Clan x86
General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: iago on January 02, 2014, 11:08:48 am
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Living in the Bay, working at the Google.
Wow, I'm surprised! I didn't think you would leave Canada, or work at a huge monopoly corporation. It's probably a nice place to work though.
Yeah, I didn't think I'd leave Canada either, but here I am!
I wouldn't call it a 'monopoly'. On one hand, I feel bad that 99.9% of my salary comes from ad revenue; on the other hand, they're constantly changing the world for the better, and they have really good policies regading privacy (privacy is SUPER important to them, because people will jump on anything) and lock-in (it's important that every app lets you view, manage, and export all your data). So that's a plus, at least. :)
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Living in the Bay, working at the Google.
Wow, I'm surprised! I didn't think you would leave Canada, or work at a huge monopoly corporation. It's probably a nice place to work though.
Yeah, I didn't think I'd leave Canada either, but here I am!
I wouldn't call it a 'monopoly'. On one hand, I feel bad that 99.9% of my salary comes from ad revenue; on the other hand, they're constantly changing the world for the better, and they have really good policies regading privacy (privacy is SUPER important to them, because people will jump on anything) and lock-in (it's important that every app lets you view, manage, and export all your data). So that's a plus, at least. :)
I dunno -- I actually like their business model significantly more than just about any other tech company. It's much more conducive to innovation. Ads enable free stuff on the Internet. Of course there are alternatives, but I think ads are really the only thing lucrative enough to enable the kinds of crazy awesome things Google does without a ton of capital.
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Living in the Bay, working at the Google.
Wow, I'm surprised! I didn't think you would leave Canada, or work at a huge monopoly corporation. It's probably a nice place to work though.
Yeah, I didn't think I'd leave Canada either, but here I am!
I wouldn't call it a 'monopoly'. On one hand, I feel bad that 99.9% of my salary comes from ad revenue; on the other hand, they're constantly changing the world for the better, and they have really good policies regading privacy (privacy is SUPER important to them, because people will jump on anything) and lock-in (it's important that every app lets you view, manage, and export all your data). So that's a plus, at least. :)
I dunno -- I actually like their business model significantly more than just about any other tech company. It's much more conducive to innovation. Ads enable free stuff on the Internet. Of course there are alternatives, but I think ads are really the only thing lucrative enough to enable the kinds of crazy awesome things Google does without a ton of capital.
Ads were never a bad thing. Nobody is complaining about advertising itself but the data harvesting aspect that has become almost synonymous with advertising. Google's (among others) vision of the future is aligned with its business model: full and total annihilation of privacy (Larry Page has said this repeatedly over the past decade). It's that kind of point of view that people don't like ... not advertising.
EDIT:
Happy new year.
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Living in the Bay, working at the Google.
Wow, I'm surprised! I didn't think you would leave Canada, or work at a huge monopoly corporation. It's probably a nice place to work though.
Yeah, I didn't think I'd leave Canada either, but here I am!
I wouldn't call it a 'monopoly'. On one hand, I feel bad that 99.9% of my salary comes from ad revenue; on the other hand, they're constantly changing the world for the better, and they have really good policies regading privacy (privacy is SUPER important to them, because people will jump on anything) and lock-in (it's important that every app lets you view, manage, and export all your data). So that's a plus, at least. :)
I dunno -- I actually like their business model significantly more than just about any other tech company. It's much more conducive to innovation. Ads enable free stuff on the Internet. Of course there are alternatives, but I think ads are really the only thing lucrative enough to enable the kinds of crazy awesome things Google does without a ton of capital.
Ads were never a bad thing. Nobody is complaining about advertising itself but the data harvesting aspect that has become almost synonymous with advertising. Google's (among others) vision of the future is aligned with its business model: full and total annihilation of privacy (Larry Page has said this repeatedly over the past decade). It's that kind of point of view that people don't like ... not advertising.
EDIT:
Happy new year.
I didn't mean to suggest that anyone here is complaining, but it's something I constantly hear about from people in tech, and it seemed like a reasonably interesting topic. I do disagree with this, though:
It's that kind of point of view that people don't like ... not advertising.
