Over the next decade, downloading and storing and processing such dumps of leaked data will continue to become quicker, and require smaller devices.
Over the next decade, mobile devices will shrink, resulting in smart glasses much more powerful than today's smart phones.
Put that all together...
It's 2030 and you're walking down the street. You pass by a stranger wearing Apple Glasses.
The stranger once spent an hour installing an "Intel on Everybody!" app, and downloaded 100 TB of random leaked data from a torrent site on everyone in the world.
As you enter the stranger's view, the glasses use the leaked data to facially identify you.
Now that the glasses know who you are, they automatically alert the wearer of the types of data they know about you.
The bored stranger occupies himself by reading your gmails from 2022, perusing compromising photos you saved, checking out your medical records, reading arguments you had here in the comments of HN, etc etc.
Maybe my understanding of technology and security is wrong somehow, but that future seems awfully plausible to me.
If the downside to minimizing my footprint is that I use DDG instead of Google, the upside is worth it.
I think that there will be a new form of entertainment which will basically generate a soap opera-like experience from real lives based on aggregated camera data, recorded conversations, and the blanks filled in by guessing.
I've adapted a different strategy from you, however. I have accepted the new privacy terrain, and I lead my life as if someone is always watching, which means I try to be my best self at all times. :)
- technology is getting more powerful and smaller
- large companies can be hacked
- leaked data is easily available on the net
- smart glasses will become more common
- apps can be made to facially id people using leaked data
Are any of those statements outlandish?
The only realistic attack on Google would be some targeted/filtered dump of celebrities or perhaps entire GSuite organizations' emails and files - and even then it would only make headlines, not cause any real trouble for Google outside of <1% of their regular user base ditching for protonmail or what have you.
I find it hard to imagine Google being leaked
The sheer amount of data
my first computer had a two Megabyte Harddisk - around twenty years later my Phone has a 256 Gigabyte MicroSD card
it's going to happen
websites that host the leaked celebrity nudes are torn down constantly. I can't imagine that you can upload that chunk of data or that app onto any platform without repercussions. On top of that, my tin-foil hat take is that internet access will eventually be completely de-anonymized. Social security or gov. ID to sign on.
It becomes much harder then to spread TB of personal information. Especially since even in 2035 I can't imagine there being very many hundred(S) of terabyte datasets being passed around social circles.
websites that host the leaked celebrity nudes are torn down constantly
internet access will eventually be completely de-anonymized. Social security or gov. ID to sign on.
It also is possible someone will force Apple to permit third parties to run app stores.
I should point out that while I chose Apple in my comment, there will be other brands with fewer restrictions.
My take: it won't be something everybody does (unless provided by some service, which looks illegal at least under GDPR) but be prepared for extensive profiling by whoever really cares about doing it.
As outlandish as my comment may come off, all the pieces (maybe aside from Google leaking data) leading to such a future are conventional takes. As far as big companies leaking data, it's not that it happens every day, so much as it is the cumulative nature of leaks: each leak adds to the pile.
I don't know the likelihood of this all going dystopian, but I did realise a while back that it isn't hard to pick a not-google option early when a thing is new. Rather than attempting to go cold-turkey you can just stop growing more locked in. After a few years you notice you're not stuck any more.
It is true that, as you point out, the majority of Google users probably prefer a less literal algorithm. Do the ways Google Search is changing benefit people who aren't me?
One way that Search is changing does align with what the average user wants: it increasingly interprets results semantically (synonyms,contextual data,domain-specific knowledge,etc) instead of just 'grepping' text content.
The other way Search is changing is user-hostile. Google is an established monopoly now, whose founders have ridden off into the sunset. As its competition and idealism have waned, so has its willingness to put search quality above profits and strategy.
It does not serve the user to include more paid content, to find excuses to personalize search, to cross-promote other Google products, to make Privacy settings inscrutable, to steer customers to AMP pages, and so on. Google has "actually, it's a feature!" rationalizations for these changes, I am sure. No matter!
If the only metric Google cared about were customer satisfaction, I would agree that their surveys, statistics, and A/B tests matter. Sadly, Google seems increasingly concerned with attributes that are at odds with their users: advertising revenue, marketing, etc.
In my judgment, even for normal users, Google Search's bad changes already outweigh the good. I reckon the bad incentives will remain in effect for years to come, too, which does not bode well for Google users.