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Comment by ksk | Hacker News Reader

Well, every ad-driven revenue model is at odds with privacy. There is zero chance that Google is going to support any privacy measure that will block themselves from spying on users. Google not only wants all your data to reside on their servers so they can mine it, but they're actively setting up tollbooths on the internet to take a cut from every online transaction. "Oh hey you Googled Tylers Texas BBQ, that must mean Google should get a cut from the order". Frankly its a bit scary that people honestly (and I truly believe you to be honest) believe Google could be a "most ethical" company.

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> Well, every ad-driven revenue model is at odds with privacy.

The correct statement is "every business model is at odds with privacy". Do you think your ISP isn't spying on you just because you pay them? Similarly you can sell ads without spying on your users, TV does that. And tracking user data is useful for businesses even if they don't sell ads etc.

VPN’s for example are not adverse to customer privacy. Generally customer data isn’t worth much, so every business is balancing that vs direct sales. Where an ISP has minimal fear, at the extreme other end, a brothel has serious risks.

Healthcare is an interesting example where regulations have shaped the landscape and similar regulations can easily hit other industries.

Agreed 100% -> Frankly its a bit scary that people honestly (and I truly believe you to be honest) believe Google could be a "most ethical" company.

Among my friends there are so many that work for dodgy companies and believe they are doing something good

In Seattle my friends and I ran into a girl who worked for a spybar/spy install bar company and she was completely OK with it. She actually liked working there

Of course, now it turns out that Google, Facebook, Amazon do far worse stuff than spyware companies

reminds me of an old quote - It is impossible to make a man realize something when his pay check depends on him not realizing it

The statement that a company is the "most ethical" is a relative one. It doesn't imply that the company is ethical, or a net good to the world. It simply means that it is relatively better than the others.

> every ad-driven revenue model is at odds with privacy

I agree with this statement (assuming you're talking about personally targeted ads). Believe it or not though, there are ways to be evil that don't require invading people's privacy, and there are a lot of companies out there that engage in this sort of bad behavior.

I'm not saying that Google is perfectly ethical. I'm just saying that the other companies I've worked at have been worse, and that the heuristic of "avoid ad-based business models" won't necessarily steer you in the direction of an ethical career.

Not if it's your only heuristic! c'mon

But staying out of the surveillance industry is table stakes for ethical employment.

> every ad-driven revenue model is at odds with privacy

Contextual advertising doesn't have this problem and in one recent case switching to it turned out to be more profitable:

https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/03/stop_tracking_increas... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23737352

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