
Google won’t be able to resist listening in on your conversations - braythwayt
https://m.signalvnoise.com/google-wont-be-able-to-resist-listening-in-on-your-conversations-3341fd3d987b
======
educar
I have trumpeted this many times but selfhosted​ solutions like cloudron,
sandstorm, arkos are the way to go. We want iot devices to send data to our
personal servers and not to big brother companies for analysis and mining.

That said, in my experience, people willingly give their data to Google and
Facebook. I assumed people were not cognisant but this is not the case. Most
people are very conscious of their decision and argue that their data is safer
with Google and it's a good trade off. This seems like a PR issue and hard to
fix even if selfhosted solutions reach maturity.

Do others share my thoughts? Would love to hear from privacy enthusiasts as to
how we can promote better architectures for the web.

~~~
KanyeBest
Let me be the devil's advocate for a moment:

Why is it a problem if Google knows more about you? Doesn't it just mean that
you will be served content more relevant to you?

~~~
amelius
I guess it depends how valuable that service is.

Right now, I can't imagine that being served content "more relevant to me" is
so valuable as to warrant a corporation systematically recording my doings. My
current reaction is: I'm perfectly capable of finding relevant stuff on my
own, thank you very much.

But I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

------
frik
My Google Home gave me an ad for the beauty and the beast today

[https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/5zq60f/my_google_ho...](https://www.reddit.com/r/google/comments/5zq60f/my_google_home_gave_me_an_ad_for_the_beauty_and/?st=j0cq7kyq&sh=6d8f1529)

Video:
[https://twitter.com/brysonmeunier/status/842358950536318976](https://twitter.com/brysonmeunier/status/842358950536318976)

~~~
emsy
That's why I avoid Google religiously: you are the product, even when you pay
them money.

------
ksk
Does anyone remember Patrick Norton on The ScreenSavers on TechTV in the 00s
complaining about websites keeping access logs? Heck we even complained about
cookies back then. The sick thing about the privacy trap is that they slow-
cook you to the point where _not_ snooping on users becomes something akin to
a business risk.

~~~
dgudkov
I believe it already is a business risk because competitors would still keep
doing this to their advantage even if you stop it. It's like smuggling -- once
your competitor finds a way of smuggling goods safely, not doing it becomes a
business risk, especially if margins are low.

------
vkb
Perhaps it's just my selective biases, but I feel like I am reading about more
notable people in the tech industry speaking out in favor of privacy over the
past couple months than even when the Snowden revelations happened in 2013.

Could this possibly be a tipping point for adtech as a revenue model?
(Although I've been reading about it for almost a year now [1], [2], [3]) I'd
like to hope so, and am also curious: how invasive can companies be before
consumers start to push back?

[1] [http://digiday.com/marketing/copyranter-ad-tech-bubble-
explo...](http://digiday.com/marketing/copyranter-ad-tech-bubble-explode/) [2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/41zyoo/why_i_bel...](https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/41zyoo/why_i_believe_there_is_a_social_media_adtech/)
[3] [https://kalkis-research.com/google-end-of-the-online-
adverti...](https://kalkis-research.com/google-end-of-the-online-advertising-
bubble)

------
65827
"This isn’t an ad; the beauty in the Assistant is that it invites our partners
to be our guest and share their tales."

It just boggles my mind that anyone could read nonsense like this and not
immediately say "I want nothing to do with that". This is evil corporatist
greed along the lines of Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, or Halliburton. Alphabet
needs to start getting called out forcefully, especially by their own
employees and other tech leaders, whenever they pull this crap.

~~~
username223
Assuming they haven't developed a deep neural net to generate PR-speak, I
really want to understand the human(s) who wrote that. How do these people
operate? I would assume they know they're spouting pure bullshit, know that
everyone knows that, and simply don't care, but I'm not in that business.

~~~
gumby
I assume they just breathe their own exhaust and so that statement was
heartfelt. You can imagine that especially non-technical people can believe
that "advertising is annoying and intrusive but we have deep learning and so
much knowledge of the user that the users will be delighted when we add to
their experience. We'll just keep out the annoying stuff."

And really are we any different? Any YC entrepreneur should know how to cold
call, and the only way to bring yourself to do it is to believe in your heart
that the person you're calling really _will_ be happier with the information
you provide, delighted that you called, so you aren't interrupting them at
all.

------
thisisauserid
The Onion called this one years ago:
[http://bit.ly/1JXicmI](http://bit.ly/1JXicmI)

------
rdiddly
"Resist" might not be the operative term here. Advertising is the whole
purpose for developing these devices and placing them in people's homes.

Edit: And though it's obvious I'll say it: at Google advertising means data
gathering.

------
cryoshon
uhhh... who here has yet to adopt a radical fuck-all-ads-always-and-forever-i-
dont-care-if-you-go-out-of-business attitude? if you're not already blocking
all ads wherever you possibly can, you can expect zero privacy and a lot of
invasive advertisements and surveillance. and it'll annoy you.

seriously, fuck em. if they go broke, they'll ask you to pay for their
service. that might be what needs to happen to restore privacy: throw money at
them so that they don't need to sell you out.

~~~
update
I use uBlock origin on all my browsers. are you doing anything extra (e.g.
blocking at an /etc/hosts level?) or am I covered?

~~~
username223
IIUC uBlock just deals with JavaScript. Google and others fall back to old-
school pixel tracking when their JS fails, so I put some of the worst
offenders in /etc/hosts.

