If you can't read the small text, let me sum it up for you, "We are getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that's a lot shorter and easier to read." Let that sink in for a moment.
That's the equivalent of telling people "You can't read all of the amendments? Here, let's make a picture book out of it. It's pretty much the same thing." Anyone else nervous? How much information can you fit in a simple privacy policy? I admit, I haven't actually looked at the privacy policy, but just the thought that corporations are dumbing it down for us makes me reconsider my dismissive attitude.
The more simple the policies are, the more loopholes can be found. Even if there are policies that we haven't read every single word of, they still exist and considered valid so if something happens, we can point to it and say it was in the policy. If Google is actually deleting the privacy policy and replacing it with a simpler one, we don't have the more extensive policy to fall back on if we need to. Again, that's like getting rid of the amendments and instead making them into one sentence bullet points. Creating a bullet point list is fine so we understand the gist of the amendments, but to get rid of the solid foundation of it would be unthinkable.
It always frightens me when information continues to be simplified for the benefit of the drooling masses. This conditioning will only exacerbate the dwindling intellect of the masses. The key is not to make information simpler, but to make it more accessible and easier to navigate. Instead, intelligence will only continue to decline in this country.
ReplyDeleteI'm not entirely convinced that we should be worried about a consolidation of Google's policies. Sure, if the language is oversimplified then there's room for loopholes, but I don't think that's what Google did. I haven't read the new TOS yet, nor have I read all the original 60, but I trust Google more than congress right now. (Okay, maybe that's not saying much.) What I believe Google did was carefully combine all the policies into one in order to make it one unified document for all the services they offer (Google+, Google Books, YouTube, Blogger, etc). In the long run, there's a lot of overlap such as copyright infringement policies. What they did was made it into one document that applies to all services so you wouldn't have to click the little box if you were already a Google+ user who decided to create a Blog.
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