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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

#241

Post by londons_explore »

n_ary wrote: post #43
vladharbuz wrote: post #31

Delete Chrome. “The intent of the Topics API is to provide callers (including third-party ad-tech or advertising providers on the page that run script) with coarse-grained advertising topics that the page visitor might currently be interested in.” https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics#the-api-an...

In other words, google knows so much about the visitor to be screwed by regulation, hence they want to wrap the coarse-grained moat as helpful topics for advertisers. Meanwhile not exactly share that info with anyone to not lose their moat benefit either by removing third-party cookies effectively killing other data harvesters’ moats and become the one true eye of sauron(or politely called as monopoly).

But the topics API is available to anyone to use right? So in a way they're getting rid of their moat because they're closing down a datasource where they are market leading and opening up a new data source where everyone gets access for free.

Seems like a bad business move to me.

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

#242

Post by _chu1 »

There are people in the comments saying Firefox is super slow compared to Chrome but modern computers are genuinely so fast I can't notice a difference. At least on my Core 2 Duo ThinkPad T61 I use regularly I have to do some comparisons on what the best browser choice is but on my main PC with a Ryzen 5 7600 and 32GB of DDR5 RAM it hasn't even really occurred that one is faster than the other. I use LibreWolf.

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

#243

Post by wolverine876 »

jurynulifcation wrote: post #207
wolverine876 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that passes for a comment. Google didn't write a press release that raises questions - insightful ones that I hardly ever see in other coverage - about their privacy practices and recommends competitors such as Firefox and Brave.

Which insightful questions did you see in this article? In which ways did they provoke your thoughts?

They raised the issue, which I hardly every see raised, that disabling the feature may not disable data collection. The gave compelling examples of both sides, rather than dismissing one or being inflammatory - the dental hygine example was great, a little personal. They clearly and efficiently spelled out the different modes. They brought up Firefox and the much more obscure Brave, and even more privacy-oriented browsers.

It was great. I'd give it to lay-people who were interested, and as a technical person I don't need to read more.

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

#244

Post by pc86 »

scarface_74 wrote: post #214
makeitdouble wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way is to make it problematic for a commercial entity to provide high value services for free. Basically an anti-dumping law, but for digital goods.

Yes, and raise prices for everyone?

Maybe paying $10/mo for email or $199 once for a browser is a good thing. Maybe if people didn't feel like browsers and email and search were human rights that should be given to them freely, moral hazards be damned, the internet wouldn't be the clusterfuck that it is now?

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

#245

Post by scarface_74 »

jurynulifcation wrote: post #234
scarface_74 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean Firefox that also gets 90% of its funding from Google ads?

Yeah, but at least it's not chrome or directly benefits google. If China came out with a web browser, I'd use it. Just to starve American spyware corporations of a tiny bit of data.

Firefox sending traffic to Google in exchange for funding doesn’t benefit Google?

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

#246

Post by nologic01 »

bjackman wrote: post #82
starbugs wrote: post #19

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…

> there is really no downside to Firefox

The Dutch national TV (NPO) videos do not play on Firefox for Android [1]. They do play on Chrome for Android and they do play on the Linux desktop firefox. Not sure if its some hidden setting that I need to find or something for the firefox team to look into.

Everybody and their dog want you to download "apps" - I wonder why?

Firefox on android is one of the few defence mechanisms we have.

[1] https://www.npostart.nl/nos-journaal/11-09-2023/POW_05465115

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

#247

Post by lifeinthevoid »

Phemist wrote: post #167

So, I've heard it said in another topic on `Topics` that a single list of topics, as far as it is an identifier for a specific person, is far less accurate than a tracking cookie (or similar technology). Well, yes, maybe that is the case _right now_, but these are convenient arguments to push the technology through. There is nothing inherent to the technology that would prevent the `Topics` from being split such that…

yeah and it's far more convenient to delete cookies than to delete your whole browsing history.

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

#248

Post by _chu1 »

xg15 wrote: post #115
tgv wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's against the guidelines to be dismissive, but there really is no other response. Especially when you left read the follow-up sentence: > Offloading cognitive effort, such as reminders like these, is a great way automation can assist humanity. Does that pass for journalism? I really don't want to read the rest of the article.

It's actually worth reading the article to the end, because otherwise you'd be missing the amazing final paragraph: > Lastly, it’s good to remember nothing truly comes for free. Software costs money to develop. If you’re not paying towards that, then it’s likely you – or your data – are the product. We need to revolutionise how we think about our own data and what value it truly holds. Ignoring the fact that this is…

Genuinely I would buy a boxed copy of the web browser I use (LibreWolf) for $60

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

#249

Post by scarface_74 »

rchaud wrote: post #239
scarface_74 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is not installed on any desktop computer system by default except for ChromeOS that has 3% market share. Everyone that uses Chrome, went out of their way to download it. I personally don’t use Chrome. But I am assuming your answer is - government should stop people from using their own free will?

For anyone born in the past 12-15 years, their first computing device would almost certainly not be a desktop computer. It would be a mobile device, and Chrome is omnipresent there.

And if they are using Android and concerned about their privacy, Chrome is the least of their problems. They are still sending information to Google

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

#250

Post by josho »

esteth wrote: post #119
dspillett wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can anyone explain to me why this is worse than third-party cookies? How about thinking the other way around: Can you, or anyone else for that matter, explain to me why this is better than commercial interests not following us around at all ? > turn off third-party cookies, but a bunch of the internet breaks if you do that Most of what breaks is just tracking for ad serving purposes. I'm fine with that breaking. So…

I totally appreciate the desire not to want an advertising profile build for you at all! I think that in practice, interest-based-advertising is going to happen, and I think if chrome can provide a way for it to be done without involving so many sketchy third-parties then I'm for that. I don't know a huge amount about the wider ecosystem here, but I can imagine that if chrome were to disable third-party cookies witho…

What is lost in this discussion is that now my browser, software on my machine, using my resources is the agent that is acting against my own interests.
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