I'm sure that's how you and plenty of other intelligent people feel, but I've met many people I have a lot of respect for that say pretty thoughtless things about advertising.
I don't want to discredit concerns about privacy, but I don't think I share the zeal for them that my peers seem to.
It's also important to recognize that the types of "data mining" that occur in much of advertising today isn't nearly as creepy as it seems. When you see ads all over the web for that gizmo you were looking at on Amazon, it's not because everyone knows you as a person are interested in that gizmo. It's just a cookie that's sent to ad networks that says "show me more ads for gizmos plz." Of course there are some slightly creepier targeting techniques, but even the ones that involve consumer data are anonymized pretty thoroughly. I'm probably not saying anything people here don't already know, but it's worth mentioning.
Happy new year!
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Anonymous data isn't as anonymous as you think. The most obvious example is the insurance information debacle in Massachusetts ... (an MIT student cross referenced anonymous medical information with voter information and was able to infer the governor's prescriptions and doctor visits).
The creepy aspect of the data mining is that it's often without anyone's knowledge or consent and no one knows how that data is used.
Sorry to go off topic.
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The thing about Google is, you have pretty good control over what they collect and how they use it. https://google.com/dashboard will list all your data / account / linkages, you can find out what google has 'learned' about you based on where you visit, and you can modify / remove / tell it not to collect it at all. It actually thought I was interested in 'new jersey' before I disabled it, for some odd reason. :)
I'm not saying I *like* being tracked or ads or anything. I just think that as far as ad companies go, Google is in a position where they don't have to (or even want to) care a hell of a lot about you. They'll do their best to give both you and the ad creators the best possible experience, and allow you to customize it from there as you see fit.
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Yeah yeah, I saw that. Here's another example:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/05/google_gmail_calendar_export/
They don't let your control the really valuable data such as search history and location information. With Google giving away all it's cool tech, it has to pay the bills somehow!
We're all worth at least $50. This is the price to update a Garmin GPS' maps.
EDIT:
AT&T Fiber will charge you $30/month less for 300Mbps up/down if you let them snoop on your connection.
Snooping is big business. A lot more than either you (@iago) and @Sidoh give it credit.
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Anonymous data isn't as anonymous as you think. The most obvious example is the insurance information debacle in Massachusetts ... (an MIT student cross referenced anonymous medical information with voter information and was able to infer the governor's prescriptions and doctor visits).
The creepy aspect of the data mining is that it's often without anyone's knowledge or consent and no one knows how that data is used.
Sorry to go off topic.
I think it's silly to assume the shittiest things that happen in advertising/marketing are the norm (mostly since they're not).
Most advertising companies are pretty serious about privacy, and this includes ensuring that promises about data being anonymous are kept. It's not as simple as removing fields that are clearly identifiers. No one wants to touch a field that's even close to uniquely identifying.
I'm pretty aware of the shitty things that have happened, and that there are costs and risks involved with all of this. Despite all of that, I embrace advertising (and many of the "creepy" things that enable effective advertising) because it allows for awesome things to exist for free.
Like I said before, I'm aware that advertising isn't the only way for awesome things to exist for free.
Snooping is big business. A lot more than either you (@iago) and @Sidoh give it credit.
"Snooping" is inaccurate in the majority of cases, I think.
"Big business" as in there's lots of money to be made? Of course.
"Big business" as in it's a super big deal and it's going to make the world a shittier place? I'd disagree.
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They don't let your control the really valuable data such as search history and location information. With Google giving away all it's cool tech, it has to pay the bills somehow!
I'm not entirely sure that that data's kept in a meaningful way (ie, linked to the user) for an extended period of time. I know that the ads and stuff you're served aren't based on the URLs you visited and the searches you made, but on your "interests" gleaned from those URLs and your current search/location.
I could go check the source, of course, but then I couldn't discuss it. ;)
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The thing about Google is, you have pretty good control over what they collect and how they use it. https://google.com/dashboard will list all your data / account / linkages, you can find out what google has 'learned' about you based on where you visit, and you can modify / remove / tell it not to collect it at all.
LIES! That link results in a 404 error!
