• @LufyCZ
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      1110 months ago

      Why not?

      • @KillerTofu
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        3410 months ago

        Because they have to comply with lawful subpoenas for free.

        • @LufyCZ
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          510 months ago

          But they could still sell it for money if they wanted to, that was my point.

            • @gosling
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              510 months ago

              even if it wasn’t, NSA would’ve probably bought it already anyway

            • @[email protected]
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              210 months ago

              Stole. The NSA steals data from companies like Google. That’s why, for example, everything in data centers and everything sent between them is encrypted.

          • @cynar
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            1510 months ago

            I believe generally not. They sell the results of processed data, but the data is their golden goose. Why sell it wholesale, when you can charge for every use of it?

              • @[email protected]
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                110 months ago

                I think they profile individuals and sell those profiles to ad companies, or in the case of google (ad company AND source of data) they pair ads to devices that fit a profile for the ad, like “rides a bike”, “risk averse”, “owns several cats” would be a profile for an ad selling cat bike seats that can hold 4 cats. That’s one way of using the data but there are many more, each more nefarious than the previous one, I guess culminating with Cambridge Analytica, especially their African endeavours.

                Btw is your username in reference to the band can?

                • @[email protected]
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                  210 months ago

                  Btw is your username in reference to the band can?

                  Yes it is! You’re only the second person to catch that in my 6 months here.

                • @[email protected]
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                  110 months ago

                  Google is the ad company. They don’t sell their primary business advantage to competitors.

                  CA bought data from Facebook, not Google.

            • @[email protected]
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              110 months ago

              You’d be surprised how blatantly companies sell very personal data on a person. Google’s not going to do it openly because of pr, but a little subsidiary might

              Google probably isn’t going to sell everything, but it’s pretty likely there’s an offshoot company who will sell individual data.

              Their data is indeed their golden goose, but if they sell data for individuals at $300 or even $10 a pop, no one is going to get enough of their dataset to compete. They could even rate limit… Although if companies start to pay a billion or 10 to get full data dumps on a country, they might refocus on collection.

              After all, the data isn’t the true golden goose… It’s the golden eggs that they process and sell. It’s their ability to collect data that’s most valuable

                • @[email protected]
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                  110 months ago

                  Here’s a list of examples where Google was examined by the courts The first search on the topic I’ve made

                  I don’t have a smoking gun for you, but I’ve got a dozen lawsuits saying that Google is lying about their assertion that they don’t sell user data

                  It’s not proof, but it’s very telling… I’m not saying that Google is directly selling user info, I’m saying that you can buy a list of credit card purchases made by any individual from Equifax for $200

                  Google isn’t selling information directly, but it sure as hell seems like they’re selling it indirectly

                  I haven’t looked into the issue deeply, but a casual search has only reinforced my opinion

                  • @[email protected]
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                    210 months ago

                    You think Equifax is buying data from Google? About credit card purchases? Google doesn’t even have access to that kind of data. It’s credit processors and credit bureaus that are selling you out. Credit bureaus openly do what people accuse Google of doing, yet the complaints about selling data are always directed at Google. People running credit bureaus must be laughing their asses off.

        • @PixxlMan
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          210 months ago

          If anything they’d be buying since they’re the ones presenting ads… The whole data selling discussion online is always ridiculous. Who are these mystical data buyers ready to shell out billions for crappy “data” (does anyone participating in these discussions actually have a definition of what they think this ridiculously non specific ““data”” even is?) to present slightly better ads to users? Why would Google sell this data, shouldn’t they want to keep it to themselves?

          • @[email protected]
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            310 months ago

            selling your data refers to people buying ads and being like I want to show my dog food ad to 100,000 people who have a dog, and then Google only shows the ad to people who have a dog

            • @[email protected]
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              010 months ago

              That’s not what selling is. At all. Selling implies that any random person with money has access to data about you.

          • @[email protected]
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            110 months ago

            I know of a SaaS company that charges for their products to end users for a monthly fee. They make significantly more money selling the data of their users to 3rd parties than they do from subscriptions. Also, they figured this out after the fact, it wasn’t a core business component when they launched, but they still ended up raising the monthly fees due to “inflation”.