What about the Users?

Keeping with the theme of not entertaining you today, I’m going to ramble on about a little half-baked essay that Dave Winer has whipped up to piss on Google. The thesis is that Dave needs to unwad his panties.

Background:
Google’s introduced a feature in its toolbar called AutoLink. The basic gist of this feature is that it turns certain unlinked text (like addresses) into links to Google services. There will be a lot of bickering back and forth about whether this is a good idea, whether it’s counter to the spirit of the web and so on… I’m going to approach from a different angle.

Concessions:
First, there are some concessions that need to be made. For starters, I agree that a site should be able to opt-out (caveat: user’s ought to be able to override the site preference). I also agree that this is, for all intents and purposes, adware. Guess what: neither of those points matter.

The User’s Right:
Dave does a lot of yapping about an author’s right to decide how his content is seen. The bottom line is that the author has no such right. Though it’s tempting to concede that, as the author, you have a right to decide how people see your material, the bottom line is that you waive that right the moment you publish in HTML. Why? Because, for starters, every program that reads that HTML may render it differently. Custom browser settings, different browsers, and so on will make this a pointless argument, and that’s not even to speak of programs which help with accessibility.

“Alright,” you’re thinking “but don’t author’s have a right to control what content their users see?” That’s iffy. In a sense, yes, but the users also have a right to alter that work for personal consumption. (See: The Shizzolator) The bottom line here is that users are are choosing to view your material with links added by google. They can choose not to install the toolbar or, alternately, to just turn the feature off. The Google Toolbar is an add on. If it wants to include adware as a “service” then it has that right. Who knows, some people might even find it useful. If not, they can just turn it off.

The bottom line here is that Google is supplying a tool. They’re not logging into your server and adding links to your site, they’ve published a piece of software that allows their users to see the web a different way if the users choose to.

That’s the bottom line. If you don’t like the software, don’t install it. If you don’t like the fact that a piece of software can modify your web content… Publish your works in PDF format, use flash, write a piece of software which prevents Google from modifying the page, or… get off the web. Web content is easy to modify by its very nature, and that’s not going to change… it shouldn’t change. Users have a right to see your content as they want to see it… and if you don’t like that, take it to a different medium.

Final note:
Personally, I would advise users to turn this feature off… it seems like it’d be more of an annoyance than anything, but it’s not google’s job to look out for your stupid ass. It’s your own.