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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

#91

Post by NewsyHacker »

insanitybit wrote: post #48
sp332 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do ads without tracking.

True, you absolutely can. They'll potentially make much less money, and I don't know that that's sustainable but I think it's at least an alternative worth talking about. I think the other question would be "can you do tracking without violating privacy". To me, " " is not a privacy violation.

Wordpress was founded, and hosted-Wordpress services ran for years, in an era where there was only non-personalized advertising. Why do you feel it would be unsustainable? As long as you limit media storage space and plugins, simple blogs cost extremely little to host per user.

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

#92

Post by insanitybit »

NewsyHacker wrote: post #91
insanitybit wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, you absolutely can. They'll potentially make much less money, and I don't know that that's sustainable but I think it's at least an alternative worth talking about. I think the other question would be "can you do tracking without violating privacy". To me, " " is not a privacy violation.

Wordpress was founded, and hosted-Wordpress services ran for years, in an era where there was only non-personalized advertising. Why do you feel it would be unsustainable? As long as you limit media storage space and plugins, simple blogs cost extremely little to host per user.

I didn't say it's not sustainable, I'm saying it's potentially not sustainable. Sustainability of tracking-free ads would be a good conversation to have.

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

#93

Post by ifz »

insanitybit wrote: post #54
stubish wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nowadays, you can get a free VM from some providers (GCP) and there are lots of sites where you can deploy a static website for free (github pages). I'd argue deploying something for free is easier than ever.

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

#94

Post by lamontcg »

Liquix wrote: post #42
contravariant wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, switch to something non-Chromium if at all possible. Which brings us in the paradoxical situation that if you want there to be any choice left at all in browsers then you're pretty much forced to choose firefox.

...which leads to yet another paradoxical situation: 80-90%+ of Mozilla's yearly revenue comes from google [0]. they keep firefox afloat (with 3% market share) with the sole purpose of avoiding antitrust action vs. chrome. IMHO if Firefox starts gaining traction big G takes the gloves off and employs different tactics to protect the vertical integration. [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-g…

> if Firefox starts gaining traction...

yeah, so lets make that happen and then find out what the response is.

right now we're stuck in the "tried nothing and all out of ideas" state.

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

#96

Post by jorvi »

contravariant wrote: post #22
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.

Also, switch to something non-Chromium if at all possible. Which brings us in the paradoxical situation that if you want there to be any choice left at all in browsers then you're pretty much forced to choose firefox.

Why?

If tomorrow Google turns next-level evil in terms of privacy / steering the web, Microsoft will have forked Chromium within a week, and everyone (Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, etc) will swap their upstream immediately.

People have this illusion that Google has an ironclad grip on Chromium, but they don’t. It’s maximally permissively licensed, the only reason they get to decide much is because they put in (pay) the dev hours.

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

#97

Post by ls612 »

Liquix wrote: post #42
contravariant wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, switch to something non-Chromium if at all possible. Which brings us in the paradoxical situation that if you want there to be any choice left at all in browsers then you're pretty much forced to choose firefox.

...which leads to yet another paradoxical situation: 80-90%+ of Mozilla's yearly revenue comes from google [0]. they keep firefox afloat (with 3% market share) with the sole purpose of avoiding antitrust action vs. chrome. IMHO if Firefox starts gaining traction big G takes the gloves off and employs different tactics to protect the vertical integration. [0] https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-g…

I've switched to Firefox after a long time on Chrome in preparation to avoid the Manifest V3 changes and it isn't all sunshine and rainbows. Overall performance feels slower (although not drastically so, they've made big strides since last I used it) and some newer features (Nvidia Super Resolution is the big one for me) work only half the time.

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

#98

Post by unobatbayar »

Is it truly turned off after taking these measures? Is there anything we can do to verify that Google's Privacy Sandbox is not actively tracking us?

It's reminiscent of turning off Bluetooth and WiFi in the Settings on iPhones, only to find out they still emit radio waves.

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

#100

Post by ndriscoll »

insanitybit wrote: post #54
stubish wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When I was a teenager, I found and installed Apache. WordPress apparently had existed for a year or two, but I didn't hear about it for several years after. I memorized my IP address and would link people to that, and never bought a hostname or anything.

If you just want to host a blog and maybe dabble in PHP, Apache works great. These days as an adult who programs professionally, my personal site is just a directory that I point nginx to with xhtml/xslt/css files that I hand edit + things like photos. I do have a domain name these days, but it's not like you need one. If you wanted something to be permanent to avoid link rot, you should want browsers to support ipfs so you could use that.

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