Google introduces $50 4G smartphone

Re:Google introduces $50 4G smartphone by planet-and-halo on Sunday September 05, 2021 @11:01AM (#28424830)

Shoshana Zuboff explains this perfectly. These companies disempower and commercialize people at the exact moment of empowerment, e.g. I provide you with a cheap smartphone / free and great service (like Google Maps) at the exact same time I load it up with trackers so I can sell your behavioral data. This is exactly what makes it so fraught. People aren't objecting to cheap phones, they're objecting to the continued commercialization and manipulation of human experience.

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Re:Google introduces $50 4G smartphone by PragmaticPulp on Sunday September 05, 2021 @11:26AM (#28425029)

> I load it up with trackers so I can sell your behavioral data

Google doesn’t sell people’s data. Neither does Facebook.

Both companies sell ads. Data they collect is used to target those ads. That is their market edge. It doesn’t even make sense for them to want to sell data to 3rd parties because it would diminish their ad-targeting advantage.

I’m not suggesting that there aren’t other reasons to be concerned, but the myth of Google or Facebook “selling your data” is just wrong.

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Re:Google introduces $50 4G smartphone by planet-and-halo on Sunday September 05, 2021 @11:28AM (#28425040)

Fair point, but it's a useful shorthand for "assembles a vast profile via collection of your data in an effort to manipulate your behavior." Part of Zuboff's book is about this very thing. This is an entirely new economic model in history and therefore we lack useful language to describe it, and since we struggle to describe it we struggle to criticize and oppose it.

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Re:Google introduces $50 4G smartphone by nicce on Sunday September 05, 2021 @11:47AM (#28425191)

> Google doesn’t sell people’s data. Neither does Facebook.

These companies are in such a position, that they have so much data when selling it brings competitive disadvantage.

There is a competition going on from the control of the world, in terms of sophisticated A.I. development. This is where they are using their data. Ads are just little sidekick in the process anymore.

Also, they probably do everything with the data and a bit more than average data buyer would do.

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