Anyways, the shit that annoys me the most (recently) about Google is the obnoxiousness of their real name policy. I've stopped going to YouTube because every goddamn time it asks me whether I want to associated my real name or not with my YouTube account. It does not respect my decision or privacy because I of course select NO, but it asks me to associated my real name every fucking login session (or something like that). Ask me ONE TIME, and then don't ask me again unless I dig around into a profile settings/ option. There have been a couple times where I have almost accidentally hit YES because it pops up when I'm not expecting it to... Very sleazy and sketch practice.
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LIES! That link results in a 404 error!
Whoops! https://www.google.com/dashboard and http://google.com/dashboard work, but not the one I posted. :)
Anyways, the shit that annoys me the most (recently) about Google is the obnoxiousness of their real name policy. I've stopped going to YouTube because every goddamn time it asks me whether I want to associated my real name or not with my YouTube account. It does not respect my decision or privacy because I of course select NO, but it asks me to associated my real name every fucking login session (or something like that). Ask me ONE TIME, and then don't ask me again unless I dig around into a profile settings/ option. There have been a couple times where I have almost accidentally hit YES because it pops up when I'm not expecting it to... Very sleazy and sketch practice.
Yeah, a lot of people internally dislike that policy too. "yes or ask me later"
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I guess you're right. It wouldn't be snooping in the case of AT&T Fiber since it is disclosing its monitoring practices directly to the customer.
The same cannot be said of some advertising firms that bait computer illiterate users into using free software and/or services and either bury their policies in long ToS agreements or just not at all (e.g. Google Ads will track me when I visit sites that host Google Ads without my knowledge or consent and independent of whether I use Google services or not ... I would call this snooping).
My impression is that these practices are either obfuscated or hidden from users for fear that users may not actually agree with those practices. That's just a guess though.
And how do you actually know that these types of companies take privacy seriously? Facebook is a reputable company that has repeatedly violated its own privacy policy in the past (that we know of). And Google's executive staff are outright hostile toward privacy. So yes, I generally take a pessimistic point-of-view. On top of that, there are numerous obscure advertising agencies that appear all over the web that most people have probably never even heard of. What could you say of these? Who would even notice privacy violations from obscure advertising agencies no one has ever heard of?
At the least, I think more transparency is needed.
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(e.g. Google Ads will track me when I visit sites that host Google Ads without my knowledge or consent and independent of whether I use Google services or not ... I would call this snooping).
I don't think that's true, depending on what you mean by 'snooping'. They might trigger that somebody has been there, but I don't think they keep information about you.
And Google's executive staff are outright hostile toward privacy.
How do you mean? I've only been there a month or two, but I haven't gotten that feeling at all.
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I guess you're right. It wouldn't be snooping in the case of AT&T Fiber since it is disclosing its monitoring practices directly to the customer.
I guess I'm more referring to advertising companies, because I think their reputation tends to be a lot worse than it should be. I think a lot of what goes on in the advertising community is fairly benign. Of course there are exceptions, and those are to be abhorred, but I'm not going to allow those exceptions dominate my perception of the industry that allows the development of awesome things that are available to me for free.
The same cannot be said of some advertising firms that bait computer illiterate users into using free software and/or services and either bury their policies in long ToS agreements or just not at all (e.g. Google Ads will track me when I visit sites that host Google Ads without my knowledge or consent and independent of whether I use Google services or not ... I would call this snooping).
Yep, those companies are shitty and I wish they didn't exist.
I guess you and I have different definitions of snooping. I think it's probably inaccurate to say that Google is building a profile of you and running complicated algorithms on that profile to decide which ads to show you. If you see an ad for a website you recently visited, it's almost certainly the result of a retargeting/remarketing campaign. The website you visited specifically asked Google to place a cookie on your browser. They then bid a premium to display ads to browsers with that cookie. It's still quite anonymous -- there's nowhere that says "nslay visited website X." It's just a cookie in your browser that tells Google when you request an ad "this browser visited website X", and Google does with that information whatever is most profitable.
My impression is that these practices are either obfuscated or hidden from users for fear that users may not actually agree with those practices. That's just a guess though.
Buried in legal jargon is possible, but I don't even think it's that common in the case of most reputable advertising companies. I think a blast of bad PR is enough to kill a smaller company, so they're generally very concerned with being honest about what they do.
