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How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

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Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#51

Post by dreamer7 »

urbandw311er wrote: post #12

If you care at all about privacy and the future of a free Internet, this really should be that watershed moment that makes you take your head out of the sand. Seriously. Uninstall Chrome today and switch to something else. It’s only if enough people do it that they lose their grip and influence.

I now use Firefox Focus as my default phone browser. It's great! Lacks a lot of the gestures that make Chrome good. But it deletes tab history by default on closing the app which makes it an adequate sandbox to open one-off links in

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#52

Post by kortilla »

burningChrome wrote: post #34
midasuni wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the rubbish ads I get on YouTube on my phone I don’t think google are in any place to know what my interest even are. 5 years ago I used to get adverts for things like films which I would often watch the whole way through. Today I get adverts for phones and Chromebook. It’s like google are unable to sell adverts that actually target me and instead just throw their own rubbish I have no interest in, and even…

>> I guess they don’t have much data on me I would consider this a good thing. My wife and I were talking the other night at a friends who have an Alexa in their kitchen. We were talking about taking a ski trip out West to Colorado or Utah. We get the car to leave. She pops open her Facebook feed and wouldn't you know? She's getting ads for resorts in. . .wait for it. . . .Colorado and Utah along with the two places…

Someone in the group searched something. Alexa doesn’t share with Facebook even if it did listen for advertising interests.

It’s much more benign, but Facebook definitely does advertise things to a whole group it guesses (usually correctly) were located together.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#53

Post by cebert »

> “If you just clicked the big blue button that said “Got it” to make the pop-up go away, you opted yourself in.”

The screenshots in the article clearly illustrate a concerning trend: users are often subtly coerced into opting into certain features or settings without full awareness. This usually happens when they hurriedly click a prominent button like 'Got it' just to dismiss an annoying pop-up. It highlights a significant problem in UX where clarity and consent are traded for corporate gain. We need for more robust laws governing terms of service agreements, transparent pricing during sign-up processes, and the design of preference dialogs to ensure they are user-friendly and transparent. This is extremely user hostile.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#54

Post by insanitybit »

stubish wrote: post #47
insanitybit wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a "free" internet look like without ads? Serious question, because right now ads pay for a lot. Ads are why we have reddit and twitter - two sites that I think a lot of people like. Ads are why I could run a wordpress blog as a young student. If you assume "the current internet is good, but we want to improve privacy" what Google is doing makes sense. Advertisers can still say "ok that person likes cars I'l…

Even today, a Wordpress blog costs about as much as a coffee per month. And that would be less without all the crap needed to serve ads and track users and monetize everything. I can't wait to find out what an ad-free Internet looks like. Maybe more like when I was a student, and stuff got put up because people were interested rather than as a side hustle. Perhaps cheap subscriptions or microtransactions for quality,…

> Even today, a Wordpress blog costs about as much as a coffee per month.

I was able to do it for free because of ads. I was a teenager just getting into computer security, I had a $0 budget. That blog is why I even have a career.

> and stuff got put up because people were interested rather than as a side hustle

How are people who are interested going to put something up? They'll have to pay for it. Say goodbye to "I'm a random person with a random interest, oh sweet I can post about it online" and hello to "Sponsor this content on patreon".

> Perhaps cheap subscriptions or microtransactions for quality, curated content such as news services

All of this "I'll just pay for it" stuff ignores that the only reason you can find content creators to pay directly is because they have free platforms like Youtube that are paid for by advertising.

> Or some other novel business model will emerge, making a new generation of people rich, thanks to human ingenuity

So propose it. I'm all for this. Give me a new business model that doesn't involve ads and let people choose. Go for it. But maybe let's not break the entire internet before we even have an idea of what that will look like?

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#55

Post by paulryanrogers »

j-bos wrote: post #46
urbandw311er wrote: post #12

If you care at all about privacy and the future of a free Internet, this really should be that watershed moment that makes you take your head out of the sand. Seriously. Uninstall Chrome today and switch to something else. It’s only if enough people do it that they lose their grip and influence.

