Google is forcing social down your throat

December 29, 2007 10:04 PM

A few weeks ago, Google Reader's team decided to show your private data to all your GMail contacts. This is now the default, no need to opt-in. Some people think it's not a big deal. Other's see it as a gross violation of privacy, a warning sign of more violations to come, as evidenced by the recent code updates to Gmail and other Google applications.
posted by m2002 (60 comments total)

I think the solution here is quite simple: Don't use Google Reader.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 10:18 PM on December 29, 2007 [3 favorites]

You have to choose "share" in order to activate this feature. Nothing is being shoved down anyone's throat.

I do agree that if Google wants to act like a Social Network, they need to give us the tools to setup a social network. We should be able to decide who our "friends" are so that we can use these features as they were designed to be used. No automated system is ever going to be ideal for deciding who we want to socialize with. Well other than eHarmony...
posted by aburd at 10:22 PM on December 29, 2007 [4 favorites]

I think, increasingly, it seems like the solution is to dump google altogether. I use CustomizeGoogle for Firefox to keep them from knowing too much about my browsing, and it's looking like a good idea to find an alternative to Gmail. Maybe I'm paranoid, but no one should be keeping tabs on me in that much detail, let alone a giant corporation.
posted by Roman Graves at 10:25 PM on December 29, 2007 [7 favorites]

Goodbye gmail and google anything. I kind of liked you.
posted by 517 at 10:34 PM on December 29, 2007

One day Google is gonna suddenly, without warning, start charging people to use its Gmail accounts. How many people will they have by the short'n'curlies? Myself included.

Feer my warning.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 10:36 PM on December 29, 2007

Maybe I'm paranoid, but no one should be keeping tabs on me in that much detail

You're not paranoid, but your cost/benefit analysis is severely out of step with most people who depend on email. Do you run your own mail server? Do you do your own jabber? Do you use pgp? If no, then how did you come to trust your provider at all? You have to trust your mail provider to some extent. That, or run your own mail server, do whole-disk encryption all over the place, etc. etc. (I do these things. No I'm not normal either).
posted by tarheelcoxn at 10:39 PM on December 29, 2007 [5 favorites]

I use CustomizeGoogle for Firefox to keep them from knowing too much about my browsing

Thank you Roman Graves, I had never seen this before. It looks like it's extremely useful. I'm installing it now.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 10:39 PM on December 29, 2007 [3 favorites]

Google is forcing social down your throat

BAD troll. No bagel.
posted by tarheelcoxn at 10:40 PM on December 29, 2007

From the 2nd to last link:

What if you were a closet homosexual who shared gay lifestyle articles with discrete partners? What if you were thinking of leaving a physically abusive relationship and you've shared spousal abuse articles with the few people you trusted?

Anyone else think those are great questions? So, the smart folks at Google had to have thought of them before implementing this new default. Which means they decided to ignore those scenarios instead of honor the possibility that this could seriously fuck up at least some of their users' lives before they realized what had happened and went through the steps to change the default.

That seems like horrid behavior to those users. Looks like the pressure to find ways to - somehow, someway - monetize all those eyeballs is really getting strong.
posted by mediareport at 10:40 PM on December 29, 2007 [10 favorites]

Does this mean y'all can beam music to me from across the room? 'Cause, cool!

Erhm, uh, waitaminit now...
posted by mwhybark at 10:41 PM on December 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

What if you were a closet homosexual who shared gay lifestyle articles with discrete partners? What if you were thinking of leaving a physically abusive relationship and you've shared spousal abuse articles with the few people you trusted?

So you are gay and you are in the closet, you see an article about the gay lifestyle, and you click a general share button? You are afraid for your life and you read an article on escaping the abuse that threatens you, so you click a general share button. I think both of these scenarios vastly underestimate the paranoia of these situations.

And if you want to only share things with a few people Google has a solution for you.

And until Google starts putting ads anywhere on Google Reader or on the Shared Items pages, I think the complaint about "monetizing all those eyeballs" is premature.
posted by aburd at 10:47 PM on December 29, 2007 [3 favorites]

It looks like it's extremely useful. I'm installing it now.

It's a lifesaver, Kraftmatic. Or at least a peace of mind saver. I learned about it from, where else, the green.

tarheel, you're right. To some extent, I have to trust a lot of institutions (my bank, my isp, etc.). Privacy is a thing of the past, but I'm much more likely to feel comfortable with a smaller and less ambitious email provider; and one who isn't trying to merge and track all my personal data, or keep it stored for at least two years. I'm ok with my cost/benefit analysis being whacked.
posted by Roman Graves at 10:50 PM on December 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

m2002's title: Google is forcing social down your throat

tarheelcoxn: BAD troll. No bagel.

