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Google Maps renames “Lake Ontario” to “Lake America” even faster than US government (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Google rolled out the Lake America change on Saturday, while the official US government maps are still waiting.

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[–] 6 points 22 hours ago* (2 children)

It's annoying that it's not easier. I should be able to go to some European or Canadian competitor and at least know that I am not giving my data directly to US data brokers. Why aren't there more options? You can't tell me the US is the only one who has tech knowledge.

A lot of Americans would instantly jump to a Chinese competitor if they offered English support, fully knowing that all their data is going to the CCP to avoid the US surveillance landscape as it already is.

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  • [–] 5 points 18 hours ago

    A lot of Americans would instantly jump to a Chinese competitor

    I think this is pretty true. To expand:

    I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have to either run my own email/hosting/storage servers and surrounding infrastructure with the tech understanding required to do so*, or give my data to someone else. Not having an email address is not realistic when it's the primary key for your bank, school, employer, etc.

    *A decade or so ago, running an SMTP server was trivial. Now, it needs DMARC, DKIM, SPF, publicly trusted certificates, and maybe newer things I'm not familiar with in order to be able send email. These are not bad things, but they increase the requirements for self-hosting.

    Right now, that 'someone else' is generally google or microsoft for most people, and those companies are so big they get to dictate how other tools I need to use work. They also freely sell my data or give it to the government - possibly without any sort of warrant via 'data sharing agreements'.

    US-based data brokers are actively hostile to me. A Chinese data broker is less likely to care, since I'm further from their profit model: I'm unlikely to buy a Chinese cereal or make-up brand or visit a restaurant halfway across the globe. This only matters as long as US and Chinese data brokers don't share info, but I suspect there's friction there. If there's not, then there's no reason to NOT switch.

    If I have to give my data to someone, then I'd prefer to give it to someone who doesn't directly impact or care about me the way google/microslop and the US government do.

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