------
rthomas6
I'm trying to move away from Google, but I'm struggling to find anything close
to the quality of Inbox. It's pretty much perfect. And it gets a lot of its
greatness by reading my email and organizing my information and events for me.
Is there anything non-cloud-based that I could use that even comes close to
this?

~~~
y4mi
really? i used inbox since the closed beta as well, but recently (january)
switched to another mail provider and can't say i really miss it.

its kinda nice, but it was pretty easy to replace it with some static mail
routing rules (and the added benefit of a wildcard email address, making
$whatever@domain.tld possible, consequently making these rules even easier).

~~~
rthomas6
I planned a short vacation earlier this month which involved flights, 2
different hotels, and a rental car. Inbox automatically gave me an itinerary
with a timeline of each thing in order with all relevant info (flight times,
flight number, hotel addresses, rental car company and confirmation number,
etc) on one screen I could look at on my phone. It added my trip (and hotel
stays) to my calendar on the correct dates so I could plan better. And it did
all this without me asking it to do anything. Literally all I did was make
reservations for things. It figured out where I was going, and that the
flights, hotels, and rental car were all part of the same trip.

------
tyingq
I'm sure they will find a way to introduce the ads, as well as a premium
subscription option that removes them.

~~~
newsat13
Like youtube red? Note that this only stops ads from being displayed. They
still mine your youtube data for re-use in other services.

------
blakesterz
That Verge article has 2 different statements, the first sounds like this was
for sure an AD though they try like hell to make it sound like it's not an
ad...

“This isn't an ad; the beauty in the Assistant is that it invites our partners
to be our guest and share their tales.”

But then the second sounds like no, it wasn't so much an ad as something an
algorithm dug up.

"What’s circulating online was a part of our My Day feature, where after
providing helpful information about your day, we sometimes call out timely
content."

Giving them the benefit of the doubt here, those 2 statements seem to describe
things that can be different. One "came from a partner" the other was just
"timely content".

~~~
Navarr
They're really both the same - and there's a LOT of annoying FUD regarding
this.

It's triggered by the phrase "Good Morning" or other phrases that launch into
the "what is going on today" prompt.

* The weather is currently blahblahblah * Your commute will be x minutes * Beauty and the Beast came out in theaters today * [the rest of your news]

------
macawfish
Straight out of M.T. Anderson's _Feed_. Have you read it? Read it! (Or listen
to it, there's a really great audio book of it)

------
jypepin
Watching the Edward Snowden is pretty eye opening about this kind of stuff. I
was going to buy an Alexa devise, but thankfully watched the movie first and
now I know I won't...

------
burkemw3
I decided I cared less about this considering that I (and many others) already
have a Google listening device with me more often than I'm in my kitchen: an
Android phone.

~~~
coldpie
Is there any evidence of Google actually doing this on a widespread basis? The
Home is specifically designed to be an always-on microphone. My phone isn't.

~~~
chadgeidel
I'm not sure if it's on by default, but the "OK Google" feature presumably
requires an always-listening microphone on your phone.

~~~
jumpCastle
The difference in the quality of the microphones make it quiet impractical in
phone, but very easy in a google home device.

------
waqf
This is really missing the point, because if I objected to Google mining my
private conversations to advertise to me I wouldn't use Gmail.

The problem with ads on Google Home this week is serious, but it isn't related
to "Google spying on me" at all. It's to do with the fact that reading out ads
in my home is super creepy, despite — in fact, because of — the fact that the
ads aren't targeted to me.

~~~
yosamino
> because if I objected to Google mining my private conversations to advertise
> to me I wouldn't use Gmail.

This incorrect and short-sighted. The private conversations that you have are
with someone else, who might have not opted into Google mining their
conversation.

In that sense your conversation partners' only option to "opt-out" of using
gmail is to stop conversing with you, which I find to be a perverse choice.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
I guess it should be noted, though, that the choice being perverse doesn't
mean the outcome is obvious. I, for one, generally will just refrain from
contacting you if the only contact info I have is a gmail address, if it's not
exceptionally important for me.

~~~
joshuamorton
Its worth pointing out that this doesn't help you much. I have 3-4 email
addresses, from @gmail to @myuniversity to @mywebsite. I send and receive all
of my mail from a Inbox though.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Yeah, I am aware that I might be misplacing my trust and share things with
people who end up sharing it with third parties, violating my trust ... your
point being?

~~~
joshuamorton
Well I didn't really have a point to be made, just a general informational
statement.

However, claiming that I'm violating your trust if you send me an email is a
bit of a strong statement, don't you think.

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
> However, claiming that I'm violating your trust if you send me an email is a
> bit of a strong statement, don't you think.

I am not sure what your argument is? If I am sending you an email, you cannot
possibly violate my trust by sharing it with other people?

~~~
joshuamorton
You said

>I might be misplacing my trust and share things with people who end up
sharing it with third parties, violating my trust

I take that as

"If I send an email to someone and they share it with third parties, they are
violating my trust...Google/gmail is one such third party."

~~~
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC
Well, google is one third party that I would count as a violation of my trust
--obviously, that does not necessarily apply to every possible third party, if
that is what you are getting at? Nor would it necessarily apply to google, if
the specific content was meant to be shared with google, or whatever.

My point is: Yes, it is obvious that other people can violate my trust by
sharing information with third parties, and I might not even know, as that
doesn't even require email or computers. People could be sending copies of
snail mail letters I send them to some company offering them 10 cents per
piece or something ...

------
dep_b
It's like buying a cat at a Monsanto pet store and complain afterwards it
glows in the dark.

