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> Visual or audio representations of the amount of data they're collecting are hardly an argument for why it's bad, as the logic goes "see, they're collecting a lot of data about your browsing... ...and that's bad" but it doesn't fill in the logical leap in the middle. You are going to be a lot more persuasive if you can fill that in instead of making fancy graphs.

But that just means the novel representations are a step forward, just not the whole solution.

Making the invisible visible creates a situation where people can start asking questions about that thing, instead of ignoring or being ignorant of it.

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>But that just means the novel representations are a step forward, just not the whole solution.

No. The part where people argue Google is collecting a lot of data is sound. The part that's missing is why is this bad.

No chart, no numbers, no sounds, or anything else will in their own argue why this data collection is bad. This argument as to why is what's missing, and until nominal privacy advocates start putting together coherent arguments as to why it's bad (and, importantly, why these costs do not merit the benefits), they're not making forward progress.

This form of data collection and use has broken a status quo that has existed as long as life itself. Shouldn't it more conventionally be the ones in favour of this change to provide evidence of its benefits rather than the other way around?

They already did. People vote with their feet and attention, and people continue to flock to free services powered by targeted ads, systematically out competing services that had other models. If you don't like these services, don't use them; they don't have subpoena power. However, you might find the other options to be lacking, because they have inferior business models that do not allow them to compete on product quality.

Not all cards were on the table back then when. The general public and perhaps even Google and such themselves didn't really know what they were getting into or where this was headed - at least not today's scale, ubiquitousness, or invasiveness. Hence I would argue that this contract or trade of sorts was not a conscious choice.

By the way, for what its worth, I really do appreciate all the time and effort you are spending on this discussion and the defence of your stance in it.

People continue to flock to new, free, targeted ads powered platforms. Look at the enormous growth of TikTok in the US; it has exploded well after the discussion on targeted advertising entered the American zeitgeist (Cambridge Analytica happened in 2018). In light of this, I don't think you can argue that Americans would have chosen something different if they knew more about targeted ads -- they are still, to this day, choosing to join free targeted ad platforms because they like using apps with that business model even when the app is effectively controlled by a foreign power.

I appreciate your kind words. I think people tend to be pretty myopic about targeted ads ("I don't like them/find them creepy") and fail to reason about all the positive things they are getting because of them, and as a consequence they fail to suggest alternatives that are actually better for the general population.

I think it's sad, because a huge amount of good for humanity has come out of Google search and other Google products being free to access while generating enough revenue to truly innovate for 20+ years. It didn't have to be this way, and one can easily imagine a world where Google was paywalled behind institution licenses, limiting its access to only powerful companies and wealthy universities. That world would be so much worse for all of us, and it was avoided because Google found the ads business model. People are now attacking that model but aren't suggesting truly viable alternatives (Google's biz dev is hard at work trying to crack this nut as well).

you can go learn about state surveillance more generally to answer that instead of handwaving it away as 'seems worth it to me'

Google making ad auctions more efficient and "state surveillance" aren't the same thing. Did you legitimately not know this or are you being intellectually dishonest in your argumentation?

Google making ad auctions more efficient becomes state surveillance the instant a subpoena arrives at their door. You might believe you are safe from a subpoena because you haven't done anything wrong, but you would be wrong about that:

* Things like geofence warrants are used to surveil people who are merely within a given radius of a crime.

* Subpoenas don't have to be for criminal cases, they can also be civil or investigatory (eg congressional subpoenas).

* Things you don't think are wrong are often crimes. Abortion clinic visits in Texas are the most obvious example. Other examples are things like using someone else's WiFi without permission, using a fake name online, or carrying around things like screwdrivers (which are a burglary tool) or permanent markers (which are used for vandalism). Estimates suggest that the average American breaks 3-5 federal laws per day.

A couple of examples:

Alexa recordings were used in a criminal court: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18089090/amazon-ech...

Amazon received 2000 subpoenas: https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/08/subpoenahappy_us_gove...

Copy and paste from elsewhere because it's the same talking point over and over: big tech is not the government, and your complaint is with the government. The FBI could just as easily setup a StingRay network [1] and capture all cell information. The only protection against that is robust digital civil rights legislation protecting Americans from governmental over reach, not lampooning big tech companies for having data. It's not like Google is willing to just shovel data at anyone who asks nicely, they will actively fight the government on nominally lawful requests it thinks are unreasonable/won't hold up to further legal scrutiny [2].

If you're going to go after someone, at least go after the right people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/18/google-...

Stingrays and other technical things that people could do are a lot more expensive than just asking Google or Verizon for their records. Also, that kind of indiscriminate tracking is a fourth amendment violation, so the government actually can't do it legally (and the evidence gathered by such a technique can get thrown out in court). Both of those things make a big difference.

The right people to go after are the ones who are not bound by the fourth amendment and who are creating a huge pool of data that is available for the government to grab. Technical solutions that collate data have been very useful tools for government overreach over the last century. IBM's census tracking system in the 1930's is a very well-known example of this sort of technology: a well-meaning innovation that efficiently organized Germany's demographic data and made it accessible... to the Nazis who wanted to find Jews.

Here's an example of the government using data from big tech that they would never have been able to collect themselves due to the fourth amendment: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18089090/amazon-ech...

Here are the stats on subpoenas, search warrants, and court orders that Google has received, showing how they have found over 80% of them to be not unreasonable: https://transparencyreport.google.com/user-data/overview?use...

If you were able to fight a subpoena for your own records (for example, because you owned the data instead of Google), I promise you that percentage would be a lot lower, solely because the incentives are different. Google doesn't particularly care about protecting you. Google cares a lot more than that about protecting its status with politicians. What this means is that they will do the minimum possible review on a subpoena for data on your account to not get sued by you.

Thank you for this concise information. This is disturbing to me.

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