> "Like most people, I don't like to be tracked. I also am the founder of the search engine that doesn't track you, DuckDuckGo."
It pains me to hear intelligent people talk about being "tracked" as something "bad" a priori. While there are certainly plenty of examples of abuse of knowledge, I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." Let me explain...
Google is a service provider that I frequent, just like my coffee roaster or my stock broker or whatever. Over time, service providers develop a relationship with their customers based on knowledge of that customer. This knowledge helps inform how they provide and improve their service. My coffee roaster knows what kinds of coffee I like and makes appropriate recommendations when new beans arrive. My stock broker knows what kinds of risks I like to take and gives appropriate investment direction.
Ok, so I don't really have a stock broker but... My point is: I appreciate that google is aware enough to know that when I search for "hash salt" I'm not talking about potatoes. DDG shows me recipes and first.
The problem (as with most things that are hot-button issues) is that the most talked about thing - "tracking" - is a red herring. The REAL issue is accountability. True information lockdown rarely benefits anyone, but openness without accountability is useless and downright dangerous.
Suggesting people flee one provider's services and head to other providers who are not concretely more accountable (just because they "say so" doesn't make it true) is simply being petty. We should instead be spending out breath advocating for greater accountability in the system as a whole.
His point is more about not putting all your eggs in one basket; you certainly don't tell your barista about an upcoming physician's appointment, or that you are in the market for a house. Your barista is also disconnected from parties who may leverage the information you provide him/her. Similarly, you don't tell your broker that you prefer Ethiopian coffee. Google offers so many services that it has a much broader insight into who you are. To the privacy-conscious, that's an unacceptable fact. Nothing to be pained about.
Except the author then proceeds to toss all his eggs into Apple's basket. No, it's not about putting all the eggs in one basket, it's about paranoidly avoiding Google at all costs for some unknown reason.
What are you talking about? Of 12-14 services he listed, 4 were from Apple (iOS, Mobile Safari, Apple Maps for directions, and iCloud for Calendar sync).
And quite likely, he is not paranoidily avoiding Google, but partly experimenting as he is running one of the very few companies that are directly trying to compete with Google in search.
- Safari/iOS will let Apple know you're in a market for a house
- Safari will let Apple know you like Ethiopain coffee
- Also it will probably allow them to track your searches
- Along with Calendar sync and maps Apple knows both where you are currently and where you'll be next
While not all of his eggs are in one basket, there's an awful lot of them providing an awful lot of "tracking" information to one entity.
Sure, if he's experimenting with replacing Google's services that's a valid reason.
You gotta be kidding me here. You don't explicitly have to login to any Apple service when you are using Safari. However, when you are using Chrome - somehow if you login to Gmail you are logged in to the browser. You login to gmail on Safari, you are logged in only to gmail. There's a difference. Sorry I don't mean to be offensive but this aspect shouldn't be overlooked.
Lets say you login to gmail in chrome. You open another tab and there are you are signed in again. This is the google+ crap I guess. The only option is to use an incognito window.
The only difference is that Apple is not an advertising company. Google explicitly uses your information to advertise against you. Apple is not yet in that vertical.
iAd is a mobile advertising platform developed by Apple Inc. for its iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad line of mobile devices allowing third-party developers to directly embed advertisements into their applications. Announced on April 8, 2010, iAd is part of Apple's iOS 4, originally slated for release on June 21, 2010, the actual date was changed to July 1, 2010.
Safari has 3rd party cookies turned off by default. And how many iAds have you seen?
Also iAds have quite strict requirements as to what kind of identifying information they receive from the device.
Google/Android doesn't have any qualms about giving every bit of information they can get to the advertisers, that's the main source of income for Google. Also, 3rd party cookies will not be turned off by default in any Google product ever.
since when is advertising strictly an adversarial arrangement?
Websites such as real estate websites are basically just ads, yet it still offers a service (namely discovery). trailers for movies are also ads but I still like watching them.
There's a lot of disgusting/misleading behaviour in advertising, but it's not strictly an Us vs. Them proposition.
Real estate websites feature the product obviously, the real estate. With Google's website, your eyeballs on adverts is the product, and it's in Google's interest to know what you like to give you relevant adverts.
When you are a visitor to a website, it's whether you are a customer vs product proposition.
Actually it's more like going to your Dr appt and realizing they have a barista onsite... of course you're not going to tell the barista why you're going to the Dr, and the barista isn't going to know your full medical history, there is a pretty large separation of concerns there. Same applies to big companies. There are really big barriers up between services like there are between the Dr and the on site barista.
