this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
350 points (92.9% liked)

Technology

59415 readers
1777 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A lot can happen in a year when you're the worlds largest search engine. Here's my Google Wrapped 2023 video showing you everything toxic they did in the last 12 months.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Darkenfolk@dormi.zone 85 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Aaand it's a fucking video, do we already have bots that post video summaries?

[โ€“] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 71 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The video's summary is an actual summary, so clearly they took this into account.

Chapters -

๐Ÿ“บ 0:00 - Intro - Toxic Google Wrapped 2023

๐Ÿ“บ 0:06 - Jan - Google fired 12,000 staff including their head of health and wellbeing

๐Ÿ“บ 0:56 - Feb - Google said employees must come back to the office and share desks. Bard (Chat GPT competitor) launches.

๐Ÿ“บ 2:48 - March - Google gave data to the police to help prosecute abortion seekers after Roe vs Wade was overturned. And they fired multiple staff after giving birth.

๐Ÿ“บ 5:18 - April - Google announces cost-cutting measures including cutting back on staplers. Google, Meta and X propose an alliance to combat misinformation.

๐Ÿ“บ 7:54 - May - South Korea fined Google for anti-competitive practices and Google continued to sell climate disinformation ads (after promising to stop).

๐Ÿ“บ 9:35 - June - Google replaces it's fired workers with "low-paid foreign workers" and donated to an anti-abortion Republican Committee

๐Ÿ“บ 10:29 - July - Google uses our data to train Bard and increases the cost of YouTube Premium.

๐Ÿ“บ 10:52 - Aug - Google offers staff an on-campus hotel room for $99 a night. And YouTube ads may have led to the online tracking of children.

๐Ÿ“บ 11:31 - Sept - Google Pixel Watches have no parts or repair program and Google Maps led a dad to his death over a collapsed bridge.

The bridge one is a little unfair. The directions were bad and the route hadn't been updated for 9 years since the bridge collapsed, and that's just Google's shitty map algorithm not respecting corrections unless a bunch of people make them, but that man's death was on local authorities for leaving a collapsed bridge completely accessable from the road without any barriers and warnings for 9 straight years. It was raining, it was dark, there was poor visibility, but Maps was never meant to be a substitute for your eyes.

๐Ÿ“บ 12:17 - Oct - Google's AI consumes as much electricity as Ireland and Alphabet hired an underqualified man (who didn't even apply for the job) over a woman.

๐Ÿ“บ 13:15 - Nov - Google backs out of building affordable housing in the Bay Area and spent $26 billion to be your default search engine.

๐Ÿ“บ 13:59 - Dec - Google caught putting ads on adult websites ๐ŸŒฝ and McDonalds is using Google AI to test if your fries are fresh.

๐Ÿ“บ 15:07 - Outro - thanks for watching!

I'd argue there's not enough here, frankly. This is mostly corporate stuff, but there's a lot of other toxic shit they've been doing on the technical end.

Trying to slip web integrity checking into Chrome, for one. Only to get pushed back and instead opt to shove it into Android for now.

Their all-out war on ad blockers as it deliberately degrades the experience of YouTube for everyone except Premium subscribers. (Remembering that increasing the ads degrades the experience for everyone even before you start arguing about how they target ad-blockers)

Manifest V3

It's not getting a lot of attention but Play Integrity on Android has been getting vicious in the last few months as Google continues the push to punish users for wanting to use their hardware on their own terms.

So on and so on.

[โ€“] Darkenfolk@dormi.zone 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks! I just really dislike having to watch a video for something that I can read in less time.

[โ€“] RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

Seconded. I hate that information these days revolves around someone getting views or being spoon fed at their pace via video. I can read a list or a summary in a minute or two.

[โ€“] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 4 points 11 months ago

Google made one /s