[CrzyLngPwd]

It seems to me that adding AI to desktop apps and sending the data back to the mothership for processing is an amazing way to collect data from people who, for the most part, would be completely unaware it's even happening.

Heck, most of them think the Internet is Chrome.

[pndy]

> Heck, most of them think the Internet is Chrome.

In the end Google has achieved something that Microsoft couldn't with Internet Explorer, and won the Browser Wars.

Google managed to aggressively advertise their browser by optional install "offer" within Windows installers of software. And they were aiming exactly at all those who couldn't tell the difference between the web browsers and who were conditioned by more experienced family members, friends etc. to just blindly click "Next Next, Finish". Thus, that was an easy win.

Being here when we had choice between Gecko, Presto, Trident and later WebKit/Blink makes me sad how easily the IT world allowed this nearly 100% monoculture to happen. There are still other browsers but chances that we return to variety and choice of rendering engines are low.

[stefanlindbohm]

What annoys me the most about this is that we as web developers have been here before with IE and managed to get out of it. Then we immediately forgot that lesson and helped Chrome be the new IE in a new coat by adopting ”modern web API’s” that were in fact proprietary Chrome API’s with low respect for the standards process, until every other browser was forced to accept it as a standard. All those ”Safari/Firefox are lagging behind” or ”best supported in Chrome” wasn’t in our best interest or even, from a standards perspective, particularly true.

[LocalH]

At this point Google is almost worse than Microsoft has ever been

[Gud]

Not just allow, they cheered it on.

[GeekyBear]

> adding AI to desktop apps and sending the data back to the mothership for processing is an amazing way to collect data from people

Wasn't that the entire point of Windows Recall as well?

[bigyabai]

And Siri, for that matter? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apple-settles-cla...

Sheesh, I'm starting to notice a pattern...

[Terretta]

Every vendor tripped over the third party affiliate human review issue.

While consumers remain surprised by affiliate clauses, the QC problem is considerably different from marketing against those recordings.

The linked article veers into Alexa for the ads part and says, roughly, must not be tin foil hats if everyone believes it – then explains the psychology misleading people in most cases. The "I'm noticing a pattern" thing…

Are there sources where Apple either acknowledges or even settles claims of advertising against secret Siri recordings?

[autoexec]

> Are there sources where Apple either acknowledges or even settles claims of advertising against secret Siri recordings?

Yes, advertising and selling data to third parties.

> In January 2025, Apple settled a class action lawsuit brought on behalf of current or former owners or purchasers of a Siri-enabled device, specifically: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch or Apple TV, whose confidential or private communications were allegedly obtained by Apple and/or shared with third parties as a result of an unintended Siri activation. (https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/apple-settlement-95-million-...)

And also https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-france-ads-fine-illegal-dat...

They've also ignored people's explicit requests to not be tracked (https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-whe...)

They've allowed third party contractors to listen to apple customers fucking (and who know what they did with those recordings). Apple's privacy policy says that they'll share (which includes selling) your data with "Apple-affiliated companies" and "our partners" without disclosing any of them.

I've seen claims that they've sold user data to facebook, but I haven't seen any details except the existence of "user-data sharing agreements" between apple and facebook and of course they take millions in cash to hand apple user's data over to google through their search engine.

Apple has been careless about handing data over in response to legal requests (https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/apple-facebo...) and gives a ton of user data to governments in the US and china. According to Snowden Apple partnered with the NSA as a data provider. Apple denied that. They've also denied working with the US government on DROPOUTJEEP.

They honestly don't have a very good track record when it comes to privacy, they're just quieter and less overtly evil about it than Google, MS, and facebook.

[Foobar8568]

You mean that chrome is an internet explorer?

[crusty]

Something no one else would want - a little colored dot next to HN user names keyed to their generation, so I could quickly tell why none of the commenter mentioned AOL.

[UltraSane]

What about Prodigy and Compuserve?

[josephcooney]

More of a navigator for the 'scape of the net.

[lukan]

Great joke, but taking the word literal and not as product name, it makes a lot of sense to describe chrome as a tool to explore the internet.