To further this analogy, what if you went to the onsite barista and when you ordered your coffee the barista told you that you're allergic to one of the seasonings. That's helpful and relevant and I think this is where most people start panicking but if the Dr has a Lot of accountability which is what the top comment is suggesting is the main concern, then you will know that the Dr isn't sharing full medical history but rather just what is relevant, your allergies. This is convenient, and in my imaginary scenario just saved the person from a lot of trouble. Also in this imaginary scenario the patient opted-into this sharing of knowledge.
I know this may not be a popular opinion, please share why instead of down voting me. I'm eager to learn and a down vote won't help me :P
That may be true of doctors with coffee bars, but it is absolutely NOT true of Google. Google is an advertising company, period. All of the thousand things they do are for one purpose: to sell advertising based on getting better and better at knowing the customer and targeting ads you're likely to click on.
Even if Google does say that some app is firewalled, the implied follow up is "...until customers stop caring" or "...until the law allows us to use it". Everything they do is intended to facilitate advertising, even if not yet.
The video on deman service for UK "Channel 4" has coke-cola ads that take my username (from the 4OD login) and superimpose text on a bottle image.
It's really creepy, even though it's obvious and trivial.
It's also counter productive - I haven't used 4OD for ages precisely because of that creep factor. Even though I knew they were doing it before the ad.
This is such a reductionist argument it can be applied to any action done by any group of people.
"Anything any company does is in the end goal to make money" is basically this argument. "Anything a university does is to get grants".
You're reducing the agency of people who work there and their personal objectives to nothing. Google has many different projects which aren't just about pushing ads . How are driverless cars selling ads? The cost of Google Fiber largely outweighs the advertising revenue. etc.
The issue under debate is not profit but rather the use of private data. Americans do not begrudge anyone their right to free enterprise. But many (including the OP) do care about the uses of their personal data. Google's activities are all oriented toward using and learning from personal data.
In the hypothetical doctor's office with attached coffee bar to which I was responding, we can see how it would be money-making but there's no good reason to assume that there would be a misappropriation of personal data between the two parts of the business. In Google's case it's the opposite: by default everything they do is oriented toward collecting and using data, as personal as possible. Sensible people would assume that if Google hasn't yet used the driverless car to find a way to better target advertising, they've got top minds thinking about how to do it.
This goes both ways -- the sheer amount of personal data that is entrusted to Google requires that they maintain a basic level of trust with their users.
If they were to flip a switch and turn Gmail-mined data into a dating site, or something, users would leave en masse. And good luck trying to entice new users with an expectation that their information would be misused.
And Google has already misused their trust with Google+ and the YouTube "real name" integration. As the integration becomes more complete, the ramifications of subtle changes become more problematic and hard to predict.
See, I don't get the whole furor over this. Most people just seem to be using it to join the Oh Noes, Google is Evil crowd without actually explaining how it negatively affects them personally.
I've always just used my real name online - so instead of having an email address like sexy_asian_chick88@hotmail.com, I just used my name. It's a little less embarrassing when you have to give it to people, and I sort of got over those sorts of email addresses in grade 5.
Sure, that means people can link what I write online, but it's hardly worse than if they just searched for my nickname, and did some legwork. And really, what am I writing online that is so private and secretive that I need to firewall it from my actual identity? I wouldn't be having such discussions on a public forum online - I'd do it offline. If
Now, sure, if I was living under a oppressive regime, and had to get data out - but let's be honest, as a percentage, how many of us HNers fall into this category?
And even then, would you really be doing it on YouTube? YouTube is a bastion of stupid (but funny) cat videos, parody videos, movie trailers and music covers.
I'm fairly sure a whistleblower would be using something a little more appropriate, and where privacy was actually a feature.
And quite frankly, considering the awful quality if YouTube comments, I'd applaud any attempts to make people even slightly accountable for the awful and often hateful c*ap they write on YouTube comments.
Great - it works for you. But you go further and claim that it must then work for everybody.
> I've always just used my real name online - so instead of having an email address like sexy_asian_chick88@hotmail.com, I just used my name. It's a little less embarrassing when you have to give it to people, and I sort of got over those sorts of email addresses in grade 5.
You can't see the value of bob@corp.example.com and barbera@mytransself.example.com for someone to blog about the widgets their company makes and also about the best places to buy clothes?
