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Having made a cost benefit analysis of my Google+ account I have concluded the best outcome would be to delete it and I have done so. I've never really seen the point of it, in social networking terms it has never worked for me and actually I think the whole thing is too intrusive. I mean... everyone knows that Google collects intelligence about us all for commercial and government agencies, so its intrusiveness should not come as any surprise to anyone really. Blogger is a Google owned product too of course but it is one that is easier to use, control and to keep track of I think.
I have been a blogger for a decade or more on various platforms and as in the case of both Yahoo and Multiply...I have been kicked off when the service was no longer of interest to either provider. Bloggers as most people reading this will know from bitter experience were told 'sorry you'll have to go elsewhere we're shutting up shop'... and that was that with both Yahoo and Multiply. So it actually felt quite good to decide to dispense with Google + today which also affects the way Blogger works and that other Google satelite YouTube.
If you intend to say goodbye to Google+ and you have a YouTube account I suggest you change the settings to pre-Google+ which is actually easy peasy even for me. It may be less straightforward if you signed up to YouTube since Google+ appropriated it... but it was quite liberating to say to this global corporate-person... thanks but no thanks, I'll pass on that one!
If you intend to say goodbye to Google+ and you have a YouTube account I suggest you change the settings to pre-Google+ which is actually easy peasy even for me. It may be less straightforward if you signed up to YouTube since Google+ appropriated it... but it was quite liberating to say to this global corporate-person... thanks but no thanks, I'll pass on that one!
Since it was in my experience a flawed method of communication anyway and for everyone concerned a bit of a waste of time in my opinion. I don't think it will disrupt communications with my online friends in any significant way now that I've given it up.
It was good to feel the warm glow of moral rectitude in the knowledge that Google is an organisation that is obviously utterly evil to the very core.
Google's corporate motto Don't Be Evil is an intellectual property claim, not a moral proposition. Google wants the monopoly on all evil of course, just like it does on all internet traffic so it can blab for big bucks to anyone who asks, what could be more evil than that?
Shameless traders in personal data who sell the contents of your mind to anyone interested enough to obtain it...so they can use dead clever psychology to get you to follow your dreams, buy some useless trinket you once looked at and dismissed and get you nicely into debt.
Google's corporate motto Don't Be Evil is an intellectual property claim, not a moral proposition. Google wants the monopoly on all evil of course, just like it does on all internet traffic so it can blab for big bucks to anyone who asks, what could be more evil than that?
Shameless traders in personal data who sell the contents of your mind to anyone interested enough to obtain it...so they can use dead clever psychology to get you to follow your dreams, buy some useless trinket you once looked at and dismissed and get you nicely into debt.
As a mere physical person as opposed to a corporate person there may not be a lot you can do about it, except lay false trails and stuff like that of course, but you can also inconvenience the domestic espionage a little bit and that is always worthwhile when it is just done by nosey bastards on the make.
Of course in the UK Google is intrinsic to the NSA supervised GCHQ spy caper called not very imaginatively 'Flying Pig' ...oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!
Of course in the UK Google is intrinsic to the NSA supervised GCHQ spy caper called not very imaginatively 'Flying Pig' ...oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!
See you soon on Google minus!
I was going to delete my Google+ awhile back, but it sounded like if I deleted it, my blogger page and my youtube would go too. And I still don't see how to delete it without losing those two things . And I made some friends on G+ that don't have Blogger so now I am tied in there because of friendships .........sigh
ReplyDeleteNo Lia all that is scare tactics my Blogger and YouTube work fine without G+ but obviously it is more successful for you than it has ever been for me, so if it ain't broke why fix it?
ReplyDeleteI only posted this really as a notice for my Blogger pals that I'm not on G+ anymore, I'm glad you noticed and commented Lia we'll keep up correspondence on here now, which is great :-)
Well done, AA.
