The Patriot Post® · Google's Hypocritical Data-Collection Ban
Google is in the business of collecting every scrap of data possible. As with many other Big Tech companies — perhaps far more so than most — you are the product. That’s why it’s almost unbelievably hypocritical for the company to have just axed a couple of apps from its Android Play Store for the sin of collecting data about users.
Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You are popular accountability apps most often used by Christians who want to kick the habit of viewing pornography. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’” Jesus said. “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” How serious an offense is this? “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.” He didn’t mean that literally, of course, but to give a sense of gravity regarding how we ought to treat our sin — fight it and take away opportunities for it because it is deadly serious.
That’s exactly what Christians do by voluntarily downloading the aforementioned apps and partnering with other Christians to hold them accountable. Pornography is evil. It destroys marriages and families, and it has virtually enslaved millions of (primarily) men to the addiction of viewing it, while degrading and objectifying the (primarily) women who are the subjects of it. Limiting it is a goal so laudable that even Instagram recently banned a major smut site (some might say due to competition, but still). Visa suspended credit card processing for that same site after it came to light that it traffics images and videos of minors.
Pornography is so evil that even the Leftmedia rag Wired published a lengthy story last month slamming … “the ungodly surveillance” of apps that track its use. Read that again. Wired has a beef not with objectifying women (and children) but with men who try to stop doing so.
As a result of this upside-down worldview, Wired says it “presented its findings [read: anti-Christian screed] to Google,” which then decided that the two apps “violate its policies.”
This is neither an endorsement nor a critique of Covenant Eyes, Accountable2You, or any number of other apps that track user behavior for the purpose of modifying or correcting that behavior, and it’s also not commentary on how users employ such apps. It is a rebuke of Google, which, again, exists for the purpose of collecting and selling your data for profit.
Even Google’s efforts to convey altruistic concern for user privacy are infused with ulterior motives. Moreover, as Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson alleged in February, “Google kept tracking individuals’ location data even after consumers told the corporation to stop.” He added, “This is not only dishonest, it’s unlawful.”
Frankly, the app banning is just the latest in a long line of anti-Christian, anti-conservative, anti-privacy, anti-free speech behavior from the world’s biggest search engine. Google censored pro-life ads. Google’s Gmail spam filter is arguably biased against conservatives. It’s search results definitely are. Google secretly accessed Americans’ health data. Google cavorts with the ChiComs to suppress free speech and bows to Beijing regarding pandemic truth.
Google’s motto used to be “Don’t Be Evil,” and the imperative still exists in the company’s code of conduct. Yet, to the list of transgressions above, the hypocritical data-collection company has added blocking a certain kind of app for collecting data. Sadly, such hypocrisy is par for the course in Silicon Valley.