[mooman219]

Do you have an example of when your were personally attacked with you private data by Google? If you're going to say ads in general, you know targeting can be disabled? I see all this constant distrust towards Google, but they're probably the best example of keeping your data secure. (According to market share) 99% of people are running an OS that collects some amount of telemetry data about them already, but Chrome OS, with a <1% market share is the real offender? People are less vocal about companies that actually lose your data, like Equifax, Facebook, and even Canonical had a data breach. I know it's fun to pick on the biggest players, but mid size and small companies have atrocious security practices that are actually abused.

[zwaps]

It's naive to think the data that is collected about you is harmless if it is secure.

Standard economic theory suggests that precise knowledge about your properties and preferences will, in the future, allow firms to extract the maximum profit from you, to your detriment. Google is already heavily investing the health sector, for example.

Not only does Google have a lot of broad data associated with your person, for example, any symptoms of disease you ever plugged into search, but we are also talking about an OS, which has absolute supremacy about anything you do on that computer.

That is why we should care, and that is why a comparision even to amazon or facebook is not accurate here. In this particular case, the breadth and depth of the possibilities to get data about you are unusual.

And keep in mind we are arguing about an OS that is technically not even open-source.

[throw2016]

Privacy is not just some vague 'great to have' value. The opposite of privacy is surveillance, which democracy by its very definition excludes, but happens to be a key feature of totalitarianism.

Everyone knows the consequences of surveillance, there is no need to wait for consequences to be concerned. The casual disregard and lack of appreciation of the values that make modern societies possible is concerning.

Hand waving away surveillance infrastructure and seeking to normalize invasive surveillance is in the interest of companies like Google who profit from it, but for citizens to be blase suggests a reckless disregard of historical record and the societies they live in.