Instigator / Pro
4
1644
rating
64
debates
65.63%
won
Topic
#2753

THBT On Net Balance, Google Should Uphold Users' Privacy

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
3
Better sources
2
2
Better legibility
1
1
Better conduct
1
0

After 1 vote and with 2 points ahead, the winner is...

RationalMadman
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
4
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One month
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
6
1697
rating
556
debates
68.17%
won
Description

Pro will argue that Google should stop tracking people, their browsing history, etc. thus upholding the users' right to privacy.

Con will argue otherwise.

Burden of proof is shared.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:

Forfeit from Con automatically grants Pro conduct.

Regarding arguments, I'll mention two issues that contributed to this outcome. The first is that it's unclear precisely where the split is in this debate, and Pro muddies it a lot in R3. He basically says that it's the difference between having any upholding of privacy and having none, which may have been accurate to the debate if it had been brought up in R1, but comes across as an effort to shift the burdens last minute to favor himself. It's all the more strange since the description includes a change from Pro (i.e. Google should stop tracking people, which is also distinct from the scenarios of tracking but providing information to users, and as such that should be Con ground) and no necessary change from Con. Con can uphold status quo. Pro cannot. Con can basically take any position that doesn't substantially reduce tracking efforts. So, Pro, either start off by clarifying your case, or uphold what's in the description. Either way, it could have improved upon this because it made your position slippery in the end.

The second issue is that Con got away with a scenario that sets up his whole case: namely, that any ground that Google cedes in tracking users will be picked up by some other company. I don't see any response to this from Pro (I would have easily bought that Google will still remain the major player in the field and that no one can pirate their search engine or other sources of data, meaning that Google essentially walls off a large portion of the Internet from data tracking). This is big problem because it makes almost all of his harms scenarios non-unique. I guess you could argue that Google is a uniquely worse actor, but the only point that Pro has on that seems to stem from their size, for which Con gives me a strong reason to be grateful: they have little reason to sell data, they use it judiciously to help in criminal cases, and they are far better at protecting data. I don't know how much I buy each of these personally, but I don't get any strong reasons not to believe them within the debate. Pro tells me that governments can misuse the data, but doesn't give me examples beyond China's unwillingness to provide access to Google, which isn't really applicable. Pro tells that it can still be hacked, but doesn't tell me why Google's protections wont be effective or why (and I was surprised this is missing) it's so bad to have a giant pile of information in one place, meaning that even fewer instances of hacking could be more damaging. It also really doesn't help that I don't have a response to Google's having to get this information to keep their bottom line, a point Con made several times. So, that just leaves me with Pro's impacts regarding privacy, almost all of which appear to be slippery slopes rather than well-articulated scenarios. Why does the right to privacy and informed consent affect a person's every day? I can think of more than a few reasons, but I need to see them play out in the debate. These bigger impacts might look more alluring, but they're harder to prove and easy to undermine, as Con did several times.

So, based on these factors, I end up voting Con on arguments.