
Box CEO says mistrust of Google and Facebook could spread - throwaway2048
https://www.recode.net/2018/7/8/17543218/box-aaron-levie-tech-backlash-trust-facebook-google-contagion-regulation-kara-swisher-decode-podcast?1
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confounded
At the bottom of all this seems to be the question: can any company practicing
surveillance as a business model be trusted?

And if not, what do we do about this business model? Can it be reformed, or
should we just kill it off?

It’s doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere on it’s own.

~~~
ssss11
Selling out your users has never been a successful long term business model.
These companies should have held up paid models and not bowed to pressure for
free services (at the hidden cost of selling all our data). They should all be
replaced by companies that charge a reasonable fee (or are subsidised) for the
service provided like every other industry.

~~~
amoshi
But a "free" competitor could then have appeared, and would almost certainly
have experienced greater user growth compared to a paid alternative. The
number of users is one of the crucial metrics of success.

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allears
As well it should. Can you name a company that you trust?

~~~
MR4D
Apple. But for a different reason than you might think.

They’ve now made so many promises about privacy that if they renew on those
promises (ie such that they were lying), then their will be shareholder and
other lawsuits till the end of time. Tim Cook would be in court for a decade.

Pretty darn good incentive to keep to their path.

~~~
extralego
Is it recent that shareholder lawsuits started serving this purpose of cryptic
and costly checks and balances?

Might this arrangement only exist because the Apple brand depends on a level
of dignificafion somewhere above Surveillance State Overlord?

It’s not nearly as comforting for me as it seems to be for you, but I guess
it’s a decent point in this situation.

~~~
MR4D
The rule that allows class actions has been in place since 1966, but has taken
different meanings (due to both changes in the law and court interpretations)
since that time.

In the case of a misleading material statement (which this type of case would
fall under) legal remedies go back to the Securities Act of 1933, which
prohibit such statements. [0]

I agree, it's not the most comforting, and worse, it would be a long,
protracted battle that could easily last the better part of a decade. My gut
feel is that such an event would be brutal on management and the stock price
for years, so any rational manager would do everything they could to avoid
that situation.

[0] - IANAL, but I do work as a licensed practitioner in the securities
industry.

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yuhong
I wrote an essay about Google:

[http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/04/google-doubleclick-
moz...](http://yuhongbao.blogspot.com/2018/04/google-doubleclick-mozilla-
essay-final.html)

I wonder if there are any other notable Google privacy problems not covered in
the essay.

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segmondy
could? SHOULD!

We should all do our part making sure the mistrust spreads because they have
both demonstrated that they can't be trusted.

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EGreg
Why do we NEED Facebook and Google again?

It’s 2018. Do we really need intermediaries who we reveal our data in order to
achieve basic things?

Collaborate on documents - use Google

Share news with friends - Facebook

Plan an event - Meetup

Host my own mini blog - Twitter, Medium

Seriously?

We have projects like scuttlebutt, dat, SAFE NETWORK coming out. We have
cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technologies.

Personally I started two companies to change all this by building easy-to-use
open source platforms to disrupt the centralized models. One is to make social
apps. The other is to power currencies and tokens.

2011:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI)

2017:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rBU__CCeUxE](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rBU__CCeUxE)

I am passionate about the change that’s about to happen. We are not the only
ones doing it but I think it will take about 5-10 years before most people are
talking across open source, uncensorable, end-to-end encrypted, autonomous,
self healing and self rebalancing networks.

The only way you can snoop on such group activities is to have a mole join
that particular activity. And by ”activity” I mean anything from a chat to a
video game.

And it will be EASIER than the current Internet. There won’t be any questions
of “do I host on bluetooth or hostgator” or “my site was blocked in x country”
or “help I got slashdotted” because apps would mostly be client side while the
static file delivery would be content addressable and rock solid reliable.

~~~
dredmorbius
A valid question, though the answer may not be quite so glib as you suggest.

Mindshare itself is certainly one factor. De facto standardisation another.
Monetisation and tech recruitment, from both a positive aspect and from
crowding out other challengers, is also a large part, I suspect.

