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Comment by cuuupid | Hacker News Reader

No one in the chain of comments you are replying to has mentioned anything about Google, and on HackerNews you will find the majority sentiment is against spying in all forms - especially by Google, Meta, etc.

Even if we interact with your rhetoric[1] at face value, there is a big difference between data going to your own elected government versus that of a foreign adversary.

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

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So you are implying at the end that it is better that your secrets (“telemetry”) go to your local agencies and to possible relatives or family who work on Gmail, Uber, etc ?

Yes, naturally I trust my own elected government, or possible relatives/family, far more than I trust a foreign adversary

I'm sorry but why? Your government can use this data to actually hurt you and put you on the no-fly list, or even put you in prison.

But a foreign government is limited to what it can do to you if you are not a very high-value target.

So I try as much as possible to use software and services from a non-friendly government because this is the highest guarantee that my data will not be used against me in the future.

And since we can all agree that any data that is collected will end up with the government some way or another. Using forging software is the only real guarantee.

Unless the software is open source and its server is self-hosted, it should be considered Spyware.

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