The Case Against Google (2018)

Re:The Case Against Google (2018) by ilovecaching on Sunday March 10, 2019 @02:12PM (#19353298)

What is it with all this tech bashing lately? Certainly they aren't perfect, but silicon valley is far down on my list on things we need to fix. What about ISP monopolies that have required massive amounts of regulation just to let small ISPs ask for a bit of dark fiber? What about the gambling house that is wall street? Or our crumbling rail infrastructure? What about our exceedingly ineffective health care system full of insurance middle men and price gouging?

The difference between Google and those other issues, is that Google actually has a mission, and they use their money to generally do good things. In fact, I'd say it's a small miracle that Google isn't 10x evil. If Google was as evil as the big TelCos or some of the other scummy businesses out there, we would absolutely be having a bad day.

Part of that is google's culture. Not every company can afford to hire the best, and put them in an environment where work is fun and people feel compelled to do good. Break up Google and you get 1000x more companies all gathering the same data, except each one of them is staffed by idiots that leak data every day. Google is working as hard as possible and it's still a challenge to keep nation state attackers at bay with unlimited sums of money.

Let's get real here. The journalists are mad because they work for tech illiterate companies who gave in to shilling fear stories in the 90s. Now they have the jester-as-king calling them out as fake news, and the irony is that it's true. Maybe 5-10% of each story as some nugget of truth to it. The politicians of course have to lap those stories up so they can virtue signal to their ignorant constituents who barely understand tech any better than the politicians too.

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Re:The Case Against Google (2018) by titanomachy on Sunday March 10, 2019 @02:41PM (#19353506)

Most of the other problems you mentioned are American problems. There are quite a few people who actually do not live in America and care fairly little about America's "crumbling rail infrastructure".

Tech monopolies are a potentially global problem.

When Google is the world's portal to the internet, and they use that position to prevent competition, there are potentially huge consequences for all global citizens. China notwithstanding.

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Re:The Case Against Google (2018) by ilovecaching on Sunday March 10, 2019 @03:04PM (#19353682)

It will be your problems when countries start removing themselves from the free and open internet, and your left with isolated bubbles that further radicalize people. These problems can be solved by making world wide platforms better so people can become educated, or we can break it up so people can have no communicate outside their country or ideology. America is also a lynch pin of defense for Europe, it spends astronomically large amounts of money on defense so other countries don't have to, so hopefully you recognize that if things go wrong here it will definitely impact the rest of the world's ability to defend themselves.

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Re:The Case Against Google (2018) by titanomachy on Sunday March 10, 2019 @08:47PM (#19355825)

I think we're talking past each other here. How would forcing Facebook to split off Instagram and WhatsApp (for example) cause a worsening of ideological bubbles?

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Re:The Case Against Google (2018) by alecco on Sunday March 10, 2019 @02:35PM (#19353468)

If you use basic encryption your ISP can't know much about you. But you can't lie to Google. Search "red spot in my groin" + tracking on Android/Maps -> Google knows you have a venereal disease and likely from who.

Not even Facebook knows you this well. On social media you present a highlight reel and hide your ugly side.

You can't lie to your search engine and Google tracks you even when you don't think it's doing so. Google gives hundreds of variables about a user on real-time bidding. That's you.

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Re:The Case Against Google (2018) by ilovecaching on Sunday March 10, 2019 @03:07PM (#19353700)

Absolutely false. DNS is still a huge leak of privacy, and it’s trivially easy for an ISP to rate limit traffic going to major content providers they directly peer with, which is most of their traffic.

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Re:The Case Against Google (2018) by 908087 on Sunday March 10, 2019 @03:01PM (#19353656)

Google Analytics also pierces the encryption that hides much of your activity on the modern web from your ISP.

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Re:The Case Against Google (2018) by ocdtrekkie on Sunday March 10, 2019 @02:45PM (#19353557)

Google and Facebook at the root of a huge percentage of our other social problems. They are inherently harmful, and regulating big tech will be my primary voting issue in the 2020 election.

Bear in mind our many of our issues with election tampering, disinformation, and radicalization, can all be traced to online platforms. Facebook was essentially at fault for a genocide. Google has set a new high bar for corporate lobbying and revolving door practices with our government. Both companies bleed our journalism industry further and further dry every day.

Big tech should be the highest concern on your list, and you shouldn't buy the PR campaigns about how they are good for the world.

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Re:The Case Against Google (2018) by ilovecaching on Sunday March 10, 2019 @03:01PM (#19353657)

The issue is the people spreading information and the people believing it. , When the news, who have lost all credibility, hyper exaggerate every story, it's no wonder the amount of FUD and lies people are willing to believe on the internet. It's also a problem of education, people no longer believe in science, and accept any notion that fits into their belief system as fact. The real PR campaign here is the media and politicians using big tech as a virtue signaling platform to free up the market for the fake news organizations to become profitable again so they can spoon feed stories to the masses.

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