Google wants you to agree to a program to reduce web tracking by just letting Google have all your browsing data directly : techtakes

[–] [email protected] 83 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The absolute most insidious thing about this isn't the technology at use here. It's the complete and utter normalization of ads. Google doesn't even consider a world where ads don't exist, they're pushing the narrative that they are a normal aspect of life, and they're offering to help make that more relevant to everyday users. They're normalizing ads in front of your eyeballs 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

Christ I hate Google.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Heading towards a very enjoyable and economically sustainable future where the advertising industry is somehow bigger than the goods and services industries that supposedly need its services. But before I get into that, speaking of goods and services, this comment is sponsored by OpeRaid Shadow VPN, the only energy drink/razor blade delivery service for Pro Gamers…

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

For real though, we must have reached Peak Ad at some point, or at least we're deep into the realm of diminishing returns. This can't go on forever, right? I mean there's a finite number of things that need to be advertised and a finite number of people with a finite amount of time and patience to look at ads. How long until it all collapses?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

The market can remain irrational for longer than you and I can remain ~~solvent~~ sane.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

@200fifty @bitofhope

As long as companies can post chum ads that look like news articles but are completely false or imply nasty false things about a celebrity, there will be ads.

I’m always astounded by how shit internet ads are. Stuff that wouldn’t have passed muster in the Weekly World News.

[–] phoenixz 5 points 2 years ago

Yeah, die a hero or live long enough to become the evil mastermind...

I used to love google, way back when they used that "do not evil". Times have changed.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I like how the assumption seems to be that the thing users object to about "websites track your browsing history around the web in order to show you targeted ads" is... the "websites" part

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago

holy fuck, that’s such a good description of the shitty marketing tactic google is trying here. they’re shifting focus away from the awful shit they’re doing more of to something that doesn’t matter

[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

"Chrome is finding new ways to increase tracking and keep you even if you want to leave. Chrome also steals your interests and prevents you from managing them. Then, sites you visit can buy your interests from Chrome and force feeds you ads."

There I fixed it.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 years ago (1 children)

When I worked in agencies you could pick the suits that had lost touch with reality by how much they seemed to believe that targeted ads are useful enough to be some kind of public service. Now google use the same rhetoric to justify user tracking

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 years ago

on the engineering side, I keep having to turn down executive feature requests with “this is functionally indistinguishable from malware”

[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I always tell my kids, as a consumer, I am SO grateful to have been better served by more relevant ads.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

How else would you have known about products you already bought a few days prior? 🤣

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

I'm so glad they remind me so I don't forget and accidentally buy them again!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes! The thing I love most about browsing without adblock is seeing endless ads for tech conferences about programming languages I don't know, on platforms I don't use, held on continents where I don't live. I especially love the culty business lingo they use for pitching these conferences at me. No I'm not "obsessed" with anything my job involves and I'm frankly worried for anyone who is.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Now see you've got it all wrong. This solves all your problems: Google knows what you do, where you live, and where you go, so they'll always show you ads for relevant conferences with the most reasonable adjusted prices.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

When I'm logged in the youtube app I get TV ads for women's hair products. I am a bald guy.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Sites you visit can ask Chrome for your interests to show you ads.

Nifty. Let's ask what my browser has to offer instead (Firefox + uBlock Origin).

Sites can not show you ads.

Hmm that's a tough choice hmm.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago

But think of all the great ads you're missing out on!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

WEI: “Hold my beer.”

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago (1 children)

STOP USING CHROME!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Although Chrome needs to be ditched, few of the features of it are yet to be implemented into other browsers such as copying images to clipboard and dragging & dropping text from one app to another.

