Pot, meet kettle: Facebook caught running anti-Google campaign over data privacy

[tonedaddy]

Facebook, the company that does so much to protect its own users' data privacy, secretly hired a PR firm to plant negative stories about Google's practices that invade users' privacy.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...pt-on-google/#

http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic...oogle_campaign


I'm not naive enough to think companies don't engage in PR practices about their competitors all the time. But Facebook complaining about Google's privacy practices when their entire business model is designed to exploit their users' data, often in ways they don't disclose to their own users?

Seriously?

[vesper]

I read that article earlier today.

While there is an air of hypocrisy about it, most people use Facebook knowing that it's collecting all of their personal data, or at least they should know.

Should add I don't really have an issue with companies collecting personal data as it helps them deliver a better user experience to me. Anything I don't want them to know I don't tell them.

[nondeplume]

Originally Posted by vesper

I read that article earlier today.

While there is an air of hypocrisy about it, most people use Facebook knowing that it's collecting all of their personal data, or at least they should know.

I actually find that most people don't actually 'know'. And the ones that 'sorta' do because they've heard 'something' about it, don't know how to find out exactly 'what' that/it means. It's buried in geek-legalese and they (geek/people like me).....know it.

Originally Posted by vesper

Should add I don't really have an issue with companies collecting personal data as it helps them deliver a better user experience to me.

My excruciating micro-second to micro-second existance/experience as a software dev and/or avid internet user searching wide rangine topics, is exactly the opposite.

I spend a great deal of my day 'trying' to unravel when an app. or search engine tries to 'help' me based on past 'behaviour/choices'. 9x out of 10 I AM looking for something NOT related or in better terms something NEW.

And more to the point, I'm generally NOT looking to be 'sold' something. When I want to buy, I'll search to 'buy', it shouldn't be an internet-default, as prior to that I'm looking for NEW information. But ever since google's changed their 'formula' a few months ago. I find myself more often than not, at places I've already been and more pointedlty-aggravating, at sites that only offer crap for sale, it makes them money, it makes me have to work harder and....find alternatives to them....which is a huge....lol...atm. It's becoming the 'user' experience like some sorta manifest-destiny via attrition and people don't even 'notice', if you logged on today for the first time, you wouldn't know there was any other experience to be had.

The only time I can honestly say that 'data-profiling' works for me is when I've found a 'new' style of music and/or artist and youtube obviously offers up like minded stuff. But after a few clicks, it's a quagmire of sameness...

....and that's the number one problem with 'profiling'...what I call information-incest....with the same 'mental/social' results as the procreated act. People already spend too much time inundated with what they already know.

I really don't want any 'help' from an inanimate object/calculating app trying to second quess me, it's impossible, and catastrophically so.

Imagine if a car kept driving you to places you've already been, or was 'programmed to guide' you to shopping malls, my god. You don't need that kind of 'help', right? Neither do you on a computer/internet.

Down with singularity, burn that pompous-arrogant flag, stomp it in the dirty dirt!

Originally Posted by vesper

...Anything I don't want them to know I don't tell them.

The problem is.....in alot of cases, it's not asking, it's taking. And one should'nt have to be a computer scientist to know that it is or stop it.

[Jagsound]

Nice job mate!

You've put into words something that I was feeling but not sure about - the web is turning to shite.

Loads and loads of aggregating sites that summarise sales and less info, sometimes the same piece of incomplete data repeated over and over at different sites.

Companies starting to not keep a backlog of data sheets for their products, as those data sheets are now available through third parties that charge for them.

It was always going to happen...
There's still some good stuff on there (for now).