> sure, if I was living under a oppressive regime, and had to get data out
People are beaten every day in the US for being gay or trans or whatever. Sometimes murdered. Often discriminated against. While I feel Brandon Eich's opposition to gay marriage is abhorrent I kind of feel sorry for him being kick out of a job for it.
> And really, what am I writing online that is so private and secretive that I need to firewall it from my actual identity? I wouldn't be having such discussions on a public forum online - I'd do it offline.
There are so many reasons people might want to talk about something in a public forum but not want to tie it to their identity. At least, they may start wanting to keep it private before they reveal their identity. Why deny them that choice? But here's a list:-
- battered women
- battered men
- victims of sexual abuse
- members of the glbt community, especially if they're preparing to disclose to family members etc.
- people with "embarrassing" diseases.
- people who face stigma - being religious or not religious in a not religious or religious area; having severe and enduring mental health problems, etc.
This is just a partial list! There are very many more!
> And quite frankly, considering the awful quality if YouTube comments, I'd applaud any attempts to make people even slightly accountable for the awful and often hateful c*ap they write on YouTube comments.
Have you read comments under newspaper articles recently? Real names, horrible comments.
Improving comment quality is important. So far it seems that you need to set expectations and have some kind of moderation. This can work even with anonymity. See, for example, early /R9K/ (at least when they had the robot image) for an example of not terrible commenting without real names. But some people really strongly prefer real names - http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/UseRealNames
You've just listed several groups of people who are discriminated against. I certainly feel for these people.
However, this appears orthogonal to the issue of whether YouTube (a public forum) requires posters to use their actual name, and not a fake name.
I mean, think about it - is a public forum the sort of place that you would want to be posting private content you don't want linked to you?
If I was an oppressed person, and wanted to talk to somebody - friends, family, counsellor - there are other mediums available. I mean, gosh, I could meet up in person? Or I could pick up a telephone? (Assuming my enemies weren't the NSA.) I could write them a letter? I could send them an encrypted email. The list goes on.
What benefit do I possibly gain from publicly outing myself on a public forum, fake name or not? Why not use a private forum?
If I was an oppressed person, and I wanted to vent in my own community - there are private gated ways I could do this. There are real life meetups. We could meet in a coffee shop. There are private discussion forums, where you control the servers. There are Usenet groups etc.
I really don't get people's obsession with posting everything publicly by default. It's like people posting every time they do a poo on their Twitter feed - why?
Or let's look at one of your examples - people with embarrassing diseases. Is this where people with symptoms refuse to see a doctor, but would rather post on a online forum, so that anybody can chime in with their opinion? Have you seen some of the idiocy that's spouted in these forums? shakes head. Dude, go see your doctor, seriously. Firstly, it's guaranteed to be confidential, and secondly, this is somebody you're paying for their professional opinion, as opposed to some guy in their mum's basement having watched too many episodes of House M.D., and posting under the alias Dr_John_Hopkin_MD.
Or say you were filing a victim's report. The police aren't exactly going to say to you - oh, you need to file a police report? Gosh, you should do it in a...YouTube comment! You will go into a police station, and fill in a paper report.
The world would be a better place if people learnt to live a little less online, and didn't default to public-view on everything.
....
I don't see how this is related
If it's public, it's public. Eventually, it will probably be linked back to you.
"I mean, think about it - is a public forum the sort of place that you would want to be posting private content you don't want linked to you?"
So, "subversive", against the status quo ideas, should only be limited to my neighbor? So that there is not enough exposure and they just die out? How cute.
"so instead of having an email address like sexy_asian_chick88@hotmail.com, I just used my name. It's a little less embarrassing"
Nice, loaded example. Strange you didn't use "I'm a naive idiot" as an email example, to "explain" why using your real name would be better. ..And, btw: Sexy asian chick? Pics or it didn't happen.
"And really, what am I writing online that is so private and secretive that I need to firewall it from my actual identity?"
You may be boring, unimaginative, and a herd follower, but that doesn't mean everybody else is.
I'm not sure if that's an ad-hominem, but I'll bite.
Yes, I am boring - I'm not afraid to admit it.
I am just another of the 6 billion or so souls floating in this rock in space. I don't think of myself as a special snowflake, or as some secret government operative, or somebody who's smarter than all the plebs around me. And I sleep perfectly fine knowing that =). You use the word herd follower as if it's some kind of grave insult?