Idk why other browsers are not keeping up or idk if these are Chrome exclusive features.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

I copy and drag images and text all the time between Firefox and other programs.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)

firefox has everything, and if you still want spyware, just use edge at that point.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

... did you forget this "/s" ?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (5 children)

I recently switched entirely to Firefox and have yet to find a feature that I miss from Chrome that Firefox doesn't have.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ah yes, Google the benevolent gatekeeper to my user interest metrics, surely not to sell them to anyone who is willing to pay the smallest pittance upon mere request.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

some times wonder if it's worth building a service where someone pays a pittance as a test fee and then gets presented with whatever you can get together on them via RTB ads

because just showing someone the amount of data carried in an RTB packet is too disconnected from reality (which gets closer to "the bidder probably has your house geolocated just from the ad data on that one add the android app shoved in your face without warning"

(of course, the RTB houses would likely want to kill such a service because it would show just how much shit they tie together)

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This year so far I’ve deleted Reddit, twitter and now google.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (2 children)

go for fucking broke and get rid of windows before it goes SaaS. it’s less painful than it sounds because daily driving linux will break your brain’s ability to feel pain

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

In the caverns of systemd, where the audio pulses and you are surrounded by the mad scribings of a thousand journals; you will lose yourself, and find something else. You will come back both more, and less.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

i tried using windows for a week when i was without my own laptop and had to borrow the loved one's spare gaming rig. even just living in firefox, i hate windows with the fire of a thousand suns. and this was a relatively well behaved win10.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

much like vampirism, daily driving Linux makes exposure to windows feel like turning to ash in the rays of an uncaring but aggressively annoying sun (the sun is also siphoning your data)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

My wife uses windows and sometimes I dual boot it to play games with her.

She laughs at how rapidly I transform into a raging boomer but I forgive her for she does not know.

Linux has problems but windows is just fucked up. The moment you want to do anything outside the lines it becomes an utter horror show. no univeral interface (I'm stupid, you can tell by my posts, so I just learn CLI and do everything that way), no nice consistent model like "everything is a file", no scripting language everything respects. It's insane and baffling.

I know Microsoft has brilliant people working for them so windows is inexplicable

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

the least infuriating way I’ve found to use windows is in a gaming VM with a dedicated GPU where if windows decides it needs to update, reboot, or crash my actual work in Linux won’t be impacted

increasingly, running games and apps in straight Proton is a better option in general though. both options give me slightly better performance than raw windows, cause the gaming VM has very good compatibility due to it mimicking reference hardware, and Proton implements the windows API on top of a higher performance kernel with none of the shit parts of windows slowing it down

and all it costs you is your sanity

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

don't worry about losing yourself though - everything defaults to ext4 and the ubuntu devs have pinkypromised that it's no longer totally awful dogshit that you regretfully notice only after some time and you've loaded significant data onto the system

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

what's wrong with ext4? I'm stupid and use it for everything. Should I not?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

it’s fine and I use it for extremely performance-focused (see: linux gaming) and embedded systems, but LVM+ext4 is generally a better idea and I use ZFS for systems where extreme reliability and storage flexibility are important (so just my NAS machine really)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

it irks me that linux-zfs still has no good native encryption outcome. I had to do zfs on multiple mdraid mirrors, but ugh. that you directly lose out on the zfs insight into block device health there... big sad

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

thanks. I am setting up a NAS atm so will use your opinion as a cue for further reading

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I haven’t used windoze since the 1990s

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

Example how even with much criticism Google is going to do their ideas anyway.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

A thought I had a while back with google (and any other tech company I guess) with the same emotion that Rorschach has just before Dr. Manhattan disintegrates him: if they’ve already won, aka achieved virtual dominance over how we experience the web, then fine. Fucking break me with your personalised ads. Show me deep cut references from my personal life as emotional leverage. Orchestrate my nightmares with jingles. Show me the logical end of advertising. Just fucking end the human experience entirely since you’ve monetised all our dignity away anyway. Anything less than that is just an insult to my ability to hope.

Anyway yeah I hate this. Big ick

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Google Chrome runs like constipation on android

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I wouldn't mind filling out a survey for this type of stuff. Then I only tell them and they only know what I want them to. But they want the whole hand not the finger.

Plus I wouldn't see the ads anyways. Only reason why I even forward that option, it's that I know I can (still) sidestep the important part.

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