Greetings. So a few days ago here on #Mastodon, I was in contact with a journalist who firmly believed that #Google currently scanned #Gmail messages for ad display purposes. This is false -- while Google did do this in the past for consumer Gmail, they stopped the practice years ago.
And I'll add, the way it was done was utterly harmless to users' privacy, in much the same way that Gmail (and virtually all major and most minor email services) scan email messages for malware and spam.
Occasionally I'll have someone loudly proclaim that they want their email essentially untouched by anyone other than the sender and receiver. When I note that crucial functions like spam and malware scanning would be mostly impractical with this model, and widely used functions such as email sorting and searching would similarly become a vastly more complicated and less effective set of tasks, they usually don't have too much more to say on the topic.
But I really do wish that Google would more effectively communicate these realities to the public at large, especially in our current toxic political atmosphere that is so heavily polluted with fascist and other disinformation. Best, -L
@lauren maybe if Google, you know, stopped bullshitting, lying, and making their primary moneymaker the creepiest most invasive thing ever, people might have an easier time when they say “look, we know we don’t give a shit from a diarrhetic ape’s ass about your privacy, but in this instance, we’re actually not being as shitty as humanly possible.”
Like it’s utterly unimaginable how people have a hard time believing Google about Gmail privacy.
It’s a puzzlement.
Bynkii highlights the problem Google encounters. The people they'd want to reach with that kind of message already don't trust them as an information source, so putting out information on how they do things could only harm them. Malicious actors could use it to infer potential vulnerabilities, and those who don't trust them will just believe they have lied.
Perhaps a third-party audit of some kind could work.
@mtomczak @lauren or perhaps they could also apologize for being shady, stop relying on shady as their only reliable moneymaker, stop acting like white guys from Stanford are the only source of valid ideas, and actually do the work of rebuilding their rep by not being what they currently are.
There’s no third-party audit that restores trust. That’s never worked, it’s just a lazy way to distract without actual behavior changes.
@bynkii You've said a lot, but I'm sorry; your use of shorthand was just too distracting for me to respond proparly because I'm now stuck imagining Google relying on Marshall Bruce Mathers III as their primary revenue stream. ;)
