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Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

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Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's have an advertising company also have a monopoly on the web browser. What could possibly go wrong?

You all voted for this.

I have only ever used chrome if it was mandated by work, and even then I have argued to be allowed to use Firefox, such as at my current employer.

on edit: admittedly this was because I was too lazy to change, but later on that laziness started looking like moral backbone!

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#122
post #49
post #26

I uninstalled chrome & switched to Brave (I know about core) when I couldn't disable chrome auto update. I have firefox too.

I used Brave for awhile, but it got too crypto which made it feel scammy.

Brave gives me a strong negative gut reaction. I really doubt crypto goes well with ethics. Looking at some of Brave's past transgressions confirms it for me. Sure, you can turn it off, just like you can remove the pineapple from pizza, the pizza is still ruined though.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#123

This appears to be the same as this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37427227 Top comment on that one was: Key actionable info: to fix this, go to this URL: chrome://settings/adPrivacy and turn off the toggles on each of the three subpages. Alternatively, go to this URL https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/ to fix this permanently.

I use Chrome at work and Firefox on personal devices (including my Android phone). As a heavy user of both browsers, as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox. In fact, even though presumably there are way more engineers working on Chrome than on Firefox, I guess most of Chrome's engineering effort goes towards benefitting advertisers, not users. While Chrome seems entirely stagnant since I adopted i…

I use Firefox on both Android and desktop. It's much better in many ways, and I love it. I do get compatibility issues sometimes, but I'm unsure whether it's because of all of the add-ons I use, or websites being buggy with Firefox.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#124
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They will also do so if you keep the feature on. Third-party cookies in Chrome won't be blocked for the near-term future at least. Unless you switch browsers - e.g. Firefox has blocked third-party cookies for a while now.

There's an option in the settings to block third-party cookies. Does that no do what it says?

It does, it's just not on by default yet. You can turn it on now if you want to get ahead of the curve.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't regret it and you won't miss anything. Who cares if Chrome is 2% faster on some obscure CSS parsing test? At least you aren't participating in your own psychological manipulation and are resisting WEI.

> Who cares if Chrome is 2% faster on some obscure CSS parsing test? The person who has to access a site that takes advantage of that parsing trick every day, I assume.

Shaving a few microseconds off of internal loading is absolutely meaningless when there are hundreds of milliseconds of third party JavaScript being downloaded, and your browser is actively removong the features that allow you to not do that.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#126
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consistently working as the better browser. Both Chrome and Edge are just hostile towards my browsing experience. Chrome keeps on rolling out new settings to pilfer my browsing data. Edge will just kill all of my settings to anything Microsoft wants. Arc and Firefox are working reliably at the moment but Firefox remains a stable option to come back to everytime.

I might be misremembering, but isn’t Arc also a Chromium-based browser?

Arc is.

And I was a big fan of Edge when it came out as an alternative to Chrome. There's always an arc (pun intended) where the product goes the profit-at-all-costs direction and chooses to exploit it's users (looking at Chrome/Edge). I will move away from Arc the moment it chooses to do so without allowing me an alternative way to support them.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#127
Ars' (and lobste.rs') take on this [1] is titled "Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome" - with Google cookies and ads on the page ofc.

[1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/googles-widely-oppos...

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#128
post #26

I uninstalled chrome & switched to Brave (I know about core) when I couldn't disable chrome auto update. I have firefox too.

I'd like that Vivaldi is also a great option, and the company is a legitimate employee owned cooperative. https://vivaldi.com/blog/news/alert-no-google-topics-in-viva...

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#129
post #71
post #36

Can anyone explain to me why this is worse than third-party cookies? *If* this lets chrome remove third-party cookies, doesn't it effectively increase your privacy by putting that tracking data on the user's machine instead of having random third-parties involved in every page load to harvest that tracking info? I understand that you can currently turn off third-party cookies, but a bunch of the internet breaks if yo…

> I'd rather have my machine present this kind of data than have a network of unknown third-parties collaborate by sharing bits about me to build a profile. That’s a bit like saying you’d rather have cameras inside your house streaming your every move than have paparazzi at your door. In the current model, the third parties have to fight and spend resources to get an imperfect profile of you, while you can make their…

I don't think it's fair to compare what might happen in the future.

In my mind the metaphor is more like "instead of having paparazzi at your door following around, you show everyone a card saying that you like dogs and video games and the steelers, and you tend to shop at big box stores out of town".

I'd rather know exactly what I'm presenting, which is possible in this model, than have the paparazzi all over me figuring most of it out imperfectly anyway.

Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads

#130
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. Now I'm curious if they have some internal tagging that differentiates between these two kinds of products.

I guess it's more like a continuum than two discrete categories. On one end of the spectrum there's a family house, on the other, there's toilet paper. That's why they repeat ads even for a toaster.

I suppose I'm wrong because it appears not to exist. But, I can't get past the idea that there's just a lot of things very few people have more than one of. Many of them being big ticket items too, where the cost (or opportunity cost) for a wasted low-conversion-rate ad is high. Like bbq grills, most types of power tools, air compressors, automotive battery chargers, refrigerators, washer/dryer, dishwasher, lawnmowers, etc. And many of those have obvious companion items that would be a better use of the ad space than trying to sell someone a second bbq grill, for example.
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