[suriya-ganesh]

I see this too often. But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes. Most people just want get stuff done in a competent, fast and easy-to-use operating system.

>It also locks you into the cloud services of an advertising company

this is pretty much any company these days. microsoft is guilty of the same.

[shimman]

Users absolutely care, what a terrible comment. Users have ZERO choice. Tech companies are not regulated, tech companies abuse their monopolies at their users detriment, and tech companies do not have consumer councils to help mitigate these issues.

What it actually appears to be is we have a market where undemocratic business leaders are deciding the direction of technology in a country that only seems to benefit them and not the population.

What a terrible mindset to have and I sincerely hope you never have any capacity to yield power in your life.

[mcmcmc]

They do have a choice, they just don’t want to a) pay for anything or b) be cut off online society

[shimman]

Man you clearly need to talk to people outside of Google. I'm glad the vast majority of Americans hate tech companies and their leaders if this is the mindshare they purport: "you don't have a choice, fuck you."

Great attitude that goes well with voters.

[mcmcmc]

How did I not describe a choice? If you don’t want to be tracked and manipulated, don’t drink the free beer. Turn off JavaScript. Pay for a search engine. Run your own mail server. Host your own fediverse node. Accept that life will be harder. Don’t be so naive as to think for profit companies aren’t going to milk everything they can from addicts who can’t quit their “free” services. Go start a co-op or something if you want to change it, but you can’t compete. And the reason is because they offer it for free and hide what you’re really trading for it in the EULA.

If you think I’m not mad about it, you’re not reading between the lines. I’m just a realist. This is what Peter Thiel meant by “free email was not enough”.

[turtlebits]

Until your google account gets locked for some unknown reason and you there is 0 support and recourse. And now you can't even log into your own computer.

[random2021]

The is so rare. Such things can happen even with bank accounts (if you are a foreigner in many countries).

If you use your own Ubuntu/Debian or even RMS certified disro same can happen. An upgrade and you see only a xorg blinking cursor.

[opan]

>If you use your own Ubuntu/Debian or even RMS certified disro same can happen. An upgrade and you see only a xorg blinking cursor.

This can be fixed yourself, whether that's hopping into a TTY or having to boot a live environment and chroot in. You aren't at the mercy of some major company's support people.

Even without fixing it you should be able to get at the files on the drive for use on another machine, or backing them up if you're gonna reinstall.

[random2021]

Keep boot live environment? You always carry USB? Learn security. Chroot?

You don't learn or understand modern bootc?

[prepend]

It can’t happen to my macbook.

This happened recently to my kid and it was a nightmare of a week trying to resolve it.

I’d rather tie my identity to an org with customer service.

[faust201]

this does not mean anything logical. Billions use android. Some will be affected due to any company or ID etc.

Pretty sure you can visit your local apple store and see many people asking for shattered screen or lost iphone. They did lose their accounts.

Moreover even if you use macbook - if you lose google or apple ID situation is same. (for the majority) appstore is important. See your comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48111545#48123885 you are happy to give everything to iCloud but don't like Google?

I can also store all my data in hetzner cloud. Use chromebook only as a hardware. If Google account is blocked then use Guest session. No account needed. Your turn?

[prepend]

Shatters screens and lost iphones don’t affect your apple account. Sign in to your new device with your apple id and your stuff is there.

Moreso, there’s no google store to go to for help if your google account gets locked.

Of course you can store data on a thumb drive (or hetzner cloud) and use that without a google id. Good luck with that. And it’s not scaleable for billions of users.

Again, apple provides support, google does not. I don’t want my livelihood dependent on a google id.

[omnifischer]

they do. You do lose 2FA with shattered screen.

Android phone can be used without google account (I do it). You cant even use Apple iPhone without.

[Forgeties79]

>But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes.

Like them I think I am also surprised not because that isn't the case, but because it's wild to see that take on HN, which skews way more towards privacy/owning your compute.

[suriya-ganesh]

I've been working in the privacy space for ~4 years now and have worked across, homomorphic encryption, Federated Learning and finetuning.

I've also run multiple user studies on privacy during my time doing a master's in privacy at CMU. almost 10/10 times users will choose, easy to use and accessible over complex and more control over their data.

In fact, for one of the Mag7 we proved that, users only want to have the feeling of safety and don't really care what gets done with the data.

very unfortunate, but this is the world we live in.

[mcmcmc]

They don’t care because they don’t understand, or don’t want to. It’s a scary thing to confront the fact that you are psychologically and demographically profiled so that people can manipulate you to extract as much of your money and attention as possible.

[socalgal2]

So is Apple. Went to the Apple store recently. To buy something they told me scan a QR code. The code popped up

"Get Start and Personalize Your Apple Store Visit" and a big button "Share Now"

Under the button in small text was a link to "customize" which said they were going to harvest your contact info, your carrier account, your phone model and applecare info, the list of all devices you own, the list of all your subscriptions, your purchase history, your reservation history.

They said all of it was for ads (to make more customized recommendations)

So much for "Apple = Privacy"

[customguy]

> I see this too often. But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes.

And when it's brought up where people do know, there's always these attempts at gatekeeping by speaking for the average user like a priest would speak for God.

The person who asked that cares, and didn't ask "the average, realistic user", because you can't ask an abstract concept questions.