Google is exploiting the requirement for age verification to set up Google accounts for future purchases.
So then, how do you prove that you are in a different country? Easy, right? There are multiple sources of information that can prove your location - GPS, mobile service provider information, IP geo-location, Wifi SSID databases... . But no - none of that is enough. You have to add a local payment method! And coincidentally none of the payment methods other than credit card information works - not even the one provided by mobile service provider. So, you are forced to register your credit card information to prove your location.
Now that your have proved your location and installed the essential apps you need, may be it's time to delete the credit card information. What if you accidentally subscribe to some service you didn't want? After all, you aren't subscribed to any service or bought anything with the newly entered card. So it should be easy to delete it, right? NO! You are not allowed to delete your only registered payment method! [1] Now it's open forever as a payment method for online services or Google pay.
Google's tactics here are sleazy, underhanded and manipulative. And what of the complaints they receive about it? See for yourself - discussion locked and disabled! I don't know at what point their behavior is declared illegal and anti-social.
[1] https://support.google.com/googleplay/thread/10797082?hl=en&...
In Canada at least, through Visa and Mastercard, your expiry date is automatically updated with various people.
This means that never expire, may be just that.
https://www.bngpayments.net/automatically-update-expired-car...
Just imagine that! The lengths you have to go to avail public services and protect your personal information from a giant corporation!
And? I create a "profile" in my mind of every new human I interact with, and every human I read about or hear about even without interacting with. It's a basic human function.
When I gain a new business client, I create a profile of them too. This might start with a phone number, but over time, expand to include an email address, knowledge about their location, work hours, bank of choice, etc. Most businesses do this and always have.
Consent isn't required for this.
Corporations may be legally people, but they are not individuals. They are not human. And we should not treat them as such.
- logging to gmail on a non logged in android ? This logs the entire phone to the accounts
- chrome and online google services account are intertwined
Because whatever happens in court (if it gets that far), they'll have years of appeals to go, and that'll be some future Google employee's problem not the current people.
Like when governments agencies ask to both "disable all tracking of what their employees do on the platform", to ensure private data and GDPR like stuff are ok. They also ask to specifically "enable full logging of all access to their data" for security reasons.
So: "sed -i 's/tracker/logger/g' codebase" and everyone is perfectly happy.
I wonder does GDPR specify different categories of consent which must be specifically and separately requested?
Though what you're describing would also be illegal. GDPR does not allow requesting consent for such broad data processing just to fulfill a legal requirement to verify the user's age, and then denying access to the service if the user understandably refuses to give consent.
Google has an obligation to verify age. Google also has an obligation to limit tracking of personal information to usages that have been consented to. Neither of these obligations negate the other, and if Google never put it onto their feature roadmap, that just means that Google has been negligent in fulfilling their obligations.
Google should flat out refuse when governments make these requests.
If so, I don't see how it is any more dystopian than the ID requirements that have long been in place for non-internet media. I don't recall anyone calling it dystopian back in the '70s for instance when we had to show ID to rent movies from the "adult" room at the local video rental store.
And was this process duplicated for every other piece of media you consumed, to create a full profile of your interests?
A large change in quantity changes quality as well.
It practically seems like a type of cognitive bias based around technology.
We use some similar technology from the past to model the implications of the new technology and then willfully ignore the fundamental change brought about by digitization and network connectivity. The strangest thing is everyone understands how powerful network connectivity and digitization are in the abstract but when it comes to the concrete we brush it off like it is not.
This is just like renting The Terminator from the video store in 1989. What could possibly go wrong?
Worst case scenario, you had a paper card somewhere in a drawer with your name on it.
The fact is, there are gray areas. When it comes to government regulations, tech companies essentially have 2 options: comply or leave the country in question (note Google has already tried to lobby against the law in question). While "leave" sometimes is the only moral option, I totally disagree that this law warrants Google leaving Australia.
Instead Australia can now get what it wants and the backlash is minimal at best. Meanwhile they can go on to celebrate their dystopian law as working because of the endorsement Google gave them by capitulating.
Short term yeah it'd suck for Australia to lose Google but then the law gets changed back, Google comes back, and everyone wins. Well except for the Australian government.
I see diatribes all the time on HN bashing companies like AirBnB and Uber for "blatantly ignoring the law" to get what they want, and here are a bunch of people wishing for Google to blatantly ignore the law to get what they want.
[note: that is not my position here - I'm merely clarifying part of the discussion]
I must add, being relatively familiar with Australia's tech sector and it's people, that there is not a great deal of respect in the sector for the tech choices made by Australia's incumbent government of recent years. Whether or not that sentiment is ethically trumped by the fact of that government's democratic election by the general populace, is up to the reader...
I don't know the details of this legislation but I have viewed Australia as a beta test for new tech legislation and worry this sort of authorization barrier could become more common place in Western countries.
I think most people have this opinion, but I wonder if they would have the same opinion if the country in question is a non-Anglo non-West but democratic country like India or Brazil
For the record, i think Google should leave
I for one would have the same opinion. India and Brazil may have lots of corruption but they are still functioning democracies.
If it were Russia or China I would have a different opinion.
edit: point taken. I had read the "google should flat out refuse to follow the law" bit. oops
I find it disingenuous to claim that one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world has no agency in this situation.
Remember how hard Google fought the Australian laws about search engines paying news organizations.
Not to say the Australian government is guilt-free here. There are no good guys here.
Tired of people defending Google at every turn despite them not deserving the benefit of the doubt for many years now.
There, I fixed it. I'm getting tired of every headline trying to bash on Google/Facebook/etc. for clicks.