Google has agreed to wipe billions of records it collected from over 136 million Americans, users of its Chrome browser, as part of a settlement for a 2020 lawsuit.
I’m seeing a lot of people make arguments like this and I just don’t get it. Is your point that its okay for tech companies to prey on the ignorance of nontechnical users? We can’t expect everyone to know everything about every service they interact with.
I understand how the internet works but you apparently don’t understand how people work. Normal people have absolutely no concept of how the internet works, they don’t understand what data servers need about them to function, or what a packet is. They need to be explicitly told that even though they’re using a privacy mode Google is still collecting data on them, especially since they’re collecting data even if you are not going to google hosted sites.
You’re infantalizing people by assuming everyone who doesn’t know how the internet works lacks critical thinking skills. Do you ever interact with non nerdy people? Additionally, some people do genuinely lack the capacity to understand how systems like the internet work, are we supposed to just let them get taken advantage of or exclude them from society?
I’m ignoring your last sentence because its entirely irrelevant to the situation, the data that Google was collecting from people using incognito mode is not data that they needed to make their services work.
I’m seeing a lot of people make arguments like this and I just don’t get it. Is your point that its okay for tech companies to prey on the ignorance of nontechnical users? We can’t expect everyone to know everything about every service they interact with.
Removed by mod
I understand how the internet works but you apparently don’t understand how people work. Normal people have absolutely no concept of how the internet works, they don’t understand what data servers need about them to function, or what a packet is. They need to be explicitly told that even though they’re using a privacy mode Google is still collecting data on them, especially since they’re collecting data even if you are not going to google hosted sites.
Removed by mod
they are toddlers though. They don’t care how something works even if it is the backbone of their entire infra and society.
Removed by mod
Zero disagreements from me
You’re infantalizing people by assuming everyone who doesn’t know how the internet works lacks critical thinking skills. Do you ever interact with non nerdy people? Additionally, some people do genuinely lack the capacity to understand how systems like the internet work, are we supposed to just let them get taken advantage of or exclude them from society?
I’m ignoring your last sentence because its entirely irrelevant to the situation, the data that Google was collecting from people using incognito mode is not data that they needed to make their services work.
Removed by mod
Where did rdyoung say any of this?
What you just did was put words in his mouth;make a straw man.
And factually, browsers explain what their respective private/incognito modes do. People assumed they did something else.
Did these corporations take advantage of that? Yes.
In the end, these users are as much to blame for using a tool and assuming how it functioned.