What's more likely: that Google's willing to risk being outed for employing shills or that there are people who actually hold the opposing viewpoint?
Personally I tend to think of most people on HN as privacy nuts. Honestly of all the problems in the world to get worked up over, online advertising is pretty low on my list. There's nothing I can do about Google/FB/whatever, so why even think about it.
If Google or whoever wants to pay me to keep posting, I'm listening.
>that Google's willing to risk being outed for employing shills
This risk might be lower than you think, the key phrase is, "we didn't realize that the marketing firm we contracted was subcontracting to other, shadier marketing firms, who themselves aren't evil, but fell in with the wrong crowd and ended up trusting a yet deeper level of marketing firm, who was in fact evil."
> There's nothing I can do about Google/FB/whatever, so why even think about it.
Actually, of all the stuff going on in the world, this is the one thing where you have an actual degree of control that matters.
Sure, one individual won't change business policies. But: you can easily take steps to prevent or reduce the amount of data these companies have on you.
Don't use their services, use an ad blocker, use tracking preventing, etc. You can even easily tailor it to your specific needs.
Compared to stuff like Brexit, fires in the Amazon, Hong Kong, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, attacks on democracy in Turkey, Hungary etc., it is trivial to do something against Google/FB that has at least the effect of protecting you.
The threat that Google's tracking infrastructure represents is not limited to ads. If they stayed in their proverbial lane and used their panopticon exclusively to sell me things, many of us wouldn't mind as much as we do.
But they lend the power and reach of their machine to governments, whether it's China looking to smoke out dissidents, or the NSA PRISM program, or even the DEA itching to score another weed possession arrest, Google gladly and happily does whatever governments ask of them, frequently with no warrant required.
Exactly. I don't care about getting marketed at (an ad blocker is the simple solution there). What I worry about is the collection and storage of all that data, to be used/sold for x purpose by y organisation in perpetuity.
Personally I tend to think of most people on HN as privacy nuts. Honestly of all the problems in the world to get worked up over, online advertising is pretty low on my list. There's nothing I can do about Google/FB/whatever, so why even think about it.
If Google or whoever wants to pay me to keep posting, I'm listening.