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 @bynkii My view is a bit different, and I've expressed this many times to Google (yes, to little effect to date).
To wit: Haters gonna hate. Disbelievers gonna disbelieve. They are not the major segment of concern. The major segment is the big chunk of people who don't have accurate information because the vacuum of facts that is created by Google not speaking out more about this is filled with misinformation/disinformation from the haters and disbelievers. I know this to be true, because so often when I explain these issues to large audiences (e.g. radio) I get so many "thank you for explaining this" responses.
@lauren @mtomczak silence is always the worst option, but if Google really wants people to trust them more, they have to admit most of their wounds are self-inflicted.
The treatment of Dr. Gebru et al did them no favors in that area, nor did their half-assed attempts at apologia.
Explanations are great, but they wouldn’t have a trust problem had they not spent decades working to create it.
@bynkii @lauren ... but it's unfortunately accurate. There's a lot of people who dislike Google who's underlying issue is "No corporation should have that much power, period." No amount of explaining will reach that audience.
I think Lauren is correct however about the larger in-the-dark audience that Google does a poor job of self-advocacy with. I may re-think my position on this.
(Also, TBF: I agree with you that at their scale, Google's worst enemy is Google. I advocated for years for non-profits to use Google as their primary tool for setting up a basic online-presence system only to have Google pull the rug on that entire channel. Did not feel good to be the one making suckers out of people.)
@lauren @mtomczak I’m waiting for tech in general to stop acting like “how to treat non-white males like real people” isn’t some intractable problem.
That’d be a good start and Google has a *history* there that they’ve yet to even acknowledge much less fix.
Why should I believe their public assurances when fair, equitable worker treatment seems so foreign to them? Why should people trust them when they continually act in an untrsustworthy way?
@bynkii @mtomczak Big Tech in general isn't perfect -- and neither is Google -- but there are a lot of critics for whom there simply is no way to prove anything to their satisfaction. If the firms say it they're accused of lying. You've already made it clear you feel that third party inspections don't help. There simply is no way to prove to the satisfaction of such folks that they're being told the truth. Because really what they're demanding is proof of a negative -- "prove you're not lying!" -- and we know where that falls in terms of dumpster illogic.
I'll say this again. I've worked with privacy issues for decades continuously -- well more than 30 years. I've worked inside Google and know how their protections of user data work. And I'm very comfortable having my data entrusted to them.
@lauren @mtomczak The other problem with audits is that “shining up for the boss” is a well-established function specifically to pass audits. I was in the military, inspection behavior and day to day behavior are two different things.
In corporate, we had audits all the time. We knew when they were happening so we could prepare.
Audits are useful, and should happen, but as a way of establishing trust? That’s not their function, never has been.
@lauren @mtomczak has *anything* changed in the last year about how Tesla makes cars?
No.
And yet without changing their processes at all, that company has a HUGE trust issue, and you cannot audit that away.
Audits verify procedure and configuration. Trust is a people issue.
I’m a happy Google fiber customer because out of all of google, they behave in a straightforward way. That creates trust.
@lauren @mtomczak Firing people for releasing a paper you find inconvenient does not create trust.
Apologia tours that say “we aren’t actually apologizing but instead are justifying why we were right” does not create trust.
If that part of Google is shady at that level, why should I not assume they’re not shady in others?
Google created this problem but shows zero interest in fixing it, so AFAIC, until they show any interest in fixing it? 🤷♂️
@lauren @mtomczak but that’s the question that google and honestly so many people who think everything is a tech problem are running from at high speeds:
How dod that assumption take hold on the scale it has? Because it didn’t “just happen”. It was not like last Tuesday was “and now we decide for no reason that Google is always lying” day.
As an example, 20 years ago, MS was considered irredeemably evil. Malicious. By pretty much everyone.
@lauren @mtomczak now they aren’t. Mildly incompetent at times, but the old vitriol is gone.
That didn’t happen because kf a third-party audit of a single product codebase. That was a CEO leading the company on a different path and doing things in a way that *proved* the old ways were done. Took time and a LOT of work, but by actually behaving better, MS earned back the trust it had lost.
Google *can* do this, they *choose* not to.
@bynkii @mtomczak You've got to be kidding. The vitriol I see every day about MS' horrific privacy practices in Windows is beyond anything I see anywhere else. I spend hours helping people turn off all that surveillance crap in an operating system! And it only got worse with Win11. I don't know what planet you're living on? Maybe Pluto?
@mtomczak Pretty sure @b blocked me when I asked them what planet they were on where MS is now beloved. So I'm no longer on that thread, apparently.
@bynkii @mtomczak The only people "running" from Big Tech are mostly left-wing and right-wing activists with their own political agendas. By far most ordinary people just want their tech to work. They aren't all wound up about arcane privacy issues and antitrust nonsense. I deal with them every day. And again, I've dealt with privacy issues for well more than 30 years!
I'm not engaged in the underlying conversation one way or the other, but it is interting to see the language being "would be a good start/doesn't help".
It impies a linear scale between "good" and "bad" corpos, where you can intuit an underlying ethos or morality to them.
In my expereince that's not how it works. That's how PR works, not actual companies.
But then, social media *IS* PR, top to bottom, so maybe it doesn't make sense to think about it any other way.
@mtomczak @bynkii Often these kinds of arguments end up with people ranting that ALL corporations are evil, they should ALL be banned. If you bring up nonprofits or charities, the rant is that the nonprofits and charities are crooks. There's just no point to engaging with that kind of hyperbole.