101–110 of 203 posts
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Exactly. That's why I solved this problem by using DDG. Although I admit some searches I have to send to Google to get the result I'm looking for.
Same for me, but all google searches are done by DDG bangs like 'g!'
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That wasn't what caused DNT to fail. What caused it to fail was that websites could decide whether or not to honor it, and honoring it would have meant a reduced ability to spy on people, impacting their income.
That was part of it. Obviously if sites had no choice in the matter then it wouldn't have mattered whether browsers enabled it by default or not. Since it was a voluntary thing though, browsers sending it by default pretty much destroyed what chance there was of mainstream sites deciding to implement support for it. It's one thing to give up on tracking a small portion of users who explicitly opt-out, and another thi…
I find link mangling to be a great test for when a service becomes too powerful relative to its users, able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users[1]. Google started doing this around 2004[2]. Facebook didn't do it until a few years ago. Slack and Discord don't do it. Yet. [1] Example: a search result that's a pdf. How do I share this link? If I click on it it downloads to my disk. If I r…
It's worse with Google, because they add the friction but then hide it in their own browser. There's no issue copy/pasting links from Chrome. This is a pattern of behavior. For example, when reading an AMP article hosted by google.com, an iPhone will correctly show `google.com` in its URL bar. Whereas an Android will conveniently rewrite `google.com` to show the URL of the article source, falsely implying the browser…
I find link mangling to be a great test for when a service becomes too powerful relative to its users, able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users[1]. Google started doing this around 2004[2]. Facebook didn't do it until a few years ago. Slack and Discord don't do it. Yet. [1] Example: a search result that's a pdf. How do I share this link? If I click on it it downloads to my disk. If I r…
My alma mater switched its mail accounts to Outlook365. Now all links in email messages - including text emails - are mangled to go through microsoft's servers. And they're humongous-long too!
Google does this so they have click tracking data. But they don't need to mangle URLs in Chrome because it supports the `ping` attribute on tags [0]. The ping attribute basically adds click tracking as a native browser feature so you don't need to do URL redirects. It also makes these analytics much easier for the site and mysterious to the user. Looks like most vendors besides Firefox support it. (They were pretty o…
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Same for me, but all google searches are done by DDG bangs like 'g!'
Yeah, me too. Love the bang system. Don't forget to put the exclamation point in front! "!g"
At least some of the bang keywords work with the "!" on either side. I tried "g!" and "w!" and they work OK.
Google does this so they have click tracking data. But they don't need to mangle URLs in Chrome because it supports the `ping` attribute on tags [0]. The ping attribute basically adds click tracking as a native browser feature so you don't need to do URL redirects. It also makes these analytics much easier for the site and mysterious to the user. Looks like most vendors besides Firefox support it. (They were pretty o…
At least with the mangled link approach it’s easier to tell that tracking is going on, but that ping attribute seems extraordinarily sneaky to me. I get that it enables “clean” links but the opaque tracking is way worse in my eyes.
Sigh.
Edit: when I think about it, I guess it’s not that dissimilar to what you can do with JS based tracking anyway, so perhaps it’s not really any worse than what already exists. But it still feels wrong for some reason.
I find link mangling to be a great test for when a service becomes too powerful relative to its users, able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users[1]. Google started doing this around 2004[2]. Facebook didn't do it until a few years ago. Slack and Discord don't do it. Yet. [1] Example: a search result that's a pdf. How do I share this link? If I click on it it downloads to my disk. If I r…
In the google search results, click the three vertical dots above the link and to the right of the domain. If using mobile, you'll need to switch to desktop mode to see the three dots. After clicking, an "About this result" pane will pop up to the right, probably[1]. In that pane you'll see the true link, and you can Right Click > Copy Link.
[1]: On my computer, the "About this result" pane says "BETA", so not sure if everyone can use it. It works for me in a private window, though.
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That was part of it. Obviously if sites had no choice in the matter then it wouldn't have mattered whether browsers enabled it by default or not. Since it was a voluntary thing though, browsers sending it by default pretty much destroyed what chance there was of mainstream sites deciding to implement support for it. It's one thing to give up on tracking a small portion of users who explicitly opt-out, and another thi…
Its reasonable to assume that users choose a more privacy focused browser intentionally, meaning that "default" setting is intended by the user and not a decision that's made for them without their knowledge.