I'm not an anarchist, nor am I V from V for Vendetta. Ergo, my argument, I don't really have any issues with people seeing what I post online, since most of it's just banal rubbish. You're not going to get any national secrets from reading all of my online postings.
I have friends who are paranoid with security/privacy - and I respect them for that, I just don't understand it. I'm more likely to be the target of an online spammer or phishing attack, than a government agent trying to see if I am against the Party.
However, _if_ I were an anarchist, do you really think I'd be posting my secret plans to overthrow the US government on a YouTube comment?
This is precisely my point, everybody seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill. Who cares if Google makes you actually identify yourself when you comment on the 50 billionth cat video.
What if knowing you prefer Ethiopian coffee would make your insurance company charge you more because statistically these people are more prone to medical issues? Would you tell them in a heart beat?
The pendulum swings both ways, and this is the reason why all of this should be opt-in.
Just because something isn't currently happening doesn't mean that it won't. You're ignoring the fact that the data isn't transient. It persists into the future, at which point these things can (and probably will) happen.
It's like arguing in favor of a monarchy just because the current ruler is just, competent and benevolent; while ignoring the possibility that the next ruler will be violent and vicious.
Just because something isn't currently happening doesn't mean it will either. You're ignoring the fact that, if Google started abusing your information, people would stream away from them in droves and Google is more than aware of that.
Your monarchy analogy doesn't work either because, in a monarchy, you don't have the choice of leaving it other than leaving the country. With Google, and every other internet company (they all track you), you can leave on a whim.
> Just because something isn't currently happening doesn't mean it will either.
I never said that there was certainty that it would. Only that it is possible. You can't hand-wave away possibilities with "it's not currently happening now."
Well, you're hand-waving that it can so it works both ways. Again, you're ignoring that people can walk away from this and nobody else is doing the exact same thing.
"if Google started abusing your information, people would stream away from them in droves and Google is more than aware of that"
I, like you, also get a daily email notice of what google is actually doing and planning, every morning. Larry also, sometimes, attaches sexy pics of himself. /sarc
Except maybe your barista happens to know a real estate agent and will get you an amazing deal on a new house. Something you might not have gotten if you didn't tell them...
Actually, I do tell my broker I like Ethiopian coffee, if I like it, there are probably many more like me, find me some shares in a company that deals in Ethiopian coffee!
> I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building."
That is just another term (and a significantly creepier one) for the same thing, for those people who don't want that kind of relationship. A good rule of thumb would be to assume that people who "don't want to be tracked" have already considered the fact that tracking may help the company in question improve its service to them -- after all, this is frequently given as the justification for tracking.
From this viewpoint ("I don't want that kind of relationship, and am prepared to live with the associated service degradation"), it is logical to switch to services for which your envisaged greater accountability isn't necessary.
Incidentally, I have issues with DDG simply because it will return Android programming results from 2011 in preference to those from 2014, despite the entire state of play having changed in those three years, because it was a really good result in 2011 -- or because it simply doesn't seem to index as much of the Web. These are just anecdotes, but in my personal experience the "relationship" I have with Google search isn't a very large part of why it's good.
"It pains me to hear intelligent people talk about being "tracked" as something "bad" a priori."
Tracking is bad when you know little to nothing about what is being is tracked about you and how that information is used. While you might get targeted or personalised results as a result of tracking, that is likely just a small outcome of the data collected about you. Who knows what else is being analysed or number-crunched about your online behaviour? If you read Google's privacy policy, the most notable aspect is how little it tells you. Nothing about how your data is aggregated, who sees your data, how long that data is kept for, whether it's anonymised. Is the data collected to "protect Google and our users" (their words) used solely for that purpose? (For example, providing your date-of-birth for age verification and your mobile number for two-factor authentication.) Or is this information also used for tracking and profile-building? These are all reasonable questions to ask any company that tracks you online or asks for your personal information. But Google aren't giving answers. And Google arguably tracks online behaviour more than anyone else.
A big example of the intentionally murky and everchanging privacy policy confusion was in how it applied to student emails in Google Apps for Education:
Nice to hear thoughts on this subject i agree with.
Myself, i've long used Google and hadn't cared at all what information they collect about me. Rather, i openly give them information. Sure, if the world turns to hell and suddenly the government is at my door because Google "knew too much" then the naysayers can laugh at me all they like.. Then again, the world has turned to hell already, so is it really a time to laugh?
