thing. Certainly Facebook shouldn't have allowed random apps access to this user data, but straight up selling data would be an act of immense incompetence on Facebook's part. Their whole business is keeping the data to themselves and selling access to targeted advertising based on that data.

Isn’t it also the case that FB didn’t allow CA to scrape data, but gave permission to a UK researcher who then sold the data to CA?

No, Facebook shouldn't have collected the data in the first place, because leaks are inevitable.

It's not Facebook's incompetence to blame, no matter how much you try spinning it that way.

I agree, but Facebook exists because of that data.

I'm assuming you hadn't heard about this.

https://www.projectveritas.com/news/insider-blows-whistle-ex...

Also Project Veritas so I'd be quite skeptical. They have history of doctoring footage and overall other sketchy practices.

> Right, so, has Google done this?

Business is booming for Google right now. Imagine Google still have all of that data but are slowly going bankrupt and desperate for new business ideas.... and then Google is approached by a company with ethics and practices like Cambridge Analytica?

I think what matters is whether you trust them or not. I do care about privacy, so I don't leak information that I care about on random websites, only trust entities. For me, Google is one of the company I trust, just like some people trust DDG, Mozilla, Fastmail...

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