I feel like I'm in the minority, but I'm mostly ok with Google. I feel like they are good stewards of my data (encrypting even internal traffic, severe restrictions on who can get access to my data, doing useful things with that data). I believe Facebook has similar policies in place.<p>I think their biggest sins are just being big. It makes them a larger target (which probably necessitates them taking extreme protections, otherwise they WOULD be taken down). Others that are much more concerning don't get attacked simply because they are smaller. For example Lyft and Uber who have both been found to have all sorts of personally identifiable information available to random employees. Or various ISPs tracking of data flowing through it.<p>To me, the cost of being google's product, is outweighed by what they provide me with. Search, news, music, assistant functions, "remember this day", "here is your family growing up", e-mail, automation of e-mails into actionable widgets... These things all are powered by Google knowing kind of a lot about me.<p>I don't know of any alternative to Google for these services, that respects privacy.
I read the opening paragraph and thought 'wow, this guy has clearly just taken the release statement from Duckduckgo's privacy app announcement (or possibly their much-upvoted AMA) and just copied and pasted some statistics.'<p>Then I saw the author.
<i>Google and Facebook also use your data as input for increasingly sophisticated AI algorithms that put you in a filter bubble — an alternate digital universe that controls what you see in their products, based on what their algorithms think you are most likely to click on.
These echo chambers distort people's reality, creating a myriad of unintended consequences such as increasing societal polarization.</i><p>How is this any different from the pre- or sans-Google and Facebook world? People have always lived in bubbles, always been funneled down a particular path by their experiential influences. Without Google or Facebook, if you were a white supremacist, it’s probably because you were influenced by white supremacists and you would continue to surround yourself with them. If you were someone who really strived to expose yourself to different ideas and things outside your bubble, you can arguably do that easier than ever now.<p>This isn’t really to “exonerate” FB and Big G, but I think it’s worth asking what impact they’ve really had on this basic facet of life.
A common behavior I witness, is people using ad/tracker blockers such as ublock origin and/or umatrix and yet continue to consult websites that makes use of those trackers. Worse, they link those sites to other people that might not make use of those blockers. They don't think much of it, but ain't that evil?<p>Most of the times they don't even notice anymore that trackers were blocked on the page they consult.<p>Just look at links posted here on HN, most are of hostile websites.<p>I'd love to see a browser extension more radical: if it detects such third party scripts or cookies it simply stop loading the page and display a message explaining why instead.<p>Someone sends you a link to an article on cnn.com? Answer with this message telling why you won't consult it.<p>Going further: the extension attempts to extract the content, strip it of anything useless (some js libs works OK for such tasks), and share this version with others using this extension.
The metaphorical Pandora's box has been opened, and the contents aren't going back in. Best we can hope for is practical legislation. The EU is ahead on this one. Its GDPR is going to throw a massive wrench in these practices.
Honest question. I'm unsure what the danger is in letting these companies acquire data on us. We get a lot of benefit from using their products for free. Why should I care about giving my data to them as a cost of admission?
They provide free services. What do you expect? The data they have collected is so lucrative for them that they would never offer Facebook, Gmail, Google Search on a premium basis to daily consumer. I mean I would take premium package if they guarantee that they will not parse my images, parse my emails, parse my searches, connect dots among my social peers in order to help train their AI bots. Which/whenever they will use in the future to come up with better products or improve their existing products.<p>Sure there are problems associated with it. One of them is when malicious players like foreign govts get hold of such data and use it to their advantage.
Writing better articles than this is the way to stop Google/FB/advertising. Educating people on how dangerous ads are and what the solutions are (uBlock origin, turning off JS, VPNs, and hosts files etc.) is the main thing we can do other than making such things the defaults in products like Firefox (which doesn't even have such features built in yet, afaik). Once a large enough percentage of the population is using such solutions, tracking will no longer be a problem. If the argument is that most people won't want to deal with such education or the solutions it proposes, then those people simply do not deserve privacy or security. People that are too lazy/stupid to use computers probably shouldn't without the supervision of someone competent anyway. Yes, that includes the proverbial grandma--I don't let my mother use a computer I haven't prepared for her, for example.
These guys are selling data to "advertisers" that are actually trolls trying to subvert our democracy. They specifically target pain points and make things unbearable online for people. They use their data to alter the subliminal landscape. It made everyone at each other's throats.
The article seems to argue for a GDPR[1]-like equivalent in the US. It'll be interesting to see how it is enforced in the EU. If applied as intended, it could offer a more realistic alternative to the only other privacy-preserving option at the moment: not using Google/Facebook/etc. 'noyb'[2] is planning to help that along. I just hope we don't get another cookie-law like debacle.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...</a>
[2]: <a href="https://noyb.eu/" rel="nofollow">https://noyb.eu/</a>
i think many orgs instead of suing google n such orgs if they simply use that money to invest in good organizations which are open and respect an individuals privacy that ll lead to a better world. it is not the law that is going to protect the people it is money in the good people's hand that is going to take us in a positive future. doing one good to cover up 18 other bad things is not considered good.
Addressing root causes one key approach would be for someone to develop a better alternative to google analytics. I'd hazard that the usefulness and ease of use for webmasters to install analytics tracking via google analytics is the number one reasons that 76% of sites include google tracking. Develop a mass replacement for GA and you'll directly hut that number.
>"Google and Facebook's hidden trackers across the Internet,..."<p>Are these "hidden trackers" mentioned in the article just the normal beacons or are they referring to something new?<p>Are these relevant if a person is not logged into neither FB or Google or if someone has uBlock Origin/Privacy Badger installed?
How much would it cost to pay off every single Hollywood paparazzi to drive over to Silicon Valley and focus their attention on the Google, Facebook & Microsoft executives for a month?
I use One phone for phone calls and personal use providing a wifi hotspot to another phone for Facebook and Google account.. I just wish I could get two separate phones in one case
imho the current web is broken.. it has become entirely dominated by monopolists, which will only grow larger.. more dominating<p>we need:
- The Decentralized Web (as it was originally envisioned)
- Users in full control of their own data
- Privacy-first approaches only
- Stricter regulation (though tough to implement well)