In the mean time, i want to give Google my info, because "Google Now" is a great example of a service attempting to predict my needs. Keeping up to date with my life, and giving me information i want, without having to even ask for it. I don't want dumb computers, i want intelligent meaningful interactions, tailored to my life. And i can't get that by being a black box.
Tracking is an issue in that your interests, preferences, and proclivities are being used to make others richer. Hey if that's ok with you then I'm cool with that. I'm not cool with me doing that. I run ad blockers. If you make a living from ads then offer me a paid-for alternative. I avoid everything Google. I use a Windows Phone without a Microsoft account. If an app wants access to my contacts it doesn't get installed. My blog is my own code because I own what I write so I want control. In the absolute sense. I'd rather pay than use a free service, because being a cynic I don't believe altruism in it's truest sense exists.
> your interests, preferences, and proclivities are being used to make others richer.
Your logic here villainizes a behavior simply because it benefits someone else.
Let's say that every day you stop at Starbucks and order a cappuccino. The people who work at there recognize that you always show up at 8:10am and order the same thing so they begin to make sure it is ready for you every day so you don't have to wait. Did you give them explicit permission to notice your habits? No. Does their behavior benefit them? Yes, they keep you satisfied and paying obscene amounts of money for coffee on a daily basis. It's mutually beneficial. Now an employee of Starbucks could potentially give information about your daily routine to someone else who was looking for you (say to the police for whatever reason) but you don't hear anyone lamenting the presence of eyeballs in the heads of baristas as massive privacy invasions.
I believe what you are really getting at is that these companies like Google and others can - and have at times - abuse the information they have available. This is exactly my point: what's needed is greater accountability.
It sounds like people are cross-discussing what they're really trying to get at the heart of,
Tracking is a tool.
It can be used for good and for bad. It has been used for good or bad. A healthy debate about the pros and cons and discussing choices one has with their tools/tech is vital to this.
Tracking is an aspect of privacy, but it is not the entirety of it.
It would be great if that was the discussion, but it seems like many people consider tracking to be an absolute bad. Thus, any service improvement that might come of it is tainted by its association with tracking.
It sounds a lot more like you don't actually understand how advertising works.
No, tracking helps to provide you with better services, full stop. Since you use an adblocker, tracking isn't making anyone money at all. Your personal information is worth exactly $0.00 on its own.
> No, tracking helps to provide you with better services, full stop
No. Tracking is about allowing advertisers to better target people that they want to advertise to. A side-effect is providing you with 'better' services.
> No. Tracking is about allowing advertisers to better target people that they want to advertise to. A side-effect is providing you with 'better' services.
Those two are NOT exclusive. Targetted advertising only works because you the user find it more useful.
And, no, it's not about better ads, it's about better services. The vast, VAST majority of tracking is never used in targetted ads. Targetted advertising is a very wide net, not hyper-focused.
> My point is: I appreciate that google is aware enough to know that when I search for "hash salt" I'm not talking about potatoes. DDG shows me recipes and first.
That's the reason I always come back to google and search logged in. Almost all my searches are computer or more generally electronic related. On other search engines I get useless results.
> I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building."
I'm fine with relationship building. Google can give me better search results based on other activity they observe; I'm perfectly fine with that. They're simply trying to better their product for the user.
What I'm not fine with is the fact that Google is an advertising company. We're not the end-users, we're the product. Intuition says Google is selling the valuable information they collect to third-party advertisers. This means that our valuable information is being leaked to third parties I'm not sure I can trust.
At the core of it, I only want to give my information out to parties I trust. I don't care if it's valuable information or not, I just want to be in control. I don't want my info being sold to some advertising company -- after all, I'll only buy their product after I build a relationship with Google and they can provide the most relevant links.
You're right; I was wrong. It makes complete sense for an advertiser to say, "Sell adds to people interested in X" and for i.e. Google to show those ads.
Even for less reputable companies, it seems you're right: it makes more sense to sell ads for a keyword rather than to make the advertisers sort through a mass of data. Is that the case?
Truthfully. I would have no problem with the amount of data google aggregated on me, if I could depend on them not using that data against me, or to manipulate me, or to sell it to someone who would do either of those two.
If someone came up to me and said "I'll give you 5 dollars if you give me the names, email addresses, phone numbers, and personal vulnerabilities of all your friends", agreeing to that would be considered a massive breach of trust and a horrible act. On the web it seems like standard procedure.