(Edit: thinking about it, I think generic terms like "Internet Explorer" should not be trademarkable at all, also I just learned, that also Microsoft "stole" the name and had to pay in a settlement..)

[PythagoRascal]

No, I think it was meant literally. Like the IT Crowd skit where Jen refers to the Internet Explorer desktop shortcut as "the button for the internet".

[ZeWaka]

https://youtu.be/NUNEZ9-4v_E

[2ndorderthought]

I called this out when it was announced on here. Supposedly the team lead replied to my comment saying this wouldn't happen. I rolled my eyes but asked will android be able to use those models for ex filtration. No reply. And apparently the original claim was not true either lol.

Maybe I'm misremembering it. Google is awful. My goodness. I hate Android and can't wait to be rid of it. Graphene and it's buddies can't roll it fast enough

[userbinator]

Maybe I'm misremembering it.

What you should've done is saved what they said so you could post it directly as evidence. If they're collecting all the data they can, you should naturally also have the right to do the same! I've noticed they're increasingly memory-holing a lot of things that, somewhat coincidentally, are inconvenient truths.

[2ndorderthought]

It's in my comment history..sometime last week. I don't really care, I knew this was a surveillance move that's why I called it out. No clue if the anonymous poster was who they claimed to be anyways

Here is the comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47930833

[lovich]

They’re all awful.

Does anyone believe a single big tech company isn’t harvesting data en masse from everyone in duplicitous manners?

Like, the best case scenario is that they don’t just blatantly steal your data and instead use dark patterns or inference to take from you without your knowledge.

And then, thanks to the wonderful opinions of the court, the government has full access to said data since you apparently knowingly agreed to giving it to a third party by virtue of the fact that you engaged in any sort of commerce.

It’s why I’m for forcing content being posted on the internet to be non anonymous and tied to a real identity.

The corporations and government already have and abuse all this data. I want the benefit of knowing when someone says “As an American {incredibly divisive shit}” that it’s actually someone in a foreign country sowing chaos for money or political aims.

[niutech]

> Does anyone believe a single big tech company isn’t harvesting data en masse from everyone in duplicitous manners?

I believe SUSE, Red Hat don't harvest users data en masse.

[2ndorderthought]

They won't actually show you who said what though. Twitter trialed that feature then they quickly turned it off after everyone realized half of the maga influencers were russians.

It also kind of stinks because not every mistake should be immortalized and recorded forever. Blackmail and all that. It kind of ruins the internet in a different way.

[lovich]

I want it enforced at a governmental level. I don’t think content consumed by people should be required to be public but if you want to post on a public square that the internet is, I should be able to recognize you as well I could in meatspace.

We get all the negatives of anonymity now with foreign actors, domestic actors, and bots flooding the zone with lies, and not of the benefits since all the corporations and governments can trivially pierce that veil.

[martin-t]

I assure you they cannot pierce that veil if one has a modicum of competence.

One uni in my country has been getting bomb threats during the exam period every year for multiple years (a random article says 20 times at least). The whole place gets evacuated each time, nothing is found and nobody is caught.

But people who think they're anonymous because they used a different nick? Yeah, those are idiots, their ISP and the platform knows who they are and anybody can deanonymize them through stylometry.

I don't think surveillance is the solution though. I'd much rather see a network of trust or (second best) anonymous proof of identity.

Any place selling alcohol or cigarettes is able to check if you're 18. They could just as easily check your nationality by looking at your ID and give you a crypto key which can be used to prove that to online platforms without revealing who you are.

But there's no money for big corps in that and most people are not even smart enough to think of it.

[lovich]

Every single packet of information sent on the internet flows through NSA servers at some point. We've known this since Snowden. When I say the government has this information I do not mean that every single bureaucrat at any level of government can access this, but that the government as a whole has access to the information if they feel its worth using. We have limitations on how the government uses such powers but those are currently worth the paper they are written on and being ripped up left and right.

[userbinator]

influencers were russians

... or just hiding behind a VPN that exits there?

