Can I just tell Google what I like and then they serve me ads for those things only? Because the current scheme seems like a whole lot of unnecessary subterfuge just to reliably serve me ads I will never click on. Wouldn't they rather have a shot in hell of serving me an ad I might actually click, while also not turning themselves into the poster boys for online privacy violations?
Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
351–360 of 435 posts
Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your browser has been serving ad banners since 1994, nothing new here.
The simple display of a sponsored banner and the systematic tracking of people throughout their online activities are not the same thing.
> not the same thing
Never said they were, only that they both using your browser & resources "against your own interests", and this is not a good argument against tracking.
Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
#353Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
If enough people switch these settings off, Google will just re-enable them "accidentally" during the next auto-update. Or hide them altogether. This is their business model. They didn't create Chrome out of the goodness of their hearts: it was created to impose their rules on the internet. And since their business model relies on tracking people, that is what they will do. Refusing by deleting Chrome is the only way…
> They didn't create Chrome out of the goodness of their hearts: it was created to impose their rules on the internet. IIRC, it's the opposite: Chrome was created to prevent other browser manufacturers (in particular, Microsoft) from imposing their rules on the Internet in a way which affected Google websites.
So another instance of "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
I'm not fan of seeing which tech giant wins the privilege of imposing their will on me.
Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
#355Earlier 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…
Chrome Mobile is the largest reason I would not recommend an Android (specifically Pixel) device to friends or family. I bought one, and I found myself actively avoiding browsing the web on it. Even after installing Firefox you can’t get rid of the Google Chrome web search bar on the home screen, and in-app web views are Chrome, so you’re never really free from Chrome. I do understand the why of ads, and I’m okay wit…
I watch Louis Rossmann and he likes the Pixel brand but only after installing a different OS. I think he used graphene which is privacy respecting.
I am so ingrained in iOS it’s hard to leave but I really did like the pixel phones and have thought about getting one.
Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
#356Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vivaldi is closed source, even worse than Chrome in privacy features: https://privacytests.org Brave is objectively the best mainstream privacy browser.
That site is ran by a Brave employee[0]. The author claims that there's no COI, but one ought to be suspicious if Brave passes almost every single test barring the ones that no browser can pass. [0]: https://github.com/privacytests/privacytests.org/issues/166
Seems par for the course for a browser which came into existence to peddle crypto magic beans, tbh.
Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just don't understand this take. In every Chrome gripefest thread, there will be a comment about switching to Firefox that's at or near the top, and then a comment about Brave closer to the bottom. With half the replies to that comment being about crypto, or even smaller niche players like Vivaldi that are closed-source and don't even have an iOS version. Look, I'm not into crypto. But it takes me about two clicks…
It's a reflexive guilt-by-association instinct that many people have. Some people have used crypto in the past unethically, therefore everyone using crypto is unethical. I usually like to illustrate the problem with this fallacy by using it in a way that nearly everybody can quickly see: "do you have a dog? Hitler had a dog."
How about "have you ever committed a genocide? Because hitler committed a genocide."
Or at least, messing with the user's URL [0] to inject your affiliate code is a pretty bad, single strike kinda thing for me.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/8/21283769/brave-browser-aff...
Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
#359Earlier 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…
> Can you, or anyone else for that matter, explain to me why this is better than commercial interests not following us around at all? Because people prefer free, ad supported content on the internet. Once you accept that premise, then it's a matter of balancing privacy, volume of ads, and payments to creators (ad tech companies are going to get theirs). Do you think the majority of people would prefer fewer, better t…
I can see both sides of this. There's the side of me that looks at advertising and sees it as a necessary annoyance. It's the primary funding source for the open web today, and thus far that model has been very successful. Advertising has enabled the development of well polished, incredibly useful software like YouTube, Google Maps, search engines, etc without requiring users to directly pay a single cent for those services.
Then there's the Stallmanesqe, crypto-anarchist side of me that says it's my machine and it shouldn't do anything that doesn't directly benefit me. Tracking and ads don't directly benefit me, so my machine shouldn't cooperate in running them and if your business can't survive under those conditions then it doesn't deserve to.
I'm not 100% on how to resolve that tension, but I can't really fault Google for the way they're handling it. (As an optional, yet on-by-default feature that cooperates in serving relevant ads in a way that's more private than cookies but less private than just blocking everything.)
Re: Google Chrome just rolled out a new way to track you and serve ads
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give me a break. It is delusional to believe that corporations do not regularly float press releases to journalists, which then get recycled into articles, which sometimes include a tiny bit of original research.
Why would I give a break to someone who doesn't give me one?
I'm not sure if you aren't a native English speaker or are just being deliberately obtuse, but I wasn't asking for any consideration on your part. I was expressing disbelief at the apparent naivety of your previous comment where you started off by writing my post "passes for a comment" and then proceeded to argue this article is some kind of insightful work in the area of online privacy.