3,183 karma · joined September 13, 2015
This is kind of ridiculous in the cloud era, isn't it?
The analogy with external accountant up this thread is a good one. It's not about where data are processed, it's about how it's used.
Was it a problem a couple centuries ago, when offline media emerged and blossomed? It was the same effect, just smaller scale. Yet, free press is valued as essential for democracy.
On the other hand, misinformation and propaganda also work without tracking, just less efficiently.
Wi'll have to strike a balance somewhere.
If true, that means our social pressure on Google (and Facebook, collaterally) is working, and we should keep applying it.
Would you also take the cost of their labor?
Would you manually reinstall and reconfigure your workstation every morning?
From first look, I don't think they are. Telegram gets a new feature, Google gets more data to mine. It's a win-win. I just hope they'll be clear with their users about sending data to Google.
Most people don't actually need full history in most situations, just recent history.