

Thoughts on Google+: I fucked up. So has Google - chuhnk
https://medium.com/@chrismessina/thoughts-on-google-8883844a9ca4

======
chestnut-tree
This article fills me with horror. I completely disagree with the ideas about
privacy. I don't want companies to track me. I don't want a single digital
identity. I don't want a future where online tracking is an unquestioned norm.

We need to be more critical of companies that track us. We should be
scrutinising their practices more closely, and yet the author asks us to drop
our objections and consider the benefits of tracking. These companies aren't
open about their data collection practices, so why should we be more open or
trustworthy towards them? The information they collect about us gives them
far, far more than just an advertising profile about our likes and interests,
but they're not going to mention that are they?

Let's consider Google for example. If you have a Google account, Google has
your name, date-of-birth, gender, and (possibly) mobile phone number. Couple
that with the searches and sites you visit and that is some very personal and
private information about you.

Yet, in their privacy policy [1], Google fails to mention:

\- whether the data they collect about you is anonymised (and what they
anonymise)

\- how long they keep your data for

\- whether the data they collect about you is disasscociated from your
identity. This is important when you consider how personal and revealing your
online activity can be when it's tied to your identity.

\- who sees your data at Google. GMail automates scanning of your emails. Does
this hold true for all the other data they hold about you? After all, your
activity across the web is arguably just as personal and private.

Why does Google not provide this information in their privacy policy? Why are
people ok with this? I challenge anyone to explain why, if you were collecting
personal information from your users, you would purposely omit the information
above from your privacy policy.

Google seems to view privacy in one dimension only: security. Yes, you can't
have privacy without security, but security does not equal privacy.

Let's not forget that Google can track you across smartphones, tablets, and
laptops. Their tracking reach now even extends to school kids with the
introduction of Google Classroom. They are collecting an absolutely gargantuan
volume of data.

 _WAKE UP!_ shouts Chris Messina in his article. Yes, let's wake up and stop
giving these companies a free pass when it comes to matters of privacy and
data collection.

[1]
[https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/policies/privacy/](https://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/policies/privacy/)

~~~
chrismessina
Hmm, you clearly didn't catch my drift, which I'll accept blame for — my piece
rambles on a bit uncontrollably.

My point was to rethink privacy from the perspective of what we as individuals
stand to gain by gathering this data. I then asked: who would you trust to
gather and store this information, _on your behalf_? For most people, they
wouldn't be able to answer that question — for others, especially
technologically privileged individuals / open source libertarians — the answer
would be "myself".

Aside from logging in with your username and password, you have few if any
opportunities when using apps today to stream your data exhaust into a data
vault of your choosing. Rare is the app maker that allows you to export a dump
of your data, rarer still is one that openly shares the data it has _about_
you _with_ you.

Curiously, Facebook actually a lot of functionality in this regard through its
App Settings page
([https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications)).
Google Takeout
([https://www.google.com/settings/takeout](https://www.google.com/settings/takeout))
provides a lot of your data for export, but no one seems to have really built
any tools for the individual to take advantage of this trove of information
for personal benefit.

What I hear you arguing for is the end of user tracking. Indeed, there are
plenty of tools that you can outfit yourself with to that end (Tor, Ghostery,
Adblock, Do-not-track, Incognito Mode, and many more). But ultimately you as
representative of a class of internet consumer are an outlier. There are for
more people on the internet and in the world who unknowingly consent to data
collection and then have little upside in the collection of that data. It is
those people that Google cares the most about as customers (perhaps in
addition to advertisers), and those who are most in the dark about "the
privacy boogey man" about which you know plenty, but about which they know
nothing but confusion and fear.

My question is how we enfranchise those individuals with the choice — either
to not be tracked, be tracked by a party of their choosing, or to somehow do
it for themselves so that they reap some of the gains of the data capital they
are producing.

~~~
chestnut-tree
Thanks for responding.

