[liquid_thyme]

They created the largest spying instrument in the world that creates hidden profiles (that can never be deleted) documenting web activity, psychological state, medications, etc, etc for billions of people - and have been caught multiple times sharing data with governments (they're probably compromised internally anyway). I would categorize that as unethical. But yeah, you can cheer for the scraps they throw out.

>about things that barely even register to most people.

News flash: This whole website is about things that don't register to most people. It's called hacker news FFS.

In any case, I think a trillion dollar company probably doesn't need defending. They can easily tweak their algorithm to bury this type of stuff; after all this opinion is probably not "relevant" or "useful" to most people.

[jrowen]

Yeah I mean it's a huge company that has many heads and I'm not trying to say that they've never done anything unethical or taken missteps to be corrected. But on the whole, the evilness or dangerousness to the health and well-being of (for example) American citizens of what you describe pales in comparison to so many bigger problems that are facing this country (homelessness, medical care, wealth inequality, authoritarianism, bigotry, the military-industrial complex, supporting foreign genocides, the list goes on...).

Why should the average American give a shit about profiles being built and data being shared with governments? Virtually all of the danger of that is so hypothetical and far removed from the real terrors that many people are facing (please don't pull up an example of a greyhat-type individual that arguably wrongfully got caught up).

In any case, I think a trillion dollar company probably doesn't need defending.

So you just want a punching bag to bitch at? I'm not doing it for their sake, I'm doing it for yours. Crusading against Google, which has actually provided a lot of value to a lot of people and continues to do so, feels a bit myopic to me.