Google's Real Name Policy, Why You Are the Product 374
bs0d3 writes "Google tells their investors: 'Who are our customers? Our customers are over one million advertisers, from small businesses targeting local customers to many of the world's largest global enterprises, who use Google AdWords to reach millions of users around the world.' Site users don't seem to understand. It's not that it's free. It's that you are the product being sold. ThomasMonopoly points out, 'I'm unaware of any company that feels responsible to their product. And if I'm to understand that they're responsible to their customers, the advertisers, I don't want "the world's largest global enterprises" dictating my identity or choosing who in Syria is granted a voice on the world stage.'"
I'm currently really pissed at FB... (Score:5, Interesting)
So don't think it can't happen to you, as it has to me and I was following their rules
I think what *slashdotters* don't understand often (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
My thoughts, exactly. If you listen to radio, you are not the customer -- you're the product. If you watch television, you are not the customer -- you are the product. If you read most magazines (even if you pay for them), you are not a customer -- you're the product. When it comes to media of all kinds, you are the product far more often than you are the client.
That doesn't mean that privacy shouldn't still be valued, even in free services. It should be. But people need to approach it from the mindset that they are trading something valuable (their eyeballs and their personal data) in exchange. It'd be great if there was an alternative to all of these things, for those who would rather pay a few bucks than give up their "soul", so to speak. Unfortunately, the masses do not want to pay for anything, anywhere and catering to the niche who does is usually not so profitable, as a result.
As for their naming policy? It's entirely within their right to determine how they intend to curate the culture of their service and if it means there will be less fake names posting ridiculous crap on the service than are doing so on competing services and it will somehow elevate the general level of discourse compared to the competing services, then have at it. (This is not to endorse required identification for using the internet - only for using a particular service that is offered on a website to people on the internet.)
Of course, as far as a company doing no evil . . . I'm not aware of such a thing.
Totally illegal in Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
The export of Canadian personal information outside the country is governed by PIPEDA. Google simply doesn't have the right to demand any personal info be sent to their servers outside the country's borders. This is effectively the same legislation that Germany later copied.
Also, government-issued ID is not to be used as "identification." The social insurance card numbers are ONLY to be given to employers and government agencies, and, at your option, to your bank (unless you have an interest-bearing account) - and it doesn't have a photo. The universal medicare card, which has a photo, is also not to be used anywhere except when dealing with medical services such as hospitals and pharmacies.
That leaves your drivers license - IF you have a drivers license. And even that is classified as "personal identifying information".
Re:Can we please stop this meme? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Totally illegal in Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
Facebook was "invited" to leave if they didn't change their rules. They changed their rules. It was shortly after Canada refused to back down that the EU decided to do the same thing.
You might want to look at "contracts of adhesion", aka "standard contracts [wikipedia.org]" , "boilerplate" or "take-it-or-leave-it" contracts. The law is different (and this also applies in the US) - ALL clauses in such contracts are always to be interpreted in the other party's favor, and the party cannot give up their statutory rights.
Google is wrong with their policy, plain and simple, and that's why there is so much push-back.
Re:Here's What's New (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows is the product of a legendary, institutional inferiority complex, fueled by twin engines of incredible amounts of capital and hubris.
Defenders of the "Windows User Experience" serve to illustrate the concept of a consumer's "Stockholm syndrome".
That is, until Google puts them to shame in this, for the obvious reasons stated in the article.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
They're going to get run out of Germany on a rail if they keep pushing it... the Germans have very long memories of what can be done when your ID can be linked to your actions or what your religion is... Not only Nazi Germany using IBM provided technology to identify Jews and help round them up, But the East German Stasi with their requirements that all typewriters had to be registered with the authorities and samples of text provided... so they could try and track Samizdat newsletters to typists.
What seems a reasonable request for identification now, can very quickly become a nightmare if the government is taken over by an extreme right or left wing ideology who wish to start rounding up all dissidents
Re:Totally illegal in Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, they are. As you said, if they don't like Canada, they can kindly shutter their buildings and leave the fucking country. There are two parts to PIPEDA. The first is that a corporation cannot do ANYTHING with any information collected about a person unless that person has SIGNED a form indicating approval for that EXACT use. The second is that business cannot refuse to do business with somebody who doesn't want to "voluntarily" share personal information. You might be fine with BestBuy and such requiring (oh, sorry, you doublethink'd "require" into "mandatory request") you to turn over your email, phone number, and address in order to buy a cable, but in Canada we put a stop to that retarded practice. Stores have tried to skirt it "We need that information for our service of contacting you for recalls!" "I don't want that service" "It's mandatory!" it didn't go well for them.
Google is squishy soft on business identity (Score:5, Interesting)
Schmidt is insistent that Google has the right to know who their users are. On the other hand, Google doesn't do proper due diligence on their customers, the ones who buy ads. That just cost them a $500 million fine [nytimes.com] to the Department of Justice for running phony pharmaceutical ads. (Those supposed "Canadian pharmacies" often aren't real pharmacies at all, and many are not in Canada. DOJ went after Google because an investigation into some Mexican drug dealer was also running an offshore pharmacy.)
Because of Google's "we don't care who you are" policy about advertisers, Google has become the advertising system for a wide range of scams [benedelman.org]: typosquatting [benedelman.org], adware, ads for free stuff that's not free, ads for counterfeit software, and mortgage modification scams. Prof. Benjamin Edelman at the Harvard Business School [benedelman.org] estimates that Google makes about $25 million a year from ads for spyware and adware, about $6 million a year from ads for "credit repair" scams, and about $100 million a year by allowing competing trademarks as search keywords (that last is being litigated.)
Most of those scams depend on advertiser anonymity. Business aren't entitled to privacy. Even in the European Union, which has privacy rights for individuals, businesses don't get that right. The European Directive on Electronic Commerce [europa.eu] is very clear about that. Google has the right to demand proof of business identity from advertisers, and to demand that the advertiser disclose the actual name and address from which the business is conducted on their web site. Google doesn't do this, which makes Google the scammer's friend, and in some cases, as they just discovered expensively, an accomplice to criminal activity.
Google claimed to the DOJ that they cleaned up their act [googlemonitor.com] on drug ads. Let's see. Search for "no prescription diet pills" [google.com]. See a Google ad for "Phentremine 37.5 mg HCL - As low as $30. Free Shipping. www.phentreminediet.com No subscriptions, or hidden cost.". There it is, right at the top of the page, in prime position, a drug ad run by Google. This is a fake drug scam site. It's a form of drug typosquatting; the real drug is spelled "phentermine". The site has a Google Checkout seal (which may be fake) and a BBBonline seal (which is fake). Yet Google is running that ad.
Prof. Edelman says it better than I can: "I have long doubted Google's claims of innocence. For one, Google has an obvious incentive to allow deceptive and unlawful ads: each extra ad means extra revenue -- an ad in lieu of white space, or an extra competitor encouraging other advertisers to bid that much higher. Furthermore, unlawful and deceptive ads have been widespread; I found dozens in just a few hours of work. Meanwhile, it's hard to reconcile Google's engineering strength -- capably indexing billions of pages and tabulating billions of links -- with the company's supposed inability to identify new advertisements mentioning or targeting a few dozen terms known to deceive consumers. From these facts, I could only suspect what the DOJ investigation now confirms: Unlawful ads persist at Google not just because advertisers seek to be listed, but also because Google intentionally lets them stay and even offers them special assistance."