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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>Missing from this is the reality that the modern world increasingly requires using these applications

From the second paragraph in the linked article:

>Location History is turned off by default, so a user must take several affirmative steps before Google begins tracking and storing his Location History data. [...] Roughly one-third of active Google users have enabled Location History.

This is specifically about the opt-in location history service, not some sort of opt-out/mandatory location reporting that's on android phones.

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Google used to (still does?) disable many features of Maps if location history was disabled. I kept it off, but could easily see many people felt forced to give up on their privacy for the convenience.

Source? I remember them disabling search history if you didn't sign in, but not any other critical features. Moreover as I mentioned in my previous comment, only a third has this feature enabled, so whatever feature google is withholding must not be that important to most people.

Search history is a pretty nice feature to lose unless you volunteer to share your information. I had multiple addresses I had to store elsewhere because Maps would purposely forget them.

>Search history is a pretty nice feature to lose unless you volunteer to share your information

I didn't say that you had share location history to get search history, only to sign in. Maybe there was some point in the past where sharing location history was tied to having search history, but I don't remember it, and it's certainly not the case today. If you think that's the case you'll have to provide some third party corroboration.

I'm confused, there's 3 separate things being talked about in this thread.

You do not have to share your location to store search history.

Maps should not store addresses you search for without you signing in.

> "so whatever feature google is withholding must not be that important to most people."

correction: to most institutional investors that take precedent over the end user people

This is false. The "Location History" setting that the article is talking about is a different feature entirely from the "Web and App Activity" setting that you are referencing. "Location History" has never been required for any Google Maps features other than (obviously) Timeline, AFAIK.

I have it disabled and at the very least I have to type my location in every time on desktop because it doesn't track frequently visited places locally

1/3 of active google users is a lot of people to opt into giving away their privacy. Either they actually don't understand what they did, understand but were forced in some way or understand and truly believe the value of the service was worth the privacy invasion. It is pure speculation on my part but my guess is that the first two reasons dwarf the third. The decision in question though would, in my view, only have merit if the third answer was overwhelmingly the case.

Have you considered the possibility that the average person doesn't care that much about privacy? That's entirely consistent with other things you can observe, like the lack of response to the Snowden leaks, or how commonly excuses like "nothing to hide" are invoked.

> Have you considered the possibility that the average person doesn't care that much about privacy?

I have. I considered it in depth and did a good deal of psychological research on it. Then I went out onto the street and asked people; dozens and dozens of ordinary people, old, young, rich, poor...

Result: People really care about privacy.

You can read all about it in the podcast and blog I am not allowed to mention here.

What you're alluding to I think is the idea that people do not fully understand the link between technology and privacy violation.

Our view here is also biased. The idea that "people don't care that much about privacy" naturally gets bandied around amongst developers for whom profitable software designs do violate people's privacy.

Why are you not allowed to post the podcast here? HN rules or rules for the podcast? Or something else?

When you say “profitable software designs” my bet is that if you have any person off the street a “tour” of google and how their data is actually treated, more than 1/3 of them would be okay with sharing that information, and wouldn’t believe it to be a violation of their privacy.

What happened to Google on privacy could easily happen to any company- people complained about the total amount of data Google had, the gut response of the devs was

“oh, you can trust us, we’re not using it for anything nefarious, just features/debugging”

And then Apple took that and used it as a marketing opportunity.

And now, once you get to a certain size, you start having to develop without metrics/logs, or go through a bunch of red tape to get them.

> Have you considered the possibility that the average person doesn't care that much about privacy?

it's not that they don't care - they didnt think they need to care. There's a big difference. Implicit trust in the data usage is the key here.

On the one hand, this implicit trust means the customer is a really good one. But abuses of this trust is inevitable imho, and eventually, it will be made public if it happened. Only then, will those average person actually reveal their real preference - that they do care!

And to me this actually also makes it very qurlestionable, whether actual consent existed, or someone simple abused their uninformedness.

I believe choice three covers this possibility so, yes, I explicitly considered it and gave my view that I think the other two choices, in my opinion, likely dwarf the third. Further, I think the Snowden leaks and google privacy abuses are likely linked. It isn't that people don't care, it is that they don't believe their choice matters or that there will be protections if they take the other choice. If your privacy is going to be abused weather you use the feature or not, why not use the feature? It is the only rational 'choice'. Things like the Snowden leaks show that there is, unfortunately, likely a lot of truth to this view.

Do you carry a smartphone?

HN is not a forum for “gotcha!” posts like this. If you mean to say something like “by carrying a cell phone you are already enabling AT&T or T-Mobile to legally sell your fully identifiable and detailed location history to anyone with cash” just say that. Not everybody knows exactly what you know, and sharing knowledge is the solution to that.

Yes, it's a Librem 5 with GNU/Linux and hardware kill switches which cut all networks when I need 100% privacy.

I believe choice two covers your implications. Not having a smartphone greatly impacts daily life and would make earning a living more of a challenge too. My argument is not that people shouldn't use these apps/devices, it is that because they are integral to daily life it shouldn't be allowed to abuse the user's privacy. In essence, people are given a false 'choice' which is just insult to injury and gives legal cover for abusing someone's privacy.

I have a hard time believing that one third of any user base ever changes any particular default setting, much less something this buried.

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