And how do you actually know that these types of companies take privacy seriously?
I work for a company that's pretty heavily involved with the adtech community. We don't like to brand ourselves as an adtech company, but we work closely with dozens of advertising companies, and we have very strict privacy requirements of our partners. I feel like I'm probably close enough to issue to have a reasonably accurate measurement of the culture.
Facebook is a reputable company that has repeatedly violated its own privacy policy in the past (that we know of). And Google's executive staff are outright hostile toward privacy. So yes, I generally take a pessimistic point-of-view. On top of that, there are numerous obscure advertising agencies that appear all over the web that most people have probably never even heard of. What could you say of these? Who would even notice privacy violations from obscure advertising agencies no one has ever heard of?
At the least, I think more transparency is needed.
I understand your point of view. I don't care much for these things either, but in my mind, the benefits outweigh the costs. Yeah, I don't generally agree with Google's attitude on privacy, but I tend to think almost all of what they do is pretty uncreepy. I think stuff like retargeting feel really creepy because it seems like some entity is following you around and watching what you're doing, but that's not how it actually works.
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The problem I have is that the cost isn't well known. Nobody thinks about how the advertising agencies work, or how Google and Facebook make their money. And they certainly don't directly disclose their business practices to the users. Instead, users see free software and services thinking that they're free (and they're not). That's pretty deceptive.
Why not directly disclose the cost to the user if it's so great? Why is it secretive? Maybe advertising agencies really suspect that users wouldn't appreciate the cost at all or maybe they think users wouldn't care. Either way, a price tag is nice.
And by the way, Google is among many that buries its policies in lengthy legal jargon too. At least it makes users aware of policy changes.
I can only speculate what kinds of information advertising agencies collect and how they use the data. Whether it can identify me as nslay, my Google ID, a cookie number, an IP address, or a behavior pattern is irrelevant. I don't like the idea that Google, for example, can build (and probably does) an almost complete profile of my web surfing history (since many sites host Google Ads). I personally don't want to be tracked and I am opted-in by default. I have to 1) know that I am being tracked (which is generally kept hidden), 2) Find a way to opt-out (if any).
And again, as I pointed out: Anonymous data isn't necessarily anonymous. Once you cross reference data, you could, for example, build a statistical model and accurately predict the identities* of users. It's been done before and I imagine advertisers do this too (predicting someone's identity* by their web surfing behavior would be an interesting learning task).
* : By identity, I mean some abstract server-side representation of a user (which is not limited to something like a unique number for example).
You want my support for Google: Be upfront and direct about the costs and practices. Otherwise, I think you're a bunch of hypocrites to your own motto "don't be evil." Surely Larry Page and Schmidt have nothing to hide from us, the unsuspecting user ... right?
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The problem I have is that the cost isn't well known. Nobody thinks about how the advertising agencies work, or how Google and Facebook make their money. And they certainly don't directly disclose their business practices to the users. Instead, users see free software and services thinking that they're free (and they're not). That's pretty deceptive.
Sure, and it probably will never be known.
That said, I think building a product for sale makes it much more difficult to be innovative. That's exactly why I'm saying I actually like Google's business model. They make cool stuff. I don't mean to say it's "free" in the sense that they're not making money, but it is free in the sense that I'm not paying money. Companies like Google also al Maybe some day down the line there will be a day when it's obvious that the hidden costs were too high, but I'm not nearly as afraid of that as you are apparently.
I don't think their business practices are quite as opaque as you're suggesting. Some of the details are hidden, and some of those details are probably relevant to consumers, but again, I don't seem to be as concerned about those details as you are. I don't think I know less or that I've not thought about it as thoroughly. I think maybe I'm just less risk averse.
Why not directly disclose the cost to the user if it's so great? Why is it secretive? Maybe advertising agencies really suspect that users wouldn't appreciate the cost at all or maybe they think users wouldn't care. Either way, a price tag is nice.
Because disclosing everything is probably bad for business in multiple ways, and I don't think it's at all fair to attribute all of that to justified scorn from their users.
And by the way, Google is among many that buries its policies in lengthy legal jargon too. At least it makes users aware of policy changes.
