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0 pointsmindslight11y ago0 comments

> What are they [Google] suppose to do?

Not have a business model predicated on datamining users' information, and build their systems in such a way that they are unable to collect troves of unnecessary information.

But the only way we'll ever see any change is through users/developers: Detach yourself from such businesses. Don't build your dream on top of their corrupted platform. And if you must use some of their services for pragmatic reasons, consider them hostile governmental entities and thoroughly understand what you are giving away to be stored indefinitely.

Even if we demolished the NSA and put the traitors' heads on pikes, it would only be a matter of time until insurance companies robustly created similar chilling effects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7928484

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smtddr11y ago

Basically, you're saying to just not create a business like Google. That's not a practical solution because... money. If there's an opportunity to make money, it will be taken. Even the illegal & immoral ones, not to even talk about perfectly legal avenues.

More tangible problems with your idea of never collecting huge amounts of userdata are:

- If Google didn't collect userdata, I suspect their search wouldn't be working even half as good as it does now.

- Gmail, or any email provider?

- Amazon's shopping history with your address and CC recorded?

- Youtube?

- cellphone service provider? (yeah, you could avoid logging conversations & SMS but you're still the kind of company the NSA would come to for spying on a person simply because you'd be a major hub of communication)

mindslightOP11y ago

Yes. Users wising up will hopefully put an end to that money. Your statement is similar to saying that ending the NSA is not a practical solution because "power". So our personal autonomy is fucked because money and power - I'm willing to admit that this may be the inevitable answer, but in what way is it productive?

It's indeed hard to imagine a world in which users control their data - that is the extent of how hard we've been pwned.

Some of these systems were in place long before the issue could possibly be on anyone's radar, and would/will take quite a lot of work to extricate ourselves. anonymous payments - hard, especially now with Bitcoin on the scene. cell service - a bit harder, TOR+wifi+bearer payment for programmatic wifi access. physical address obfuscation - even harder, physical package mix network backed by repu (fuck, I give up).

But Youtube? You could write a software frontend tomorrow that avoided being Google's slave by not sending cookies. Comments would be a little harder, but that's a feature - I think a recent study showed glancing at those actually causes brain cancer. Beyond that, I guess TOR to scrub IPs until a better (high-latency) mix network comes along.

Email is a broken naive protocol like HTTP which relies on centralized identities, and can thus never really be secured. But secure messaging itself is a low hanging fruit. The fact we don't have it already shows that we seriously need to invest effort into building the ladder.

smtddr11y ago

When I said youtube, I meant the fact that people upload their lives to it. Not the cookie or IP tracking stuff. Speaking of uploading lives, let me add Facebook. So there just can't be a Facebook?

Devolving the internet & its services isn't the answer. You'd also have to just stop using cellphones too. There is no hiding from a corrupt government. You can't expect the general population to do all this stuff you're talking about. You have to fix the government. Focus on corruption-in-USgov and NSA, they are the enemy. Anything else is a distraction because it's not reasonable to say "Don't make a useful service for millions of non-technical people". Somebody, something, will always be popular and become a major hub of communication. To prevent that, is to prevent the evolution of not only the internet... but even society in general. And you'd be doing all that to avoid a corrupt-government, which you will fail at because you cannot avoid a corrupt-government. Anyone who thinks they have is wrong; it's just that USgov/NSA isn't interested enough in them yet.

The only exception is Snowden, and we all see the sacrifice he had to make to do it. If we all did that then... well... there is no America anymore. If that's what you're advocating, then you're asking for a nationwide revolution. Which is fine, btw. I'm supportive[1] of that. I'm just saying that avoiding a couple of social sites doesn't put you out of reach of the NSA. You'd have to get a significant amount of US citizens to go completely off the grid and live like hermits... or Snowdens. If that happened, I will happily call that a revolution and celebrate.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458114

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smtddr11y ago

More tangible problems with your idea of never collecting huge amounts of userdata are:

- If Google didn't collect userdata, I suspect their search wouldn't be working even half as good as it does now.

- Gmail, or any email provider?

- Amazon's shopping history with your address and CC recorded?

- Youtube?

mindslightOP11y ago

It's indeed hard to imagine a world in which users control their data - that is the extent of how hard we've been pwned.

smtddr11y ago

When I said youtube, I meant the fact that people upload their lives to it. Not the cookie or IP tracking stuff. Speaking of uploading lives, let me add Facebook. So there just can't be a Facebook?

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458114

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j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse