I sure as hell don't think my Grandma or Dad would have realized that Google's dark pattern[1] "opt-out" dialogs asking if they want to "make Android better" actually were asking for permission to send their location on a minute-by-minute basis to Google. How do you think Google populates their "Popular Times" card on search results?[2] Do you believe that even a simple majority of people going to a hospital, say, for some embarassing infection or a psych eval realize that the fact that they are there is going to be stored permanently on a Google server?
Google for me is the company that epitomizes the idea of false consent justifying near-unlimited data collection and permanent retention. If the man on the street is not aware of what he's agreeing to when he buys an Android phone in a meaningful sense, it is not consent in any meaningful sense.
We as people in tech might be aware. We might even be fashionably cynical in trying to rationalize our awareness of Google's tricks as a "social contract." But with knowledge comes responsibility.
C'mon... Google maps will ask me turn my GPS every damn time I use it; no way "to remember this choice", but if I activated it, it is super happy to remember it.
Google for me is the company that epitomizes the idea of false consent justifying near-unlimited data collection and permanent retention. If the man on the street is not aware of what he's agreeing to when he buys an Android phone in a meaningful sense, it is not consent in any meaningful sense.
We as people in tech might be aware. We might even be fashionably cynical in trying to rationalize our awareness of Google's tricks as a "social contract." But with knowledge comes responsibility.
[1]: https://darkpatterns.org/ [2]: Seems to appear/not appear based on opaque conditions.