The main question for me is why Google couldn't be bothered to make a simple announcement to its users that this would be the new default in, say, one or two weeks. Given the many obvious ways this feature could cause discomfort, it's difficult for me to understand why Google wouldn't offer a polite heads-up here before implementing something that was *bound* to cause at least some folks some embarrassment.

Unless, that is, Google didn't want folks to know they could opt-out until the feature had already been implemented. Which, ya know, *would* be kind of close to "forcing social" down someone's throat.
posted by mediareport at 10:50 PM on December 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

And until Google starts putting ads anywhere on Google Reader or on the Shared Items pages, I think the complaint about "monetizing all those eyeballs" is premature.

Oh come on, they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't have a plan to monetize it.

Part of the problem with these dumb social moves both Facebook and now google is that I don't actually care about every single thing my friends do. If my friends think I might be interested in something, they'll tell me about it. Or forget, or whatever. But automatically notifying me about it is just useless clutter. This mostly applies to facebook, since I don't use google reader (I actually use a desktop application, feedreader).

I was actually thinking of trying out google reader, and I still might. *shrug*

But I don't know what it is about big companies that makes them think it's a good idea to just start sharing your dating with people you know.
posted by delmoi at 10:54 PM on December 29, 2007

I dug all around Gmail and gReader to see how my privacy was being violated. Then I read the article. And then I realized I had no idea I could share articles on gReader. And then I realized I have no one to share articles with.

SO THANKS A FUCKING LOT.

Though, seriously, not freaking out. Not dumping Google. Stepping down to Yellow Alert. Breathing normally. Going on with life.
posted by gc at 10:56 PM on December 29, 2007 [4 favorites]

mediareport: Anyone else think those are great questions?

Do you understand now, your new feature has made it ridiculously easy to stalk someone who is a gmail user? Just put them in your contact list, and voila, you can see when they're online. Chat programs should be able to be turned off for a reason. Fix this *now*, or be complicit in every stalking incident it causes, from nosy employers to unrequited "loves".

Lawyers to the rescue?!
posted by uncanny hengeman at 10:58 PM on December 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh come on, they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't have a plan to monetize it.

I did say it was premature...

But I don't know what it is about big companies that makes them think it's a good idea to just start sharing your dating with people you know.

I think it's just software engineers and Robert Scoble who are truly excited by this.
posted by aburd at 11:07 PM on December 29, 2007

Chat programs should be able to be turned off for a reason. Fix this *now*, or be complicit in every stalking incident it causes, from nosy employers to unrequited "loves".

Hmm, let's see...

OPTIONS: SIGN OUT OF CHAT
(click)

Your tinfoil hat is made of ALUMINUM! IT LEAKS RADIATION!
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:31 PM on December 29, 2007 [6 favorites]

In other news, the moon is made of cheese!

Seriously, why is this post still here if all it's doing is propagating inaccuracies concerning a non-issue?
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 11:38 PM on December 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

Part of the reason I choose Google is because it forces options on me. I like it a little rough.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:45 PM on December 29, 2007 [5 favorites]

OK, I'll stay out of this one! I just use Google and Gmail, not even iGoogle. Does this make me safe?

Although I do notice that Gmail peeps in my contacts (anyone I've ever contacted via that account, as far as I can tell) can initiate a chat with me. Kinda shits me.

But my prediction of Gmail one day charging for its email service still stands. Advertising revenue schmadvertising schmevenue.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 11:56 PM on December 29, 2007

Some of these complaints just don't hold up:

from the first article "everyone can see my real name" - only if you choose to use your real name as your nickname. It takes two clicks to change your nickname.

"easy to stalk someone" - unless they sign out of chat (one click!) or remove the prospective stalker from their contacts list (about three clicks!).

And to reiterate: this isn't sharing personal data - it's sharing blog posts (or other RSS items) that users have chosen to share, by clicking a button marked 'share'. I agree that sharing items with everyone on your contacts list, by default, wasn't a good idea. But as aburd noted, they've changed this setting anyway, to allow you to choose who you share with.

This really isn't a big deal.
posted by Infinite Jest at 12:03 AM on December 30, 2007

Roman Graves:

>> but I'm much more likely to feel comfortable with a smaller and less ambitious email provider;

That's really what it comes down to, isn't it - with whom are we comfortable placing our trust ? Should I trust a huge company that's hiring like it's 1999 (i.e. an increasing number of people on the inside with the potential to access the information gleaned from your "private" data) and has more cash to burn on outside legal than anyone on Earth, OR, a smaller email provider who has a bit more to lose by the bad press of data loss and privacy breaches?

