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Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

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Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#301

Post by kulahan »

timewizard wrote: post #132
kulahan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While still allowing random third party javascript to run unchecked on a parent website. Lol, why are you commenting as if somehow allowing it to run negates the other good ideas in some way? Obviously some is better than none, and all is better than some, but each step takes more effort.

lol, because ads pay for the content you're reading. it pays salaries. what I _don't_ want is to be _tracked_. show me ads all day if you want.

I have bad news for you about how ads work. Also, you didn’t really answer my question, you just dodged it.

I’m not asking what you think makes for a successful ad campaign, I’m asking why you’re letting perfect be the enemy of good

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#302

Post by dlivingston »

jhasse wrote: post #216
dlivingston wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Safari anything but strong on privacy?

It's closed-source.

That's irrelevant to how private something is. Closed-source is a reason to be suspicious of privacy claims, especially without third-party privacy audits, I'll grant.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#303

Post by bigyabai »

salawat wrote: post #294
bigyabai wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can only hope enough people wake up and grow a spine If that's all you can do, then I might as well go apply at Meta right now.

[flagged]

I don't care. I won't starve, live in my car or go hat-in-hand to my relatives to cover for rent. I did that for years while attending primary education and I will happily ruin whatever little middle-class pastiche you're so desperate to protect if it puts a roof over my head. I personally know dozens of people who would quit their job to subsume that compensation. The fact that it's all legal? I won't even remember who cares by the time my head hits the pillow. It's a problem for someone else.

You hate ads? Surveillance drives you nuts? This is the consequence of a dysfunctional government. You can protest the businesses all you want, it's their job to be apathetic. Make a big show of it, take off your flair and tell your AWS or Apple manager exactly how much all it sucks. They'll nod, write it all down on a legal pad, put it in a folder and refer to it when your next employer calls asking for cross-references. It would all make for a very touching scene of career suicide, and then your replacement can have a technical interview scheduled in by the end of the week. That is the sum of damages you can enjoy as the fruit of your protesting this company.

It's funny how much Americans care about their legacy while doing nothing worth remembering. A Microsoft employee who donates their disproportionate wage to an animal shelter is doing more to benefit the world than some shmuck who got mad at capitalism for the fly in his soup. John Carmack worked for Meta, and still has more of a legacy than every "hacker" on this site combined. If your identity is so shallow that it's defined by nothing other than the person who pays you, you have more serious issues than finding an ethical employer.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#304

Post by mmooss »

Larrikin wrote: post #153
mmooss wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may not be viable for many non-technical users, which is their audience. On HN, it would be an error to omit ad blockers; the Washington Post has a different audience. I expect that most would find installing and learning a new browser to be too much effort and too hard to understand.

This is provably wrong since Google has been pushing Chrome installs for over a decade.

Good point.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#305

Post by DidYaWipe »

Ylpertnodi wrote: post #261
DidYaWipe wrote: post #188

Never used Chrome, and don't use Meta apps... and when I did, I did not give them any real information. I'm disgusted by the number of people giving real personal information to these assholes. "Open"AI insisted that you give them a real, functioning phone number to use ChatGPT. No goddamned way.

I didn't give open ai my number...because i wouldn't have. Works fine for me (though i do use deepseek more, nowadays.

That is a recent change. Originally I tried various workarounds, including Google Voice and burner apps... but "Open"AI rejected them.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#306

Post by lurking_swe »

lurk2 wrote: post #184
lurking_swe wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> um, what? This is obnoxious.

it’s how i talk in real life when I'm completely confused by someone’s comment. The tone matters a lot - which is hard to express in a text medium. Emojis can help with this a bit but no emojis on hacker news. :)

Apologies if it came across as obnoxious.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#307

Post by lurking_swe »

whstl wrote: post #201
lurking_swe wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Meta or not, people don't like being fired or being threatened to. Period. They like the comfy job. But don't ask me why. I'm a troublemaker. I bring up this stuff, I talk to CEOs, I refuse to do stuff that breaks the GDPR or other laws, I got people to scream at me for being stubborn. Other people aren't like that.

I agree with you. To clarify my comment a bit. I’m confused why a software engineer of Meta caliber would even APPLY at meta to begin with.

I suppose $400k comp instead of $350k (making up numbers here) is worth selling your soul for these days? These are people with options, that’s ill i’m saying.

i’ll never understand…

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#308

Post by const_cast »

herewulf wrote: post #197
lurk2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> um, what? This is obnoxious.

It's conversational, emotive, and expressive. I'm sure you hear it all the time out in the real world.

No, it's not, it's among the same vein as "huh?" - it's a thinly-veiled attempt to paint opposing view points as so stupid that you literally cannot comprehend them.

But you can comprehend them, we all can. So it's just abrasive and annoying. You can express a conversational tone without being an asshole. You don't need to act like your conversational opponents are super far out there or crazy or whatever.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#309

Post by const_cast »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #277
klipklop wrote: post #175

Always funny how nearly universally Meta employees are quiet and never defend their companies practices.. The silence says a lot.

They make something people want. Most people I know thah use it, including me, just don't really see that big a downside to using it. I'm not even slightly considering removing any Meta app, and let's face it, Firefox is over as a project because their priorities are all out of wack. So Chrome and meta apps all the way for me, but I'm sure to listen to the Amazon Washington Post as to how I should treat Amazon compet…

This is such a foreign perspective to me that I legitimately cannot even conceptualize it.

I've used Facebook products. Even just barring the privacy concerns, there's been one constant - the products are bad. They're not good. They actively make my life worse. They're not fun, they're not enjoyable, they're not performant, they're not... anything.

Even if I was a complete 100% sellout and I didn't give a single fuck about privacy, I wouldn't use Facebook products. Because they're just that bad.

Also Firefox is "over" as a project? Legitimately, what the fuck are you talking about? Firefox works fine and has been working fine for as long as I've used it. The browser works, and for all intents and purposes, I can't tell the difference from Chrome. Really, I can't. Are there differences? Probably. I've never encountered any, so for my money Firefox is fine.

Re: Washington Post's Privacy Tip: Stop Using Chrome, Delete Meta Apps (and Yandex)

#310

Post by bigyabai »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #282
capyba wrote: post #162

I don’t know anyone that works at Meta, so I’m hoping that someone here could answer this for me- What makes employees there feel good (or at least okay) about doing stuff like this? You're spying on people, no? Surveilling ordinary people, not enemy combatants or foreign militaries? Perhaps a friend of a friend or even a family member? This kind of thing is so creepy and disturbing to me, not that it’s anything new…

No snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche - "I didn't write it, I just had the idea" - "I didn't implement it, I just made the prototype" - "It wasn't my product, I just fixed some bugs with it" - "I can't track everything in these implementation updates, I just work with what I am given" - "I didn't collect the data, I just deal with what is in the dataset"

The snowflakes don't run the company. If you work somewhere that is designing a really big gun and the CEO uses it to commit an awful crime, you don't share the blame for one person's irresponsibility. It's not a satisfying answer, but it really is up to executives to decide where they draw the line. Nobody else in the business can say 'no'.

Likewise, when we blame IBM for supplying the Nazis during WWII, we're not decrying the enthusiastic early database workers. They aren't the problem; executives without morals are.

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