I'm going to come across here as an odd outlier, and that's OK. I accept it. Being in IT for 20 years has shown me that none of these companies can be trusted. Since I have to have a mobile phone, I chose Apple. I don't believe that there are "lesser evils". You're evil or you're not. Full stop. I do my best to use open source tools (save iPhone) in my house. Granted, there are no open source TVs, Roku's, etc, but they are not tracking me. My TV is set to be dumb, I don't use "real" information when I sign up for transient things. I use email aliases for everything with Fastmail. I have no apps save the ones that ship with the phone and I don't use the health app. I use the phone, texting, and camera. That's it. I don't have an iCloud account.
The field of companies is narrowing with FAANG buying up everything of value or anything that may threaten them. I get it. It's all about money. While I don't agree with everything that Richard Stallman says, he's right more often than not. We are increasingly giving our lives to FAANG. The tracking is insidious. The sharing of information is insidious. We can fight back should we wish. But how many people are willing to give up their conveniences for their freedoms? I'd wager not too many. I'll admit I bought a flip phone for the purposes of avoiding any virus apps that may be required in future should that happen. I just want to stay off the radar and I have a right to do so.
Is it ignorant of me to wonder if the majority of the issues raised in this piece are either portrayed/worded poorly or just not very compelling?
>First, Google has the incentive and ability to favour the adoption of Fitbit over rival wearables on the user side, and to simultaneously undermine the ability of others to offer competing products to insurers and health providers.
I guess the argument is that Google buying Fitbit would mean other non-Apple wearables would be at a disadvantage by nature of there being a first-party alternative, but is that inherently monopolistic or anti-competitive? Isn't that essentially what Google has been attempting to do with Nest or the Pixel phone line?
After multiple reads, I fail to understand what blocking this merger does other than temporarily delay Google from doing what the tech industry is going to continue to do, exploit the ignorance of policy-makers and the general public to harvest and sell our personal information. Does blocking this merger even accomplish anything other than delaying what will be inevitable without legislative action?
E: forgot some words
You can sync Garmin (many devices) health tracker data locally via USB cable or wireless receiver, then parse/graph with OSS scripts:
Code: https://github.com/tcgoetz/GarminDB & https://github.com/mrihtar/Garmin-FIT
Wireless receiver: https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/10997 & https://www.thisisant.com/
this article appears to be an opinion piece, speculating what a combined google/fitbit could do, not an official announcement of what they will do. but the headline is written in the tone of an official announcement from google. seems a bit misleading.
It's crazy to me that people will run non-free software on something that is designed to capture biometrics... but then again I've been looking for a decent open source alternative and there is nothing out there.
Is there any brand of wrist sensor that doesn't require you to upload your data to their servers by any chance?
I love the fitbit sensor, but I wish I could opt out of the server side of the things
Health privacy, while kind of important Ina vacuum, is maybe the most overrated issue of our day.
Not only do I not care if my health data is out there but I wish it were.
Right now healthcare is barely using data, it's absurd. Let's focus on making good diagnostic AI preventative medicine to let people live forever.
For anyone who didn't see the Reuters article from yesterday:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fitbit-m-a-alphabet-eu-ex...
What about Amazon and Apple? Why is Google the only recipient with scrutiny? Especially since the merger hasn't happened yet.
You should be frightened about all of them.
if a ml algorithm could influence me to work out more, i would accept the consistent nonsense ads about weight watchers
Does anyone have recommendations for a privacy-conscious alternative to the Aria scale and mobile app?
Wait until their AI enables customers to target people grieving from the death of a loved one.
This is borderline sickening.
I think they could feasibly make the case for selling data to drug and research companies for the purposes of medical advancement ... but beyond that it's ridiculous.
I'm generally realpolitik about these kinds of issues, but even this to me feels evil.
If someone here works for Google fitbit please drop me a line at www.koalasleeve.com
Why don't people just count their steps or breaths and use pencil and paper? I don't see these products doing anything exceptionally useful and now they are harming people.
Unless you a training to a specification (e.g. exert this many ft-lbs of force) it's just motivation.
The argument they're making here is a little subtle, but it tracks.
They're not claiming Google will hand out a user's biometrics to insurance companies or other parties. They're claiming Google will offer biometrically-based signal as an ad discrimination channel.
At that point, they don't have to hand out the data to allow insurance companies to discriminate; insurance companies could set up targeted ads for Cadillac insurance programs on users having XYZ biometrics and those ads only run for users that are showing they're low health risks. So it's soft market discrimination; only the extra-healthy get explicitly told about new insurance plan A, and the self-select group signs up, possibly making A cheaper for the insurer to implement even if they don't do any additional screening.
I think the theory has holes, but it's not nonsense. And it's unclear to me that it demands government regulation (but my bias is American-style law; I don't know how European legal eyes see the story I just laid out).