bingidingi

How much email flows through gmail? Should Amazon have 50% of all ecommerce transaction data? How much of the chat space and social media does Facebook own?

You're not wrong, but I think rather than bringing up counter-examples, you've produced a list of similar problems.

When someone tries to find a new website someone told them about for the first time... what % of that is filtered through Google? If it's a majority, which I suspect it is, then it's still definitely a problem.

AFAIK They weren't ultimately fined, just warned... and it was one company.

They were warned because they were transferring email addresses to a company that falls under US Surveillance law and there weren't any relevant legal protections in place... and the company facing the fine never did any due diligence to check.

If you run a business and don't consult a lawyer about privacy laws you're taking a big risk... many countries have laws that you could easily run afoul, even other states in the US.

Then maybe they shouldn't allow everyone to create these groups on their platform.

If I run a music venue, and every weekend I sell out 1,000 seats... BUT every weekend 1 person shoots another person... they're not going to let me keep having concerts. I can't throw my hands up and say "well there are just too many people at this event, I can't check them all for guns"

gee wiz

yes true! but the point is also that the mind is malleable, there's no guarantee that anything I say today will be true tomorrow... there are endless circumstances

EU companies can do business with US companies as long as they're following the law. Thousands of companies and websites have no problem doing so.

"Innocent until proven guilty" does not mean "Abandon critical thought until a judge tells you otherwise" — this guy caught himself up in crimes literally everywhere he went... and this was after fleeing from a $25m judgement against him.

It seems a bit daft to think "gee, he probably did nothing wrong" simply because of how the American legal system is designed.

They don't want him in the press talking about what exactly? He didn't exactly come across as a guy that would flee to central america to keep decades-long secrets.

He had enough charges lined up (up to 5 years for every count, IIRC) that he would likely be imprisoned for life. Goes without saying but he was also an incredibly paranoid person.

Put someone in a room and prevent them from sleeping for a few days and I'm pretty sure you could convince anyone to kill themselves. There's no absolute certainty that can ever be provided.

Those really aren't good questions at all.

He was imprisoned awaiting extradition for tax evasion charges, so guilt wasn't really determined yet. He did flee the US to avoid these charges and has since racked up a considerable trail of charges from foreign governments.

We'll probably never see direct evidence of his death. But suicide is plausible, given his history, I'd certainly believe he'd contemplate suicide when faced with a life in prison.

I didn't say anyone or anything, in this case we're talking about a company that data mines as one of their primary business models that has been caught lying about the extent of data collection multiple times. They've also been sued successfully multiple times and have settled cases out of court (i.e., paid settlements privately).

I'm not sure what happened, but there used to be a time where not trusting a company like Google would be the smart stance to take. How could anyone with that much power possibly be trustworthy?

You don't have to step on other professions to lift yourself up mate.

I wouldn't be so quick to take their own description as fact.

The existence of society is a form of control on you. That's almost the entire point of society; standardized expectations and norms meant to maintain order.

as far as we know unicorns could be more closely related to rhinos

por que no los dos!

Do you need a FB account to use it with steamVR?

Think about how loose medical science used to be (and for how long)! leeches, bloodletting, miasma, ridiculous enemas and all sorts of outright nonsense. We've got a lot more mistakes to make, but social sciences will improve too.

Toss a big warning from the Surgeon General on there. People are blind to it now, but when they first did it for cigarettes most people weren't aware of the severity of related health issues.

We need a big "soda can make you obese and diabetic" campaign — we haven't even begun to approach the level of fervor that cut down on smoking... and we're fatter and unhealthier than ever.

I generally agree that bans go too far, but I love publicly funded advocacy.

Turns out people will drink more of something if you make it a little addictive. Hell, the drug of choice has changed but it's even baked into the name.

Sugar water has probably done more to change the world tbh.

It's one thing to offer support, it's something else to use support to make silencing someone palatable.

I will disagree with this no matter who does it.

Even feeling as strongly as I do about this, I would personally have a hard time turning down millions of dollars — the power imbalance is so large here that it's the illusion of a choice.

The pencil extender industry hates this one weird trick

This is horrifying. I know we feel like there's nothing we can do and this type of thing is old news, or maybe a risk no matter where you are... but I can't do business with a company that reacts this way.

Your use of "no one" here is a little on the nose.

> No we don't.

Seems like basic data security to me. If my credit card number (valuable data) is posted to the dark web I have to assume someone will use it and it's insecure. Google has the data, so they can now use it whenever they decide it's valuable. Until I have evidence that it can't be used, I have to assume it's insecure.

I'm not asking people to stop snooping. I'm asking for corporations to be barred from profiting off of publicly accessible information that can personally identify me without asking for permission first.

Education, journalism, research and the like fall into a different category... this also applies in the "photographs of people in public spaces" example. WiGLE would still exist in that niche.

Doesn't really matter what you expect, they're collecting the data and there's no evidence that they aren't using it to track... so we have to assume they do. Remember they were going as far as collecting data from people's networks using their Google Maps wifi-sniffing vehicles before they were caught.

If I have a unique SSID (let's say, my social security number because why not at this point) and I move to a different apartment and keep the same SSID... then Google's effectively tracking a person. If you have basic address/name info you can even pinpoint who owns the SSID.