Sometimes, I think legal jargon is probably more necessary than it seems. I think that stuff like privacy polices tend to sound pretty windy and convoluted, but a lot of that language is necessary to cover one's ass.
I can only speculate what kinds of information advertising agencies collect and how they use the data. Whether it can identify me as nslay, my Google ID, a cookie number, an IP address, or a behavior pattern is irrelevant. I don't like the idea that Google, for example, can build (and probably does) an almost complete profile of my web surfing history (since many sites host Google Ads). I personally don't want to be tracked and I am opted-in by default. I have to 1) know that I am being tracked (which is generally kept hidden), 2) Find a way to opt-out (if any).
Of course it's relevant how targeted advertising works. Consumer data used in online targeted advertising isn't stored server-side.
People tend to think it works like this:
As you browse the web, advertising companies build a profile of you. You as a person are tied to this profile. When you request an ad, the ad servers know who you are, take a peek at your profile, and decide what ads to show you based on that profile.
That's not how it works. It works like this:
The data itself gets placed in a cookie. You as a person are not identified when you're requesting an ad. Data relevant to you as a person is sent along in the request for an ad, but it's usually very boring data. More importantly, you have complete control over it. It's transient -- all you have to do is delete your cookies.
When it comes down to it, this "profile" model is generally a really bad idea from a business standpoint for multiple reasons:
1) It's far more difficult to maintain.
2) It's not nearly as flexible.
3) I think marketers would much rather use their own CRM data than some profile someone else has built. If some retailer wants to run an ad campaign targeted at some of their biggest spenders, they have that data. Why would they want to use some bullshit profile built by someone else?
4) As you mention, there are some serious privacy concerns, and despite your pessimism, it's a really important issue. It's not something advertising companies raise their nose at.
I don't mean to say that there aren't creepy ad-related things on the Internet that work by building a profile of you. I'm just saying it generally doesn't work as well as this much less scary data-in-cookies model.
If you don't want that data to be sent to advertising companies, there are quite a few things you can do to prevent it:
1) Set the DNT header.
2) Disable third-party cookies.
3) Opt out everywhere you can (it's more than you think). Services like SelectOut (http://selectout.org) help by opting out of a bunch of things at once. (Amusingly, I worked with the guy who owns SelectOut. Perhaps even more amusingly, it seems to be having technical issues at the moment). Companies respect optouts. It's a PR disaster if they don't, and it's easy to test if they are.
And again, as I pointed out: Anonymous data isn't necessarily anonymous. Once you cross reference data, you could, for example, build a statistical model and accurately predict the identities* of users. It's been done before and I imagine advertisers do this too (predicting someone's identity* by their web surfing behavior would be an interesting learning task).
* : By identity, I mean some abstract server-side representation of a user (which is not limited to something like a unique number for example).
I think I responded to this already. Given what I know about the advertising industry, I think your fear about this is unjustified. Of course it's easy to do this, but I can tell you that my company and companies we work with won't touch data that's even close to uniquely identifying. Fields we deal with are very broad -- think stuff like "male", and "age 21-28". I'm sure that sometimes this data becomes uniquely identifying, but again -- it's stored in the browser. The information available to a website using HTTP headers sent along by the browser and some fancier stuff from Javascript already makes a browser uniquely idenitfying (link (https://panopticlick.eff.org/)).
I think the more serious problem is when this data is tied to an identifier (like your name, email address, etc.). This is the cardinal taboo in online advertising. It's something that's (successfully, in my experience) avoided at all costs.
You want my support for Google: Be upfront and direct about the costs and practices. Otherwise, I think you're a bunch of hypocrites to your own motto "don't be evil." Surely Larry Page and Schmidt have nothing to hide from us, the unsuspecting user ... right?
If I were Google, I'd much rather lose the business of a few people than disclose everything about how I run my business.
I'd agree that those things would be nice, but I certainly don't expect them.
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The problem I have is that the cost isn't well known. Nobody thinks about how the advertising agencies work, or how Google and Facebook make their money. And they certainly don't directly disclose their business practices to the users. Instead, users see free software and services thinking that they're free (and they're not). That's pretty deceptive.
