If you're philosophically opposed to web applications why are you participating in Hacker News?

Because they're not directly making money off of me.

I used to comment on movies on IMDB until they took the information I and others submitted to their free website and went commercial, putting tons of ads up and clearly started making money off of my contributions.

I also refuse to give reviews to Amazon for similar reasons.

I'm ok with participating in non-commercial forums, as I feel they are less likely to sell information about me than sites which have gone commercial.

Also, I don't really view forums as tools for collecting information about their participants, unlike all the "free" web-services run by corporations. I suppose forums could be used for this purpose, but I think at this point it's just less likely. But it's definitely something to consider.

> I also refuse to give reviews to Amazon for similar reasons.

I could not picture myself bothered by Amazon reviews. They help decide when to and when to not buy. They also help me decide between two books on the same subject, gives me tips on another titles/authors that I didn't know, etc.

Oh, I'm not bothered by other people giving reviews on Amazon. But I wouldn't do it myself unless Amazon paid me.

Obviously you would not use this for anything you wanted to keep secret. And, how else should they help you?

Well, I don't want companies or anyone else profiling me based on what I read. So I generally try to avoid using services like this.

Amazon.com delivers product suggestions by profiling you. Google provides better search results by profiling your search history. How can this be a bad thing for you?

If I could trust them to do that and only that with the information they collect about me, maybe I wouldn't mind so much.

But, first, what they do with the information they collect about me is completely out of my control. They could sell it to someone else or to another corporation or to the/a government for all I know. And I won't even know, as they're not required to tell me about what they actually do with the information they collect about me. And even if the only thing they do now with my information is provide suggestions and improve search results for me and don't sell any of this information to others, that doesn't mean that they won't change their minds and start doing something else at a later date.

Second, and more importantly, I have a profound distrust of corporations. Knowledge is power and I don't want to allow corporations to get even more power over me (or over anyone else).

Third, I believe any information about me is information I own, and if these companies want to collect information about me or use it in any way, they should ask my permission.

If I feel that it would be a good thing for them to either collect information about me or use it to "improve search results" or make recommendations or do whatever else they propose to do with that information, then I'll give them that permission. If not, they should be forbidden by law from doing so.

But, since there are no such laws (at least not in the US, that I'm aware of) I'll just forego using their service completely. In fact, even if there were laws, I'm not sure if I'd use their service, since it would take a lot of convincing for me to believe these corporations were actually obeying the law.

Lock yourself in the basement, destroy the key.

It's amazing just how much hostility there is towards the notion of trying to keep information about yourself private.

It's not so much hostility towards privacy as strong disagreement about where to draw the line.

I took it more as true privacy is an impossibility. Any time you participate in the system there is a trail.

The fact that it runs on Google's servers doesn't make it any less valuable to me. It does give Google some valuable data, but this isn't a zero-sum game.

No, it's not a zero-sum game, but it would be a game I'd feel more comfortable playing if they didn't require me to give up this information.

Fortunately, the world of stand-alone non-spyware applications isn't quite dead yet.

Having said that, I just realized that that's what web-based services like this are analogous to: spyware.

All these web-based services, from Facebook to MySpace to Google itself, are actually web-based spyware, and people are eagerly using them.