Hear hear. Of course, on my workstation Chrome is "the recommended browser for internal applications" and firefox is a developer special request which is not allowed to support add-ons

Do they allow extensions on Chrome?

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#56

Post by cmrdporcupine »

charcircuit wrote: post #43
dangus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of third party cookies is basically the status quo. IIRC if you use Safari or Firefox with default settings, third-party cookies are turned off. This feature compared to that status quo is worse for privacy. I think this might be the first time I’ve seen something that promises enhanced privacy instead doing directly the opposite, outside of the realm of malware and scam apps. Imagine if there was a “save…

As mentioned by a sibling comment Google will be sued for antitrust reasons if they remove third party cookies as some other ad businesses rely on them. So in order to remove third party cookies Google must provide an alternative for other advertisers to use instead.

That may be the case but it's only another argument for why the company that makes your web browser should not be the same company that is the biggest advertising network(s) in the world.

Fox guarding the hen house.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#57

Post by Moru »

cebert wrote: post #53

> “If you just clicked the big blue button that said “Got it” to make the pop-up go away, you opted yourself in.” The screenshots in the article clearly illustrate a concerning trend: users are often subtly coerced into opting into certain features or settings without full awareness. This usually happens when they hurriedly click a prominent button like 'Got it' just to dismiss an annoying pop-up. It highlights a sig…

It's also not legal in GDPR lands. It has to be easy to understand, the default have to be to opt out, and you are not allowed to block usage for people that opted out. Oh, and the message has to be short. I have seen "a sentence or two" mentioned as suggestion.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#58

Post by cmrdporcupine »

kortilla wrote: post #52
burningChrome wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I guess they don’t have much data on me I would consider this a good thing. My wife and I were talking the other night at a friends who have an Alexa in their kitchen. We were talking about taking a ski trip out West to Colorado or Utah. We get the car to leave. She pops open her Facebook feed and wouldn't you know? She's getting ads for resorts in. . .wait for it. . . .Colorado and Utah along with the two places…

Someone in the group searched something. Alexa doesn’t share with Facebook even if it did listen for advertising interests. It’s much more benign, but Facebook definitely does advertise things to a whole group it guesses (usually correctly) were located together.

It's also likely that the conversation about the ski resorts was preceded by (or concurrent with) people Googling around about these things, or visiting ski related topics on FB, etc.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#59

Post by dangus »

charcircuit wrote: post #43
dangus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting rid of third party cookies is basically the status quo. IIRC if you use Safari or Firefox with default settings, third-party cookies are turned off. This feature compared to that status quo is worse for privacy. I think this might be the first time I’ve seen something that promises enhanced privacy instead doing directly the opposite, outside of the realm of malware and scam apps. Imagine if there was a “save…

As mentioned by a sibling comment Google will be sued for antitrust reasons if they remove third party cookies as some other ad businesses rely on them. So in order to remove third party cookies Google must provide an alternative for other advertisers to use instead.

I’m a little confused about that idea because it seems like as the article describes it, this locks out third party advertisers from using third-party cookies while giving Google a loophole for their own advertising business.

Re: How to turn off Google's "privacy sandbox" ad tracking, and why you should

#60

Post by goku12 »

Always42 wrote: post #17
urbandw311er wrote: post #12

If you care at all about privacy and the future of a free Internet, this really should be that watershed moment that makes you take your head out of the sand. Seriously. Uninstall Chrome today and switch to something else. It’s only if enough people do it that they lose their grip and influence.

this. I went as far as uninstalling chrome ~1 year ago on my daily driver personal desktop. I use firefox as much as possible at work, but it is "not supported" by our IT department. Confluence doesn't even work properly with firefox, its insane. Try pasting a photo you copied into your clipboard (by selecting the file) into confluence and it wont work.

With the future of the open web and privacy at stake, it's imperative that we stop letting the IT department or some random web service from dictating our choice of web browsers based on their convenience. If something doesn't work on Firefox, we should be collectively putting pressure on those in charge, letting them know that their laziness and lame excuses amount to forcing us to install spyware on our system.
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