I can see the value of interrogating your personal analytics. I guess how
valuable that is depends on how much activity and content you have invested in
these online services. And of course, some companies, as you say, would love
for their online services to be your principal digital identity. (Which raises
another question: do people want a single digital identity? Or do they prefer
multiple, unconnected identities? Or even a single identity that isn't joined
up with everthing they do online?)

 _" My question is how we enfranchise those individuals with the choice..."_

A good question and I agree. For me, it's also about giving users the
information to understand the implications of making that choice. This is
particularly important (in my view) when your personal data is involved.
That's one reason why I'm critical of Google. Privacy is important to me and
they omit basic and (in my view) essential information about privacy in their
privacy policy. This makes the privacy implications of using their services
unclear. (And, yes, I realise this all comes down to levels of trust, the
interpretation of privacy, the value of the service provided, and how much
importance someone ascribes to privacy in the first place.)

------
darrellsilver
Chris's point seems basically undisputable: tons of engineering talent but not
enough vision to gain escape velocity from the massive gravitational pull of
Google's wide-ranging needs across all its products.

Remember before you could be signed in with multiple accounts across all
google services? Those were the (sucky) days.

I wish G+ were either exclusively focused on utilities (personalized search
across services, unified privacy permissions, etc) OR useful/fun social
features that could be developed outside the borg's massive scale
expectations. Trying to do both seems impossible.

------
michaeldila
One of the things that is at least implicit in Chris' post is that software
isn't what it used to be. The idea that "identity is the platform" can either
be terrifying or empowering (maybe even both), but it is an idea that most
people do not understand at all.

Today in order to get most software to work at all you need to agree to an
impenetrable Terms of Service agreement and/or bargain away information and
data that it is nearly impossible to understand the consequences of at the
outset.

We do these things "freely", on the one hand, but we are more often than not
very naive when we strike what have become almost daily Faustian bargains.

What's wrong with this picture is not simply that Google (or any other
company) is unreliable or conflicted in their duties to be clear, transparent
or good willed in their policies. The truth is, eve if they were, most of us
aren't paying attention.

More and more, because of the growth and ubiquity of the always-on Internet
and the pervasiveness of computing (and sensing), we live in a world in which
the environment is made up of software.

The paradox of also living within legal regimes that are mostly still quite
naive about the realities of ubiquitous connectivity and pervasive computation
is that we are constantly being forced to enter into contracts, and make
covenants and agreements that are literally impossible to understand.

Again, the bizarro world this has created is one in which software doesn't
work unless you enter into a contract that there is every likelihood you will
not even notice, let alone comprehend.

What to do?

There's not an easy answer to that question. We need to ask more questions for
a start. We need to think about and create alternatives. We need to figure out
how to protect ourselves and others from abuses of power. We need to
acknowledge that software has become political, whether we like it or not.

~~~
AAinslie
Articulate and thought provoking. #SDH

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TrevorJ
Honestly, the only interaction with G+ I've had lately is wondering why the
HECK it's ruining google cal.

"Why are events showing up on google cal that I've never heard of?" Turns out
anyone who's in your circles on G+ can invite you to events and they who up on
your google cal by default.

I was asked to upgrade google cal yesterday. I did, and all of a sudden there
was a new calendar with TONS of birthdays spammed everyplace. Turns out now
the birthdays on every person in your circles on G+ now show up in a calendar
on G cal. You can't seem to delete it either only turn it off.

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radley
By its very definition, "Google Plus" is all about Google first, and whatever
else after. The truth is that Google+ is essentially community support and
interests for Google products and services.

When you live Google as Googlers do, it seems like a real social network. But
outside that tiny box it's just a slightly over-designed forum.

~~~
scholia
Or a massively over-designed BBS ;-)

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4ydx
This guy curses too much in his post. Lame.

~~~
chrismessina
And thus my points aren't worth considering? Lame. :P

~~~
4ydx
Yeah feel free to clean up your language. It comes off as unprofessional.

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danail
People on iOS don't use G+ much and this is the evidence :D

~60+ % of wolrds traffic still goes through PC

