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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

> Lessons learnt for both Apple and Google in recent weeks then. If you want to turn our phones into AI-fueled machines, then let us know what you’re doing before you do it, and give us the opportunity to say yes or no. Otherwise it fuels fear of the unknown. And if AI is to bed down on our smartphones with access to all our apps and data, then it needs to establish high trust bars and stick to them rigidly.

Is that really a lesson learnt?

Didn't Google already know what the reaction would be, before they consciously (given it's a significant launch) decided to do it that way?

Why would they care about a little blogger noise?

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i can't wait for the "there's been confusion about what we've done" message to come out. cuz its always us, right? the customer is always wrong in this era of techno-feudalism.

The customer is always wrong because the customer is too small to matter. Google's scale gives them all the power in the relationship, undermining the market's role in forcing them to compromise in negotions. We would need something like consumer unions that can collectively bargain on behalf of customers to offset this power imbalance.

Or, antitrust laws that can break them into smaller units, recognizing that strict monopoly is not the only market failure scenario. That would be good too.

>consumer unions that can collectively bargain on behalf of customers

I think that is just called "government".

Which is too easily captured by malevolent interests.

"'Government is bad because it can be captured by malevolent interests', say malevolent interests involved in capturing government."

If it's not wrong -- which as we've all seen, it evidently isn't -- then what difference does it make who says it?

Suppose I come to your house and start breaking your windows, and I tell you that you don't need windows because it's so easy for me to break them. Is that a good argument, or is the real problem the person that's breaking your windows?

It's true that government is vulnerable to capture, but from that it does not follow that government is bad. It is more logical to conclude that the problem is unbounded personal enrichment allowing individuals to catapult themselves above the law. Corporations are the Roman Legions of the 21st century.

Corporations are also vulnerable to capture, after all, and that is their default condition. Why should we not treat powerful conglomerate corporations with the same skepticism as governments, or armies? Their internal structure is an inefficient command economy, why is this not also treated as a problem? Their scale, diversification, and entrenchment, have all allowed them to escape the regulatory power of market competition.

I can buy a Polestar or a VW or a Chevy instead of a Tesla, if I don't like the way Elon Musk runs his company. I have no such option if I don't like the way he runs the government.

The problem isn't the wealth. The problem is the power.

Power follows wealth, regardless of whether there's a government or not, and while the economy is not a zero sum game, power is - economic inequality matters.

The correlation between wealth and power is even stronger in countries where government is weak, and it is thus the function of government to prevent wealth from obtaining unchecked power. It is no wonder that wealth would seek to destroy government. That we appear to be losing this fight does not invalidate its importance.

You may have your choice of oligarchs to buy your car from, but what they will never allow you is the choice to compete with them on a level playing field. A cartel can allow internal competition, but they will all cooperate to crush upstarts.

It's government that interferes with competition, not "oligarchs" or "cartels." Otherwise I could buy a Chinese EV. The only way the "oligarchs" and the "cartels" can interfere with my decision is by using their wealth to capture and subvert the government.

Again: the problem is the power.

While I am sympathetic to the notion that government is supposed to regulate corporations, it is a grave misunderstanding to conflate it with either unions or corporations.

It appears to me that this article, at least the title, is wrong. The update simply adds a local only api that apps can ise, it doesn't do any scanning. And Google sent out a notification that they plan to use this API in an update to Google Chat. Notably, it will not (at least for now) communicate the scan results back to Google.

you're not the customer! YOU'RE THE PRODUCT!

Indeed, but lip service is grudgingly paid to the notion that we are not, lest we succumb to the delusion that we know what's good for us.

Lesson learnt, way back: it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Forgiveness? Thats a wrong term here and inapplicable. Loss of trust is the topic, you don't simply ask for forgiveness if you mess up, you work your ass off with building that trust again over lengthy period of time. And even then its not 100% back, trust is a finicky thing.

This leads to loss of revenue, maybe small maybe not. Ie if google is paired with some mentality and/or actions of current US government, US phones and all internet-enabled electronic products everywhere outside of US should be viewed with same scrutiny Huawei was treated previously, with very similar actions.

facebook 2000's

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