I will give you that tracking isn't innately bad, but it is an act of trust, and the question is: do you trust google?
This is too myopic of a question. Do you trust Apple? Do you trust Microsoft? Do you trust ____? There are arbitrarily many of these questions to ask.
What really needs to be asked is: how can we establish levels of trust in companies and services that handle our digital information that approaches the level of trust we have in our direct, inter-personal connections?
Not ratting on your friend is trust established through close social connections. Trusting Google to not sell you out is a level of trust established... how?
>Trusting Google to not sell you out is a level of trust established... how?
It's trust from potential destruction. If Google was obviously using your email contents to sell you out, then people would stop using the service. It's like how people don't want to give out their email address to certain organisations out of fear of spam and phishing.
Google can't exist without that trust, so they're incentivised to act in a trustworthy manner.
Ironically, exactly because of the intense scrutiny they face with every small decision they make, I have a lot more faith in Google's inability to be evil than just about any other player. I certainly can't spend the time to verify that all the other players I might give my data to are honest and well intentioned will always stay that way. But at least with Google I have pretty good faith that others are going to do that for me.
Sometimes I wonder if the critics of Google's privacy realise they may be having the opposite effect they intend in this way ...
> The REAL issue is accountability. True information lockdown rarely benefits anyone, but openness without accountability is useless and downright dangerous.
Google is accountable. The problem is that they are accountable to advertisers, currently to the tune of about $55 billion per year.
For consumers to hold Google accountable, they have to fight against their addiction to free web content and services, and start directly paying for what they consume. It's important to note that "Google is free!" is an outright lie, and in fact we are paying more for Google through advertising than if we just paid straight up[1].
> We should instead be spending our breath advocating for greater accountability in the system as a whole.
The best way to do that is to advocate against ad-supported websites and services, and to advocate (and invent if missing) honest ways to get necessary revenue[2].
[2] I avoid the term "monetization" which to me is a word invented to make it easier to be dishonest.
[EDIT] Sigh. As usual, either Google or advertising apologists are downvoting without supplying a reason. Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Too many people here have a salary dependent on advertising, or an identity dependent on Google fanboyism.
> The best way to do that is to advocate against ad-supported websites and services, and to advocate (and invent if missing) honest ways to get necessary revenue
I like this. I mean, not gonna lie I love free stuff as much as the next guy but most services that offer to remove ads for a subscription (Spotify/Pandora for example) I pay for.
I provided plenty of facts and logic behind my statements. Did you even follow my link? And how do you refute my claims? You label them "grandiloquent" and say I must be wearing too much tinfoil. I bow deeply to your logic, reason and debate skills.
It's obvious from your comment history that you're a Google fanboy. And an Amazon fanboy. And an Apple hater. Good luck with that.
> I provided plenty of facts and logic behind my statements.
No, you don't. A claim it is not a fact or proof.
> It's obvious from your comment history that you're a Google fanboy. And an Amazon fanboy. And an Apple hater. Good luck with that.
Well, perhaps it is obvious to people like you, that only have a black and white world and everything not agreeing with you is because a paid shill or a hater.
There is an additional problem (over and above privacy concerns) with putting all your eggs in one basket that is not mentioned - namely if you are cut off from the service for 1 reason or another. This can happen because you do something on 1 of the many services that goes against the TOS and you get cut off from all services. There are other reasons of course: The site could go down, the suite of services may be vulnerable to a tailored malware attack etc.
Pervasive surveillence is too high a price to pay for the convenience of being able to type "hash salt" instead of "hash salt computers".
"Relationships" are built by two people, not by one person being followed around the entire interney by a multibillion dollar international conglomerate.
> While there are certainly plenty of examples of abuse of knowledge, I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building."
Not to accuse you of anything, but I would imagine that this is what most stalkers think, as well.
Actually search DDG for "hash salt" and although it shows some recipe images at the top, the first 6 and the vast majority of all the actual search results are specifically about cryptography, the top result being Wikipedia's article on the topic of salt in cryptography.
> appreciate that google is aware enough to know that when I search for "hash salt" I'm not talking about potatoes. DDG shows me recipes and first.
Really? For that exact query, I get the Wikipedia page for "Salt (Cryptography)", "How to Hash Passwords", and "Salt the Hash - Security tutorial"... you get the idea[0].
AFAIK, the stuff you're seeing at the top is their 'zero click' information, which Google never provided (until after DDG added it and promoted it as a selling point). That's a little hit-or-miss, sure, but the actual search results of DDG are generally just as relevant.