[2ndorderthought]

Could be, but what terrible cover to use.

[bell-cot]

> Does anyone believe a single big tech company isn’t harvesting data en masse from everyone in duplicitous manners?

TSMC, maybe?

[lovich]

When I said big tech I meant software, not primarily hardware companies. ASML is also not likely to be harvesting our data.

[bell-cot]

Beyond the easy quip, my point was that "big tech" has taken on a far-too-narrow meaning. I'd bet you didn't really mean "software" either - you were, in effect, referring to the whole amoral (at best) ecosystem of companies which run social media and related web sites and data infrastructure, making their money through addiction, exploitation, and extraction.

Perhaps Cory Doctorow will come up with a better term?

[lovich]

No, I meant companies that have a lot of money and are primarily software. Discord for example is a company that isnt as big as a faang but one of the companies I would have included in "big tech",

The software companies, for whatever reason, have been largely bad actors when it comes to dealing with users data

[2ndorderthought]

They don't really count

[DANmode]

GrapheneOS is all of the best parts of Android / AOSP.

[j45]

I'm just not sure how this gives me control of my information, whether I want it sent or not to Google, and if they're retaining it for training or not.

That last question I don't even want to ask because the first two doesn't seem clear.

This could be simply fixed by adding the feature, and defaulting it off, and letting people learn about it and enable it.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

> I'm just not sure how this gives me control of my information, whether I want it sent or not to Google, and if they're retaining it for training or not.

That's not the goal. Turning your information into their information is the goal. If training an LLM on some data isn't copyright infringement but instead makes it a brand new non-derivative work, then training an LLM on your personal information arguably means it's no longer your personal information, but instead a legally distinct work.

[kevin_thibedeau]

> adding the feature, and defaulting it off

Nobody gets a promotion for doing that.

[ZetsuBouKyo]

According to the current shortage of computing power and electricity, I suspect that what they really want is not your data, but the computing power and electricity from your device.

If users' behaviors can be pre-labeled on their own devices, processed with AI, and then sent back, it might save a significant amount of internal computing costs.

[suburban_strike]

Chrome does/did this already. They've never been of any forensic interest to me but the history file stores clusters of domains visited and keywords searched for. It was pitched as user "Journeys." I think they've deprecated it.

https://chromeunboxed.com/chrome-memories-history-journeys

A 4B model is not very useful for text generation, but useful for classification, so you're probably right.

[fithisux]

Yes, it is useful for the next wave of eitch hunting

Witch true/false Commie true/false Possible customer true/false

[Barbing]

Many around the world search in Facebook and only browse via its in-app browser (sometimes zero-rated / free).

[abustamam]

I'd argue that even pre-AI the average internet surfer never thinks about all the data the sites they use collect. I'm not even sure if my mom uses any apps that aren't web apps (maybe MS word).

But for it all to go to one place? That's a scary amount of data.

[suburban_strike]

It already does, given how much of the internet is fronted by Cloudflare. They're better positioned than most to know what users are doing.

[abustamam]

Compounded with this which is trending on HN, they basically know everything about anyone.

https://sinceyouarrived.world/taken

[tapanjk]

"Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you the Internet."

https://youtu.be/Vywf48Dhyns?si=uOwUSAr1F_QSShfj&t=67

[rishabhaiover]

It would be a reasonable deduction for someone who doesn't have the time or interest to understand the internals.

[UltraSane]

I once had someone ask me why closing the web browser turned off his Internet

[ProllyInfamous]

The even more frustrating thing here is that after auto-updates everything new [including AI "features"] is turned ON by default.

I do like how Firefox now has a "prevent future AI integrations" checkbox[0], but I just don't believe it anymore (i.e. that it won't magically `uncheck` itself and then enable features I've not requested/authorized).

Which is why I just used an LLM to help me create a local network admin rule to disable the update engine entirely (this SHOULD. NOT. BE. NECESSARY).

[•] <https://www.perplexity.ai/search/b0d3bf5d-7ac7-4d4c-b6c6-32b...>

[0] with a sick darkpattern (for most users to laregly ignore)