There are many out there. Most don't have feature sets to match Gmail. One that comes awfully close (pretty much everything, and then some, except for all that AJAX malarky) is Fastmail.fm ; theirs is an interesting story. Short version: a bunch of people who didn't like the email offerings out there, so they built their own. And they (say that they) are not interested in getting rich from it.
posted by armoir from antproof case at 12:24 AM on December 30, 2007

What a tempest in a teapot. You can log out of chat and anybody who used sharing without realizing that it published a wide open completely accessible webpage is dolt. I've been sharing Ruby on Rails articles . I checked out the feature understood what it meant and used it. What do these people thing "sharing" means?

This is dihydrogen oxide scare.
posted by srboisvert at 2:10 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Sidenote, but I've always been paranoid about Google. Nobody gives stuff away for free without wanting something in return later down the road and more than likely feeling entitled to it.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:53 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

"When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else."

- David Brin
posted by basicchannel at 2:55 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Sorry, link to David Brin
posted by basicchannel at 2:58 AM on December 30, 2007

Do you understand now, your new feature has made it ridiculously easy to stalk someone who is a gmail user? Just put them in your contact list, and voila, you can see when they're online.

Oh boy! If I put someone in my list who I want to keep tabs on, and they show as "online" that means that they're logged into their Google account from some computer somewhere in the world. Probably. Unless they forgot to turn their computer off, or have their browser auto login via save password and their roommate/partner/spouse/kid/housesitter turned on their computer.

So in other words, I'll know that a computer with the credentials to sign in to google as them has done that at some point and is either actually them, or not, or is a computer forgotten about. Not seeing the stalker angle much myself. About all it's good for is sending a message to them, at which point if they don't know you, they block you. And if they do know you and have a restraining order, well that's evidence now isn't it?
posted by barc0001 at 3:27 AM on December 30, 2007

Hell, I'd let Google Reader put my Social Security Number on the front page if they'd only let me subscribe and unsubscribe from feeds in the mobile version...
posted by Ian A.T. at 4:25 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

From: http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/12/managing-your-shared-items.html
If you haven't logged into Reader in a while you'll be greeted by a pop-up window titled "Share with Friends", and you'll have the option to move or clear your shared items from there - your items will not be shared with your friends until you've clicked "Continue" from this window.

Assuming this is true, I think there is a lot of wasted nerd-rage over this issue. It is opt-in. Yes, people who relied on security by obscurity to selectively share rss feeds are now searching for another solution (perhaps a new gmail account to use exclusively with a group they want to share with). Yes, there should have been an advance warning, and it is not obvious how the feature works until you go digging through the blogspot site, but Google's documentation for gmail and reader has always sucked. This issue is really not all that bad if you don't allow all the knee-jerking to get in the way of thinking about it.
posted by nowonmai at 5:05 AM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

I thought it was a little weird when all of a sudden I saw mathowie's shared stuff in my Google reader. I guess since I've emailed him for support, he sees my stuff too.
posted by desjardins at 5:55 AM on December 30, 2007

I'm more concerned about the other side. Just because someone is my friend and I email them regularly doesn't mean I want to see every damnfool thing they decide is interesting.
posted by Legomancer at 6:18 AM on December 30, 2007

I think the basic problems are as follows:
Firstly Google didn't give people any warning before deciding to share the shared feeds with everyone on the Gtalk contact list. Saying that you can choose to unshare the feeds isn't really much use after the damage has been done. As a longtime user of RSS aggregators, there are definitely many feeds that I wouldn't want the general public to know I was reading, while it would be quite different for close friends with whom I *choose* to share the feed.
Secondly, there seems to be no way of sharing a particular feed with only a specific group of people. So the only ways to prevent a Person A from knowing that you read a feed are to completely unshare the feed or delete the person from your contact list. That is stupid.
posted by peacheater at 7:39 AM on December 30, 2007

If I use a fake name in my Gmail profile am I safe or has Google found a way around that too?
posted by any major dude at 7:44 AM on December 30, 2007

Other's

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH. I cannot even read this post on its merits because you put an apostrophe in a plural. You have been reported. The correct spelling is OTHERS.

Now. Hm. Continue your discussion.
posted by nax at 8:05 AM on December 30, 2007

I guess since I've emailed him for support, he sees my stuff too.