I've been using DDG as my primary search engine for years now - I still resort to "!g" searches sometimes, but I have to do it far less than I used to.
It's true - the standard results on-point, but the top of the page is filled with images of food and links to recipes.
This is, ultimately, a nuanced point. It's a bit difficult to contrive a situation where the discrepancies are extremely stark in a single case, but over time and with consistent use (especially something like Google search which i use literally hundreds of times each day) the differences add up to make a pretty pronounced impact.
We live in the information age and information now is the ultimate power. Many people don't believe it, the same way that before the Civil and Crimean Wars not everybody believed that industry is the ultimate power of the industrial age.
By letting Google collect enormous amounts of data about you, you are letting them have power over you. It can be used for pushing you to buy stuff against your rational will or for killing you, if say at any point you decide to not fully cooperate with a future totalitarian government.
One can't live ones live today driven by an assumption that they'll be ruled by a totalitarian government in the future. Your mind is already trapped; you're effectively living in fear today that one day in the future you'll be living in fear.
"One can't live ones live today driven by an assumption that they'll be ruled by a totalitarian government in the future."
You may have heard it, but humans have this shit called "intelligence". It's some times used to predict future outcomes. (Yeah, I didn't believe this shit neither, the first time I heard about it. But please, do look it up online.)
The issue here is information monopoly. If one provider controls every bit of information about you than it eventually leads to a master/puppet scenario.
With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about - Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google.
Monopoly situations certainly make abuse easier but the monopoly isn't inherently problematic. Government and law enforcement are essentially monopolies in their own right and we see the results when those powers are abused. But instead of being anarchists we call for transparency and accountability. The same applies here - if we spend our time trying to become "black boxes" (as someone else here called it) we're not really going to get anywhere. If we push for greater transparency and accountability of the companies that handle our information we can better trust that they will continue to act in ways that are mutually beneficial.
You are very naive. Nature hates a power vacuum. Accountability, requires being able to enforce, if the other party is not accountable. Otherwise, it's just a matter of time before you are being used in some, or many, ways. The asymmetry of power between Joe Doe, you, and a huge multi national, assures that you can't enforce, and so you can't keep the other party accountable.
"tracking is, a priori, something bad, even when it's open and part of a relationship in which you appreciate the other party remembering certain things about you"
Advocating for greater accountability across the board sounds great in principle, but what does that even mean? Are we to hold Google, accountable for monetizing the data they collect on us? That's the social contract you engage in with Google, when you use their services.
Looking at the underlying business model is more effective. I am confident that DDG is going to respect my privacy, because that's what their whole business is built on! Similarly, I would be shocked if Apple turned around and started selling my data to advertisers, because I am their customer and I am the one paying them.
The problem with Google's methodology is destroying the market for others through "free" alternatives. When the Chinese do this it's called product dumping, and rightly criticized.
2. It undermines free-market mechanisms by having the paying customer be other than the consumer. And as fidotron points out, it also has the same effects as dumping against any non-advertising business model.
What is the underlying business model of Apple? Make products that consumers are willing to pay for. DDG's underlying business model seems to rely on sales kick-backs and minimal advertising[1]. Not perfect, but not as bad as Google's.
It pains me to hear intelligent people talk about being "tracked" as something "bad" a priori. While there are certainly plenty of examples of abuse of knowledge, I tend to think of most "tracking" not as "stalking" but as "relationship building." Let me explain...
Google is a service provider that I frequent, just like my coffee roaster or my stock broker or whatever. Over time, service providers develop a relationship with their customers based on knowledge of that customer. This knowledge helps inform how they provide and improve their service. My coffee roaster knows what kinds of coffee I like and makes appropriate recommendations when new beans arrive. My stock broker knows what kinds of risks I like to take and gives appropriate investment direction.
Ok, so I don't really have a stock broker but... My point is: I appreciate that google is aware enough to know that when I search for "hash salt" I'm not talking about potatoes. DDG shows me recipes and first.
The problem (as with most things that are hot-button issues) is that the most talked about thing - "tracking" - is a red herring. The REAL issue is accountability. True information lockdown rarely benefits anyone, but openness without accountability is useless and downright dangerous.
Suggesting people flee one provider's services and head to other providers who are not concretely more accountable (just because they "say so" doesn't make it true) is simply being petty. We should instead be spending out breath advocating for greater accountability in the system as a whole.