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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

#291

Post by toddmorey »

cm277 wrote: post #200
esteth wrote: 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…

It's MUCH worse, because if this catches on in any significant way, it makes Google the main (eventually only?) provider of demographic data for audiences/tracking. Google already owns the browser market and almost owns the advertising market, but if you want to try to play outside with your own SEO/direct marketing strategy you may be able to make it work. But in a world where cookies/independent tracking is dead an…

This is a really good point. And I think the specific lists of interests will basically be used as a fingerprint.

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

#292

Post by meiraleal »

Xelbair wrote: post #74
alexvitkov wrote: post #24

> Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well. For example, it could be helpful if an online store reminds you every three months you need a new toothbrush, or that this time last year you bought a birthday card for your mum. fuck off

"Advertisements and it's consequences have been a disaster to human race." a nod to a fragment of well known manifesto. The sooner we ban all forms of such tracking the better we will be as society.

You made me waste so much time thinking that this well known manifesto was some genius hacker thing but it turned out to be american extremism/terrorism.

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

#293

Post by MuffinFlavored »

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.

> turn off the toggles on each of the three subpages.

I'm trying to think, are there any downsides to this other than "you won't get custom ads catered to you"?

Like Google can see you requested this off and most of us are logged into a Google user account attached to Chrome. I wonder if they can "behind the scenes" label users who don't let them serve them as customized ads in a "less good" bucket? Too much of a stretch/conspiracy theory? Deny us features? Just spitballing...

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

#294

Post by l72 »

post-it wrote: post #236
jklinger410 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox. Profiles suck. Performance (specifically around video) has been ass for years. Many useful Chrome extensions don't have FF versions. Just off the top of my head.

I use Firefox containers as a replacement for Chrome profiles and I find them to be quite good. The Sidebery addon adds sidebar tab groups where each group can have a different default container, I use it to maintain different sets of sessions for personal and work stuff (GitHub, etc)

Containers are really great. Even my non-technical spouse uses them (She isn't quite ready for the temporary containers add on yet though). However, there are some downsides to containers vs profiles, mainly that you can't have different settings.

She is in grad school, and the online learning platform requires 3rd party cookies to work. With containers, this means enabling 3rd party cookies every where, which isn't good.

I set her up a separate school profile that has a different theme. Only that profile has 3rd party cookies enabled, and she knows to only do school stuff in that profile. It is clunky to say the least, even with the profile extension.

I'd really like to see better support for profile management!

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

#295

Post by paholg »

jklinger410 wrote: post #218
bjackman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> as far as I can see there is really no downside to Firefox. Profiles suck. Performance (specifically around video) has been ass for years. Many useful Chrome extensions don't have FF versions. Just off the top of my head.

Profiles are amazing. I have a personal Firefox profile and a work one, and keep a browser open for each, with no account mixing. It's great.

I can also make the opposite argument for extensions. One of my most-used extensions, tree-style-tabs, has no Chrome alternative.

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

#296

Post by esskay »

lrem wrote: post #149
bjackman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Mozilla claims over 700 of their 750 employees work on Firefox. It's a bit harder to find out the number of people working on Chrome. The founding director remarks that there were 40 engineers working on Chrome mobile in https://mdwdotla.medium.com/some-thoughts-on-running-success... . That's obviously just a slice of the whole team. Search results suggest a range of numbers between 23 and 500. There appears to be ab…

If there's 700 active developers on Firefox then they sure as hell must be having a great time "working" remotely. The development pace of Firefox is atrocious.

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

#297

Post by paholg »

esteth wrote: 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've had third party cookies disabled for years. I can't remember the last time a website broke as a result.

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

#298

Post by ale42 »

nologic01 wrote: post #246
bjackman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mecha…

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

Because apps can collect more data... many apps are just spyware with some function on the top of it ;-)

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

#299

Post by freedomben »

nathansherburn wrote: post #181
tasn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect it's your add-ons. I've been using Firefox mobile for years and I don't think I've ever had a site that worked better in Chrome. Caveats: Sometimes launching apps from the browser only works in Chrome and some demos of bleeding edge experimental Chrome features obviously don't work in Firefox.

There are definitely sites that don't work in Firefox, although they are pretty far and few between.

Mailgun is one of the worst offenders. when I mentioned to their support that auth among other things was broken in Firefox, their response was "use chrome"

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

#300

Post by [deleted] »

scarface_74 wrote: post #186
HeckFeck wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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?

[deleted]
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