ReplyDeleteAs you said: "Shameless traders in personal data who sell the contents of your mind to anyone interested enough to obtain it...so they can use dead clever psychology to get you to follow your dreams, buy some useless trinket you once looked at and dismissed and get you nicely into debt."
You have put the whole Google+ "show" in its proper context, AA. It's interesting to me that the company came up with "Don't Do Evil" as opposed to simply "Do Good".
The idea that we are all on here swapping stories and pictures and ideas and what not simply to satisfy a sublimate a latent consumer craving is a very cynical analysis on Google's part, if I do say myself...The interesting thing for me is no matter what the Internet Giants create, the powers-that-be are never satisfied with the platform as it is---in that way, they are essentially no different from old bricks-and-mortar companies like Coca-Cola, Western Union and General Motors, outfits they think they have superseded by calling their corporate HQ's "campuses" and doing away with silly things like dress codes, shift work and unions.
They are still running a store, one that bows to governments all over the world to make an extra buck. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", eh?
Thanks for your comments Doug, it is indeed interesting why Google should choose a prohibitive ethical motto i.e. a 'don't do' rather than a permissive 'do' slogan like you say..."do good."
DeleteI think the reason for that may be that Google thinks (as a corporate person) that it is being pretty clever here, which of course is a common misconception within the so-called 'intelligence community' I think. They the Google/NSA/GCHQ/McDonalds have a nice day alliance are what is called by public school buffoons over here and their secret society admirers 'nudging'... after the theories of Obama's indoctrination guru Cass Sunstein (also a great friend and collaborator with GW Bush).... 'a right little brainbox' by all accounts who has simple souls like David Cameron mesmerised in his thrall.
I read a great quote from Sunstein that goes ""The existence of both domestic and foreign conspiracy theories, we suggest, is no trivial matter, posing real risks to the government’s antiterrorism policies, whatever the latter may be." Sounds like another conspiracy theory to me...So just another paranoid transatlanticist smartarse who believes he and his retinue of of overgrown schoolboys/girls can "nudge" the unsuspecting 'sheeple' into the exact shape they all want us to be, that is basically slave shape of course.
In this picture the Google NSA franchise has a vital role to play and that's why thousands of people worldwide call it 'evil' as they feed the insatiable machine with garbage and tinsel.
'Don't Do Evil' was chosen by these self appointed leaders of public opinion whose public school secret liasons have become the basis for the governance in this country in much the same way as the immature bedwetters of Skull and Bones do similar things in the US.
They are always in awe of smartypants like Sunstein... who has managed to convince them that he holds the key to our enslavement and thus he is a pretty clever chap so far as the bedazzled duffers in government and the civil service types are concerned.
Enthused by the prospect of trouble-free social engineering, propaganda and surveillance tools like Google attempt to transcend their intrinsic mediocrity by the deployment of clever psychology to beef up their modus operandi.
In the attempt to create an epsilon workforce corporate money has been poured into research of the sort served up by the likes of Harvard Business School professor Joshua D. Margolis whose recent paper on employee ethics states that "inducing a prevention focus may lead to more ethical behavior than inducing a promotion focus."
In other words:-
"In trying to encourage good moral conduct, it's common for a company to come up with a list of don'ts—wording policies such that they focus on unethical behavior employees should avoid rather than on ethical acts they should strive to achieve. Don't cheat. Don't lie. It's a tendency that dates back to the Ten Commandments, the vast majority (eight) of which dictate what thou shalt not do."
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6611.html
In attempting to transpose those employer/employee ethics onto consumers is where its all going wrong, nobody likes a smartarse, nobody likes some upper class buffoon trying to get clever with us ...and nobody likes gobby corporate persons like Google trying to tell us what's what... when we all know they are as corrupt as a 'speakeasy' in Monrovia, you can trust them no further than you can throw them ...
The corporations are seeking to further impoverish the populations (us) for the benefit of the crooked and corrupt gangster oligarchy that have their hands on the buttons, just how evil is that Doug?...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20560359