From its start, Gmail conditioned us to trade privacy for free services
From its start, Gmail conditioned us to trade privacy for free services

From its start, Gmail conditioned us to trade privacy for free services

From its start, Gmail conditioned us to trade privacy for free services
From its start, Gmail conditioned us to trade privacy for free services
Even if it weren't free companies would likely have moved towards collecting data. Just look at how the price tag of cars doesn't protect you from not being a product.
Only fix is to end these companies, build an open future.
Hey member when they drove around and sucked up everybody’s wifi and (where possible) password? And then they were like “oh well if you don’t want us to use your network in our data then it’s on you to keep it out” member that.
Yeah.
“Security” idiot bro they hired at a bank* I used work for would drive around with a laptop and his buddies to break into WiFi as a hobby. It was truly disturbing, but he was an entitled ass so maybe not surprising.
*Silicon Valley Bank if you were curious.
Wardriving, wonder what one would find today
But they also offered a really good product, especially when it came to spam filter compared with other email services at that time.
Also amount of storage. When Gmail first launched it offered a gig of storage or so, while other email providers had around 10 megabytes.
Absolutely, now it's the standard but limited email storage space was rather standard.
Were the other free emails like hotmail selling user data?
Was there a reason to assume google was doing it differently than other email providers before they were caught selling user data?
No, user agreements/terms of service don't count because we all know nobody reads those things and they can change at any time.
I don’t think that’s a very fair assessment. We are a lot more aware of what “free“ is now. We weren’t informed consumers and collectively are relatively more so these days, even if most people still choose to ignore the issue. Back then we didn’t know there was an issue. I know I sure didn’t know I was agreeing to let them scan my inbox.
I also think more than ever people are now questioning what free means. So I’m not really sure how one can argue we are conditioned to accept the price of “free” when more than ever people are questioning it and adopting things like VPNs and adblockers to reassert their privacy.
Reminder that 25% of Americans use an ad blocker, constituting the largest consumer boycott in history. It’s such a big problem that Google has been actively trying to thwart it. That doesn’t seem like conditioned (in their favor) behavior if you ask me.
While 52% of Americans said they use an adblocker, which is up 18% from a 2022 analysis by Statista, that figure grew to 66% for experienced advertisers (those with five or more years of ad experience).
via Ghostery
Yuge numbers!
I might’ve misremembered it then! Probably 25% of internet users. It was from the “enshittification” defcon talk
And the company came under fire again in 2018 after The Wall Street Journal revealed it was allowing third-party developers to trawl users’ Gmail inboxes, to which Google responded by reminding users it was within their power to grant and revoke those permissions.
So you can remove those permissions, just that it's enabled by default. Shitty design, but it's not mandatory to enable those, just like how you are not forced to use edge when you get a Windows computer.
You kind of are forced to use Edge though. There are certain functions via which Edge and only Edge will always launch. F1, the help button, is bound to a function that launches Edge anywhere in Windows Explorer, so you have a hotkey that cannot be rebound ready to pop Edge into your face at any time if you happen to fat-finger it.
The only way you can prevent it from launching Edge is either to intercept the keystroke with AHK or similar, or remove Edge in an unsanctioned manner that requires deep system fuckery, which will often be reversed on the next system update. There are other links within the system settings dialogues that do this too.
At that point I'd call it mandatory.
I'll blame the early internet. So often stuff was for free, either due to the dot com bubble or just because someone wanted to create something.
More often than not the second one.
I mean, there were pages full of flash video games and animations with that sole purpose, no ulterior intentions.
When google came around, it too seemed amother neat free thing.
And they also had a “don’t be evil” slogan that existed until the founders stepped away. Google pretty immediately went to build the great firewall of China so the free ride was over a long time ago.
So much of the early internet was free because we all had so much trouble convincing anyone that it was worth investing in or even paying for. I mean… people hardly noticed it was there, seeing it was difficult and expensive, and developing what we now know as the internet was at least a decade and a trillion dollars away. Oh, and, no one believed in it or thought it was worth it. Everyone needed convincing.
This was 1995
The internet wasnt built after 2005; by 2005 it was already dying.
Neat (Wiki)