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

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

#111

Post by hutzlibu » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:55 AM UTC

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…

Wikipedia is not funded by ads for example. Lots of other sites neither.

So I would say, not the whole internet would go away without ads, but probably the worst parts and what remains is worth visiting.

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

#112

Post by MegaDeKay » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:56 AM UTC

grogenaut wrote: post #88

Always42 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Use chrome for work and ff for everything else. You should keep your work and personal stuff separate anyway.

There are at least two other ways to keep these things separate while only using Firefox: containers and profiles.

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

#113

Post by ljm » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

lamontcg wrote: post #94

Liquix wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

Firefox used to have traction, enough to be a threat to Internet Explorer.

People won't switch when you get a degraded experience of Google services on Firefox.

Similarly, if Firefox was as easy to embed as Chrome we'd probably see a lot more alternatives based on it.

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

#114

Post by hnburnsy » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:58 AM UTC

Its BS that Google makes these settings per browser and not per account, so you have to make these changes on each computer\phone you use. Anyone know if these settings apply to a private browser session.

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

#115

Post by skydhash » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 2:59 AM UTC

insanitybit wrote: post #92

NewsyHacker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe it can be pretty good. I go to goodreads to track new releases and yeah, I wouldn’t mind ads if it were non invasive. Everyone that goes to goodreads is interested in reading and books in some form, so why not show ads about books here, instead of when I’m looking for music gear?

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

#116

Post by throwawaysugar » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 3:08 AM UTC

ls612 wrote: post #97

Liquix wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

Having been using Firefox for years, I don't think I'm missing out on anything. I wouldn't trade my privacy for bleeding edge features

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

#117

Post by agwa » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 3:13 AM UTC

unobatbayar wrote: post #98

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.

A few ways you could verify it's off:

1. Try using the Privacy Sandbox APIs on your own site to confirm they don't work.

2. Examine your Chrome profile to make sure it doesn't contain ad topics or ad measurement data.

3. Sniff network traffic to ensure Chrome is not sending anything sensitive to Google (using SSLKEYLOGFILE so you can decrypt HTTPS connections).

EFF's article ought to be clearer that all of the privacy sandbox logic happens on your own device rather than Google servers.

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

#118

Post by lolinder » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 3:15 AM UTC

jorvi wrote: post #96

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.

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 h…

> If tomorrow Google turns next-level evil in terms of privacy / steering the web

My fear isn't that tomorrow Google will start doing the browser-monopoly equivalent of kicking puppies and twirling a black mustache.

My fear is that Google has gradually accustomed everyone to their monopolistic dominance over the web, to the point where they can engage in blatant monopolistic privacy-destroying activities like privacy sandbox and people will still rush to their defense saying "but they haven't broken out the mustache twirling yet!"

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

#119

Post by resolutebat » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 3:17 AM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #95

I recently noticed that even when using a VPN to another country and in Private Browsing in Safari and with Location turned off, Google Search still shows results based on my location!!?

Your IP address can be used by any website you connect to to figure out a rough location.

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

#120

Post by yellow_postit » Fri, Dec 22, 2023, 3:19 AM UTC

ddxv wrote: post #75

mderazon wrote: post #64

When I first saw this I was really confused about what to do as it seemed I was turning privacy off by turning these off. The use of the term privacy with this feature is confusing

As someone who works in adte h my opinion this was started by Apple's 'privacy' features which just means you opt in to apple tracking everything instead of other companies. The issue I have there is that Apple is the company that knows your real name. They used this to become a late monopoly in iOS advertising. Google took note and is now building and offering more "privacy tools".

Exactly this is an excuse to centralize more power to Google. Of course they’d rather not take on the work, but if regulators force them to end up in a position where they control even more data? Well, they are begrudgingly happy to oblige.