[fallenatreus]

This looks like fb comment page than a hacker news one.

So I just downloaded all of my search activity into nice JSON files, and now I am going to apply a bit of data science and magic stuff using Python and Node.JS and I will have a nice profile of myself for the past 11 years:

1) What kind of questions did I ask google? (beginning with how, when, where etc) - how do these questions connect to my personal and career development? 2) Apply some sentiment analysis using sentiment.js on the search terms and find out if the particular search term was positive, negative or neutral (this will give me a nice overview of my mood for each day I searched for the last one decade) 3) do some filtering and data massaging to pick out the exceptions (ok just a cursory look at the file helped me discovered a forgotten website project I did 10 years ago as part of college summer project - a work I am extremely proud of during that time and even now.) - which days, months, the year I searched the most (or what events triggered the searches - a breakup, a job search or a side project) 4) discover interesting patterns of my search profile (what I searched most during college time, after college when searching for a job, before marriage, after marriage etc.) 5) make a video on the lines of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU

so many fcking brilliant things I can do with my data. But what? Google has a copy of the same too? baby cry* What am gonna do? In a larger scheme of things, my data profile is just too insignificant.

To quote from the front page of Hacker News post, "The second volume of “My Struggle”, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s enormous, maddening, brilliant autobiographical novels, contains some depressing life advice. “If I have learned one thing,” he sighs, “it is the following: don’t believe you are anybody. Don’t bloody believe you are somebody…Do not believe that you’re anything special. Do not believe that you’re worth anything, because you aren’t.”

Not worried if Google tracks a skipped song history or an irrelevant app install on the gazillionth device I own. More worried about google's anticompetitive behaviour (blocking youtube on edge chromium and more recently making jobs of ad blockers even difficult) and even more larger questions such as what if Google starts to non exists tomorrow? Life after Google?

[xvector]

You make the same points as the "nothing to hide" people.

We get it. You don't care about privacy.

That doesn't mean we do not care about privacy.

[blub]

You're right when you say that you are insignificant, but on the other hand no one really cares that Google has your data.

A lot of people care that they have the data of billions of people, because this gives Google immense power. And certainly not everyone in that data pile is insignificant.

[jodrellblank]

So insightful to call people babies and compare comments to facebook comments to make yourself feel superior. Great content filled putdown.

so many fcking brilliant things I can do with my data. But what?

All things you could have done, if you had configured your browser to save your searches on your terms.

Not worried if Google tracks a skipped song history or an irrelevant app install on the gazillionth device I own.

Nobody is worried about this strawman.

Google has a copy of the same too? baby cry What am gonna do?*

Extrapolate this bit "google's anticompetitive behaviour" in your mind to the point where it affects you personally, then realise that it affects other people who aren't you, then legislate them hard before that happens.

[fallenatreus]

So insightful to call people babies and compare comments to Facebook comments to make yourself feel superior. Great content filled putdown.

Not that I wanted to sound superior and compared comments to baby cry, just wanted to say that people are making a big fuss about something that is completely trivial.

All things you could have done, if you had configured your browser to save your searches on your terms.

No, I couldn't have done that until I discovered this post on hn today, even getting an idea to do that thing would have been chance encounter. Even if I was interested, seriously, are you suggesting I would have implemented a custom solution for all of the devices I ever used (since a decade) not to count different environments and oses they would operate on? My argument was in the spirit of converting a curse into a boon. Making good out of something supposedly bad.

Nobody is worried about this strawman.

If you really go through the arguments against this activity tracking, you would find even more such examples. It's not strawman, it's what actually bothering the people a lot (if you can go through rest of the comments)

Extrapolate this bit "google's anticompetitive behaviour" in your mind to the point where it affects you personally, then realise that it affects other people who aren't you, then legislate them hard before that happens.

Completely I do understand everybody's unique situation, my approach could have been malformed but the intention is not. Just trying to show people something positive out of negative.

And I rest my case.

[JohnFen]

> just wanted to say that people are making a big fuss about something that is completely trivial.

Completely trivial to you. I say that's fair and I respect your stance. It's also fair that there are people for whom this is not trivial at all. You should be able to respect their stance.