Google is pretty open if you ask. Most people just don't care.
And by the way, Google is among many that buries its policies in lengthy legal jargon too. At least it makes users aware of policy changes.
https://www.google.com/privacy - linked on every page, written in plain English.
I can only speculate what kinds of information advertising agencies collect and how they use the data. Whether it can identify me as nslay, my Google ID, a cookie number, an IP address, or a behavior pattern is irrelevant. I don't like the idea that Google, for example, can build (and probably does) an almost complete profile of my web surfing history (since many sites host Google Ads). I personally don't want to be tracked and I am opted-in by default. I have to 1) know that I am being tracked (which is generally kept hidden), 2) Find a way to opt-out (if any).
You don't have to speculate. https://www.google.com/dashboard lists everything Google knows about you. As Sidoh said, it isn't a complete history or anything like that, it's simply the interests that it thinks you have. You can add/remove interests or opt out all together (like I do), after which they'll only give you generic ads for the site you're currently on without any behaviour-based metrics.
And again, as I pointed out: Anonymous data isn't necessarily anonymous. Once you cross reference data, you could, for example, build a statistical model and accurately predict the identities* of users. It's been done before and I imagine advertisers do this too (predicting someone's identity* by their web surfing behavior would be an interesting learning task).
Google defines personally identifiable data as the obvious stuff, plus the not-so-obvious stuff that can later tie back to the user, as you said. They're both considered PII, and they're both protected as carefully as possible and only used as outlined in the plain-english privacy policy.
You want my support for Google: Be upfront and direct about the costs and practices. Otherwise, I think you're a bunch of hypocrites to your own motto "don't be evil." Surely Larry Page and Schmidt have nothing to hide from us, the unsuspecting user ... right?
They are almost entirely transparent, barring, as Sidoh said, the "secret sauce" that would be harmful to release. But they aren't secretive about how they track people, how they choose ads, and the fact that they make money off ads.
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There's also this:
http://www.google.com/policies/technologies/
And I've done countless training courses that go over those again and again and again.
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Anyways, the shit that annoys me the most (recently) about Google is the obnoxiousness of their real name policy.
For what it's worth, there isn't really a "real name policy" anymore. This is the message, word-for-word, from the guy that heads that team (and shared with pemission): "We do require that you have a name on your account, but this isn't required to be your name. You can also use initials for your first or last name if you want. It's better if you pick a name that your friends know you by, so that they can find you, but that's entirely up to you."
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Anyways, the shit that annoys me the most (recently) about Google is the obnoxiousness of their real name policy.
For what it's worth, there isn't really a "real name policy" anymore. This is the message, word-for-word, from the guy that heads that team (and shared with pemission): "We do require that you have a name on your account, but this isn't required to be your name. You can also use initials for your first or last name if you want. It's better if you pick a name that your friends know you by, so that they can find you, but that's entirely up to you."
That's good to hear, but I can't help but feel it's too little, too late. The damage from their previous enforcement of a real name policy has been already done. I do remember reading that Vint Cerf had spoken out against the real name policy, so I'm inclined to believe what you say is true.
It's amusing to hear that internally there are complaints about the "Yes" and "Ask me later" YouTube thing. I'm glad to see that Google employees feel free enough to openly voice their criticisms of absurd decisions like this. However, the fact that they haven't gotten rid of this yet, makes me wary that Google still is pushing a real name policy to some degree.
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That's good to hear, but I can't help but feel it's too little, too late. The damage from their previous enforcement of a real name policy has been already done. I do remember reading that Vint Cerf had spoken out against the real name policy, so I'm inclined to believe what you say is true.
It's amusing to hear that internally there are complaints about the "Yes" and "Ask me later" YouTube thing. I'm glad to see that Google employees feel free enough to openly voice their criticisms of absurd decisions like this. However, the fact that they haven't gotten rid of this yet, makes me wary that Google still is pushing a real name policy to some degree.
Employees are *extremely* empowered to stand up and disagree. It's a really fantastic culture like that. There is a lot of reasoning behind the 'real names' stuff, which I can't really go into. Whether it was a good or bad decision is a matter of perspective, but the Internet at large certainly hated it, and they've responded, albeit slowly.