You see the same kind of fun if you use the Facebook GMail contact importer. It offers to add random people at Yahoo and Google that responded to my support or spam notes. (It also tells me their real name, which is interesting, but I guess they chose to put that on Facebook.)
posted by smackfu at 8:21 AM on December 30, 2007

Google's attitude is pretty easy to figure out: they've got a lot of opinionated geeks working there -- people who care about privacy, about open standards, about open source -- and so they assume that if their own opinionated geeks are okay with something, then the rest of the world will be too.

In other words, their privacy policy (and other policies) is essentially "if we've done it, and we think it's okay, then it's okay." This leads inevitably to bad decisions and mistakes -- or maybe it's just bad responses to concerns and criticism.

Still, after they purchase a company with a long history of privacy violations, you have to wonder where their priorities lie: with their advertisers, or with their users?
posted by jdfalk at 8:37 AM on December 30, 2007

So you are gay and you are in the closet, you see an article about the gay lifestyle, and you click a general share button?

I don't use Google Reader or GMail or GChat (or whatever the hell they call their chat program), so maybe I'm misunderstanding the issue here. But you're not describing what I gather the problem is.

You're saying:

1. Closeted Gay Idiot sees an article that he likes about "the gay lifestyle".
2. He clicks on a button to share it.
3. He is surprised when he discovers that everyone on his contact list now sees that he is interested in the gay lifestyle.
4. Closeted Gay Idiot is an idiot.

That's not the problem as I understand it - it's more like this:

1. Closeted Gay Guy sees an article that he likes about "the gay lifestyle".
2. He cilcks on a button that allows him to share it with certain people that he explicitly specified - people who know he is gay and with whom he is comfortable knowing so.
3. Eight months later, without warning, Google suddenly changes the way "sharing" operates so that everyone on his contact list can see it.
4. Closeted Gay Guy is surprised when he discovers that everyone on his contact list now sees that he is interested in the gay lifestyle.
5. Somebody at Google is an idiot.

Am I misunderstanding what's going on here? If so, how?

And if not, do you honestly not see a distinction between the two cases?
posted by Flunkie at 8:38 AM on December 30, 2007 [4 favorites]

Does anyone not have enough to read that they are concerning themsleves with what other people are reading? Something's askew with the whole "sharing" premise.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:51 AM on December 30, 2007

Flunkie, here's how it works:

1. Closeted Gay Guy sees an article that he likes about "the gay lifestyle".
2. He clicks on a button that puts it on a publicly available list of his shared articles, that he can share as an RSS feed, or by giving out the URL.

The old system was pretty clunky. It was more like sharing in the sense of a blog feed than sharing in the sense of sending an article to someone.
posted by smackfu at 9:18 AM on December 30, 2007

Here is my shared page, which I've never used before so it has one article on it. It looks just like a blog. I wonder if Google indexes it.
posted by smackfu at 9:21 AM on December 30, 2007

I'm sorry to be dense, but that's how it works or how it worked? I'm aware that you said "works", but the pro-"he's an idiot" people seem to be acting as if it works the way it has always worked, so I really want to understand the distinction between the two.

Are my descriptions in my above post not accurate? If not, how?
posted by Flunkie at 9:22 AM on December 30, 2007

With the top description being my understanding of "works", and the bottom being my understanding of "worked".
posted by Flunkie at 9:24 AM on December 30, 2007

It was never about sending it to particular people, if that's your question. That is how some places "share this article" works, but not the Google Reader.
posted by smackfu at 9:29 AM on December 30, 2007

There are several ways around most sharing-based privacy concerns, notably by using google reader's tagging feature as aburd mentioned. This link has some great howtos and links to other sites detailing some of the more esoteric uses of google reader.

n.b., I trust google as far as I can throw one of their server farms, but, as was previously pointed out, it's all about cost/benefit, a la Bruce Schneier. At this point, if you want SaaS, you gotta trust someone.
posted by digitalprimate at 10:59 AM on December 30, 2007

Concern troll indeed. There's nothing new here and there's no privacy violated without the effort of the user. Big whoop!
posted by furtive at 11:38 AM on December 30, 2007

share != private
posted by furtive at 11:53 AM on December 30, 2007

I'm usually the first to criticize this kind of oversharing, but I think in this case it's not a big deal. The verb was "share" in Google Reader, I don't think many folks expected that to have any privacy.

