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Personalized Search From Google Now Opt-Out
An anonymous reader writes "CNet reports that 'Google now intends to deliver customized search results even to those searching its site without having signed into a Google account.' This may be what finally drives me to seriously experiment with cookie-free browsing. I consider non-personalized search results to be of value. They quasi-subconsciously give me a better perspective of the full range of information and ideas on the net. That, and I'm also a bit paranoid about a coming world with push-button infrastructure for personalized mis/disinformation."
How is this a bad thing exactly? With such changes Google makes it will only help you get better search results, maybe other people get better results too somehow and it will help Google target advertisements better which benefits not just Google but advertisers and consumers too. How does this pose enough a threat for you to turn your cookies off?
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
"Only people hiding in shacks and never speaking to other humans are vulnerable to personalized misinformation."
That really depends on how well crafted the misinformation is. If every person was given exactly the information they needed to hear in order to gossip about whatever topic the powers behind the information want them to gossip about, the misinformation would work very well against people with a lot of friends. All that you would need is a detailed enough portfolio on everyone: habits, mannerisms, interests, etc...
Palm trees and 8
This in built 'subjectivity' in the search mechanism represents a kind of fragmentation of the commons the searchable Internet supposedly represents: sometimes I want to know what other people know, what they are looking at, what is popular or interesting for them.
Secondly, grouping searches around an assumption of my interests assumes that my interests are 1/ Statistically quantifiable (solving a loathesome and boring problem may result in many queries), 2/ Particular to me (I may be searching for someone else, or my computer could be shared with another), 3/ Can be built from clear-text (sometimes I might be searching within a context do take me to a binary, like a video, arbitrarily linked in a page (like the comments for instance)).
Finally, isn't there a problem with diminishing returns here? The set that represents my interests will get 'smaller' in subject matter as I continue to search within that set.
I'll certainly be switching if Google's approximation of my interests goes under the radar, digging into cookies when I'm 'signed out'.
All that you would need is a detailed enough portfolio on everyone: habits, mannerisms, interests, etc...
That and competence. So far, google has demonstrated competence. If it is an arm of the government (let's just postulate here) then sooner or later it will become the government; google has always demonstrated an ability to promote efficient alternatives. The question has always been, if I might paraphrase Pippin, is whether the fornicating we're getting is worth the fornicating we're getting. I would argue that in order to successfully pull off an orchestrated yet personalized misinformation campaign on a national scale, the government would have to reinvent itself into an entity that would at least function efficiently as a government, which is about all you can ask for. The powers that be will always find a way to place themselves above the rest.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Auto-delete cookies when closing the browser. It's not that complicated, and while it costs you some extra time (logging on etc.), it might be less than you thought it would. I've been doing it for 5 years now.
They're not spying on you for some nefarious purpose, it's to give you better results. You'd probably be a much happier person if you just dealt with it.
Yes, but if they do monitor all web surfing and searches and use the results to target adverts, they'll only be serving ads for porn from now on. How is that going to help society?
Seriously for a moment, once you got ads targetted by the site the ads were displayed on, so if I visited 'lawnmowers.com', I'd want to get ads for lawnmowers and garden supplies. I wouldn't want to get ads targetted things I've been surfing for previously (televisions actually) because I've moved on from that to wanting something new - ie. I wouldn't be getting the ads for stuff I want to buy, only those I had already bought.
Someone wrote a book last year saying how more and more of the polarization in the U.S. is because people are segregating themselves into neighborhoods based on politics. Do you want to leave someplace with Whole Foods and yoga studios, or with megachurches and gun shops? This Google move seems to be taking this same segregation on-line. Google "climate change"....hmmm, I see this person's been to Fox News recently...better send 'em to a denial site. Or, more generally, once you get stuck in an affinity group, Google results are going to tend to keep you there. Seems like this is just going to amplify the echo chamber effect that lets so many people veer off into idiotic extremism.
Google is not the concern, nor is their control. I have no expectation Google uses search history for any purpose other than algorithm tweaking. The privacy issue comes from ones search history collected in one place. In aggregate, the collection of all Internet search history is an extremely powerful tool for learning about a person, and possibly exposing things an individual doesn't even realize they are revealing.
Most people have never been sued or accused of a crime, gone through a trial, been deposed or subpoenaed, or have any understanding of just how bad things can get when situations really go bad. There are times when one justifiably wants to guard their privacy carefully, but typically it's difficult to always know in the moment when those times are. Realizing after the fact that you need to protect information from discovery is too late.
Has it ever occurred to you that Scroogle might be gathering the valuable search data of people with "something to hide"? (Yes, I know they say they won't, but that isn't particularly enforceable.)
Well, now that Google knows, what's to stop them from telling the Big Bad Wolf? After all, doing that is their core business.