Apologies for the tangent:

I know we’re just having fun, but in the future consider adding the word “some” to statements about groups. It’s just one word, but it adds a lot of nuance and doesn’t make the joke less funny.

That 90’s brand of humor of “X group does Y” has led many in my generation to think in absolutes and to get polarized as a result. I’d really appreciate your help to work against that for future generations.

Totally optional. Thank you

The government had a warrant, read the article.

It’s just made confusing by the fact that the thief had signed into the victim’s phone, so it makes for a good clickbait story “police got the wrong guy’s data”

If by “when asked” you mean “given a search warrant with very clear evidence that this man had stolen a car”, then… Yes? I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove here.

The ex-boyfriend had signed into the guy’s phone. It’s not like the police just cast a wide net and randomly got his data.

Look I never said I disagree. My point to OP is just please don’t make up shit that straight up isn’t true. Pick a real issue, not some made up paranoia.

Re 1: People keep lumping Google with Amazon and Meta, but Google does not sell your private data and alerts you if it finds out the government to accessed your data. People keep assuming that because the general tech community sells data that Google does it too, but check their privacy policy or just ask anyone who’s worked there. They don’t.

User data at Google is locked up tighter than fort knox. That’s why the Snowden leak was such a huge deal, because the NSA was taking advantage of a security flaw that Google didn’t know it had to scrape user data. Google patched it immediately after they found out.

Amazon, Meta, and Uber, are much less scrupulous.

They’d have to block all investment platforms. Even ETrade and Chase have ads like that.

FWIW I don’t really like tech companies in general. They’re monopolies.

That said, I really admire Google’s environmental policies. I worry a lot about global warming and habitat destruction. They’re doing better than any other tech company on that front.

Other companies will just lie about their emissions. Like Amazon claiming it’s 100% renewable (it’s not even close). Google has been honest and clear with it’s emissions numbers since the beginning. And it has never been afraid to call out when they were wrong. For example, they recently updated their numbers when they realized one of their accounting methods was wrong. No other company has kept themselves as honest as Google on environmental things.

It’s a big company with 170k employees. I can name a million examples of it doing shitty things. Like shutting down Inbox. But the environment is far more important to me than some product I didn’t pay for.

Yes. The problem with cookies was that they could be used to track and identify you. If this can’t do that, then what’s the issue?

They just added a fee so that AWS can’t copy it without paying. What’s the big deal.