What bugs me about the feature is now I'm seeing other people's reader items in my queue whether I want them or not. I'm sort of obsessing about whittling my reader count down to 0 every day. Now there's a few items in some new place every day that I don't even want to read. I'm sure there's some way to turn it off, but I can't be bothered to find it.
posted by Nelson at 1:10 PM on December 30, 2007

The people who are complaining are WAY off base. Google isn't doing anything different or wrong. You've always been able to share items from Google Reader. That hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is you can add subscribers to your shared items.

First of all, Google Reader tells you Your shared items are publicly accessible. That seems to imply that everyone can see my shared items. I don't know what part of 'public' those people don't understand. There was never any suggestion that it's being shared only with a limited group of people.

Second, something only gets to your shared items if you click the little share button. Anyone with half a brain would realize that they're making it available for ANYONE to see.

My shared items are available here.
posted by mike3k at 2:32 PM on December 30, 2007

I can't comment too much on this -- but I already pay for my gmail account -- I ran out of space and now I pay a few bucks a year to get more storage.

Google has said that the base Gmail with the limited but ever-increasing storage space will always be free. You can probably rely on that.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 4:17 PM on December 30, 2007

I started worrying about Google when I opened an account to sell ads on my web pages. Google somehow caused me to merge all my accounts, even though I wanted to keep personal stuff (say, Orkut) separate from my business stuff. It was a mess of logins. The end came when I was doing a porn search and realized my business login was visible at the top of the page. I closed my advertising account, did the best I could to remove all personal details from Google, and stopped using all of their products. I don't want any one company to have that much information about me, my shopping habits, and my personal life.
posted by astruc at 4:24 PM on December 30, 2007

So you were mixing business and pleasure? Someone once said that was a bad idea.
posted by smackfu at 6:21 PM on December 30, 2007

mike3k: There was never any suggestion that it's being shared only with a limited group of people.

Except that there was absolutely no way to find or stumble upon someone's shared feed in ye olde days unless you told them about it, or they guessed the hash string in the URL. It was privacy by obscurity.

Sure, when you leave the house key under the doormat for your friend who's coming over while you're at work, that's OMG LEAVING IT IN PUBLIC ... but you're still allowed to be mad when Google drives up to your lawn and plants a huge sign saying "HIS KEY IS UNDER THE MAT, FOLKS!"
posted by bonaldi at 7:59 PM on December 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Or, actually, when Google contacts everyone you've ever emailed and says "Hey, mike3k's key's under the mat! Par-tay!"
posted by bonaldi at 8:01 PM on December 30, 2007

Your friends have to use Google Reader too, right? If they just use GMail, they would never see your shared items.
posted by smackfu at 8:19 PM on December 30, 2007

bonaldi, I kind of think it's like leaving your key under the mat, and then someone robbing your house. Yeah, they shouldn't have done it, but you were still pretty dumb for keeping something so valuable in public.
posted by smackfu at 8:21 PM on December 30, 2007

"Your friends have to use Google Reader too, right? If they just use GMail, they would never see your shared items."

Except Google defines your friend as "anyone who has ever chatted with you via Gtalk and have Google Reader."

Many people use Gtalk to chat with co-workers, supervisors, customers, competitors, and god forbid in-laws. These people are not necessarily my friends.

bonaldi, I kind of think it's like leaving your key under the mat, and then someone robbing your house. Yeah, they shouldn't have done it, but you were still pretty dumb for keeping something so valuable in public.

It is common to keep keys under the mat, so that's pretty easy to guess. But in the old days, if I didn't specifically share the obfuscated URL with you (which has 20 random digits), how the heck would you find out?

The better analogy is that I have a 20-acre jungle in front of my house. It is "public" in the sense that it is not fenced off and really anyone can get in. I hide my key in a nondescript tree trunk somewhere, and I share that location with people I specifically trust.

Google is the jackass who builds a neon sign outside saying "hey m2002 hides his key in the second tallest elm tree in grid 2938 x2343."
posted by m2002 at 12:13 AM on December 31, 2007

One day Google is gonna suddenly, without warning, start charging people to use its Gmail accounts.

I REALLY doubt that will ever happen. They offer paid accounts now - Google Apps Premier Edition - but their ability to monetize their position as a storage cloud is more valuable than the few bucks they could get from you or me as GMail users.

The end came when I was doing a porn search and realized my business login was visible at the top of the page.

Why not log out? Or use a different browser?
posted by me & my monkey at 1:27 PM on December 31, 2007

"Why not log out? Or use a different browser?"

Maybe he was short handed.
posted by m2002 at 9:37 PM on December 31, 2007

I'm a she, not a he. I only need to use one browser, generally speaking, and I've deleted my Google account, thus solving the problem.
posted by astruc at 12:50 PM on January 1, 2008