Over the weekend, we learned that Google will ban any and all “climate deniers” from advertising on Google’s Advertising platform – the largest such platform on the Internet. As usual, the media coverage is in line with Google’s and it appears that they wrote this press release less for a big tech story than for a news article.
The Associated Press
Google will crack down on false claims about climate change and digital advertisements that make it easy to make money. This is in an effort to reduce revenue from climate deniers as well as stop misinformation spreading on Google’s platforms.
Science’s fundamental principles are founded on challenging assertions. Reporters and entire news outlets who support climate change treat it like a religion, with the same fanaticism as an Inquisition. Climate change is not a problem, no matter how many times its predictions have been proven incorrect.
The supposed “gold standard” of journalism is just blindly following the religion of climate change and accepting Google’s move as a good thing, as the language in the lede implies. It lends credibility to this authoritarian move where there shouldn’t be any.
Google’s decision to focus on it isn’t based on climate science.
Google currently faces a lot in the tech industry. While companies like Apple are doing what they can to further and further protect private information, Google is making it easier than ever for its customers – advertisers – to get the information they need on you, the product they provide those customers.
Chrome users are facing two new tracking problems. First, Google has ignored security warnings and launched a new Chrome API to detect and report when you’re “idle,” i.e., not actively using your device. Apple Warning “this is an obvious privacy concern,” and Mozilla This it’s “too tempting an opportunity for surveillance.”
Google, though, isn’t listening, reinforcing its fairly narrow use case while staying silent on these warnings. “This feature,” Google told me, “which we only expect to be used by a small fraction of sites, requires the site to ask for the user’s permission to access this data. It was built with privacy in mind, and helps messaging applications deliver notifications to only the device the user is currently using.”
[…]
Google’s latest gambit isn’t yet generating headlines, but it will. Rather than take Apple’s approach, that your privacy should be sacrosanct, Google wants to “budget” how invasive data harvesting can be. Rather than simply stopping web trackers from collecting your data, Google plans to introduce a “privacy budget,” whereby it will police just how much data they can take—You get what you pay for.
It is understandable. Websites are limited to what they can take from the privacy bank—that currency is obviously your data. Once they’re fully drawn down, the privacy bank shuts and they can’t withdraw any more for a time. But just like FLoC, isolated theories don’t survive long on the real web. As Mozilla explains, “the underlying problem here is the large amount of fingerprinting-capable surface that is exposed to the web—there does not appear to be a shortcut around addressing that.”
Google finds itself in an unwitting trap. Google must play both ends of the fence, unlike Brave, Microsoft and DuckDuckGo. While it might talk about protecting your privacy and data, Compromise that privacy to serve the needs of advertisers—its customers—is literally its business model. Follow the money!
You should read the entire article (linked above), as it raises alarm about recent security breaches.
Russian-sponsored hackers, for example, are targeting users with sufficient success that Google offers them security upgrades at no cost.
Google has said it will provide 10,000 “high-risk” users with free hardware security keys, days after the company warned thousands of Gmail users that they were targeted by state-sponsored hackers.
The warning, sent by Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), alerted more than 14,000 Gmail users that they had been targeted in a state-sponsored phishing campaign from APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, said to be made up of operatives of Russia’s GRU intelligence agency. Fancy Bear has been active for more than a decade but it’s widely known for hacking into the Democratic National Committee and its disinformation and election influencing campaign in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Google also warned Chrome users millions of times to upgrade their browsers as a precautionary measure to protect themselves from Day One security vulnerabilities.
Chrome’s 2.6 billion users again need to be on high alert (for the second time in a week), because Google has confirmed multiple new High-level hacks of the browser.
Coming just days after Chrome’s 12th and 13th ‘zero day’ exploits of the year were discovered, Google has published a new blog post revealing four ‘High’ rated vulnerabilities have been confirmed. It is imperative that users take immediate actions.
Google currently blocks information regarding these hacks as a standard practice to make it easier for Chrome users who want to upgrade.
Google has been a major player in the tech sector. Google’s offerings to you and me every day have huge security holes. Privacy issues will start to become a serious concern and warrant an investigation by the government.
How do they stop the government looking at them? They announce something that they know enough people in government will like and take credit for their “brave” stance and business policy.
Google understands that Democrats control the government and Democrats want to hear from those they don’t agree with regarding climate change. They also know that even if the government changes hands and is led by Republicans, there are enough progressive bureaucrats in all the regulating agencies that they have allies who won’t be as quick to go after them as, say, Facebook.
They also believe that Congress’ fascination with Facebook regulation will allow them to keep a low profile and avoid Congressional investigations.
So that’s why they are choosing right now to go after so-called “climate deniers.” They are shifting the focus away from them at a time when it’s very easy to distract their users and Congress. Google will soon find itself in more trouble, and Congress should investigate these security concerns because Google is likely to create an incredible amount of identity theft.
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