New! From Google! "Enhanced" ad privacy!

jimrob4@midwest.social to Technology@lemmy.ml – 949 points –

Got this notification when I opened Chrome when coming back to my desk after lunch.

"We changed our privacy settings to allow us to snoop on what you're looking at and shove you ads accordingly. Feel free to opt out, but we'll probably opt you back in when you aren't paying attention."

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I'm always a bit amused when these sites and apps say things like, "If you turn off ad personalization, the ads you see won't be as useful to you."

My dude, I don't think I've ever willingly clicked on an ad in my entire life. "Personalizing" them won't change that.

I used to sometimes. When there was a simple, clean ad for something I was interested in, I would click through.

Mind you, this was in an era when the internet amounted to strings and cans because I'm a fucking dinosaur. Since then, ads first went obnoxious and loud, then they got plastered everywhere, then they started being invasive.

Fuck ads at this point. There's nothing good in them for us at all.

I don't know, ads were always dog shit. Yeah you had your static banners and what not, but I remember the popup wars from the 90s.

I was always told clicking on ad's will give you viruses and sign you up to dick medicines

I don't even click those. I'll rarely navigate to their site manually.

In a way I kind of miss the old banner ads. Smack the monkey and win $1,000,000 or whatever it was. I swear I hit that monkey so many times.

Now I can’t even read a page without pop up after pop up on top of the embedded ads in between every two sentence paragraph.

Even if any of these companies were any good at ad targeting, I wouldn't want "personalized" ads anyway cuz I'd just spend more money.

but but but but you'd get something good for it! You would never have missed it, but maybe you just didn't know you wanted it? Come on, I'm sure consuming shit that will make you happy twice for two minutes each (once when clicking buy, once when getting and opening the package) will fill that hole in your soul! Spending money on stuff you don't actually need is good!

(That was sarcasm, if it wasn't clear enough.)

True. The only personalized ads I ever receive are for products I literally just purchased.

I don't know how there's so much money in the ad space. It just seems like a huge waste.

A lot of times people will visit a website for a product they're interested in and may not immediately pull the trigger. When they see it later 3-4 more times, the chances of conversion are way higher.

Google probably doesn't really know if you purchased the product, and may not care, as you may want to purchase another.

I'm sure it's like gambling and microtransactions where the vast majority of income is derived from a small minority of people who aren't bothered by the onslaught of ads shoved down their throats.

I used to click on ads back in the day when you'd get paid for it (I was a poor school student, don't judge. :p).

I see an ad and I zone out or ignore it.

you are not immune to propaganda

I'm not sure this applies to stuff like ads. Like, if you always prioritize foss and ethically sourced products, ads can't really persuade you to buy certain things. And you make those decisions by doing research and buying local, or even better, making as much stuff as you can yourself.

Targeted ads are designed to make you feel inadequate or incomplete. Even if it doesn't convince you to buy the product advertised, it can still shift your expectations and world-view just by normalizing a certain type of consumption (or attitude, or media, ect).

Just because you don't spend money, doesn't mean ads aren't still subtly manipulating your expectations.

It is a trillion dollar a year industry for a reason.

It also just lets you know the product exists or reminds you of it while strengthening certain associations in your brain. I know I can’t think of VPNs without thinking of NordVPN and if I were to decide I want one, I don’t think there would be a chance it didn’t at least occur to me to maybe look into

And you almost certainly leave thinking you aren't being careful enough with your privacy and you should look into getting a VPN. Works the same with any ad, or even a promoted social media post. "You'll like this thing because of how we know you think of yourself."

It's pernicious and erodes everyone's ability to be happy and content, no matter how resistant you think you are to advertisements.

Or you could just hate shopping. I hate it all, online, in store. I end up doing way too much research and it's too mentally taxing. I buy a phone like once every 7 years because the stress of just shopping for it is annoying, not to mention the actual process of switching.

I really need to buy clothes again... but that's like my least favorite thing to shop for...

Oh, I totally get you! I hate shopping as well, even though it's a necessity. In fact, I dislike it so much that I'm actually learning to make my own clothes. I realise this isn't for everyone and that not everybody has the time, but I'm sure there's stuff that you can do on your own that you may actually enjoy!

Have a nice day!

That's cool! I am guessing you're female? Women's clothes seems to be easier to make in my experience. Making a pair of men's pants was a challenge, the materials were expensive and they didn't even come out that great, and I almost never wear them.

A sundress is like 10x easier to sew than a pair of pants.

I don't think I've ever willingly clicked on an ad in my entire life

Same here and I've certainly never purchased anything through an ad. You'd think there'd be some advantage for advertising networks to identify people (there are dozens of us!) who never click on ads and refrain from serving any to them - and use this as a selling point for ad buyers so that their expenditures are not wasted.

Just because you don't click on an ad doesn't mean it didn't work though. If you see an ad for Coke you may not click on it to order a case of Coke online right away, but when you go out to lunch maybe you'll fill your cup with Coke.

I mention food ads because I feel they are particularly effective for this type of behavior. You don't need to click on a food ad, but I know I've had a craving for a certain restaurant or food from seeing it mentioned online (whether an ad or just a comment/post) and then gone to get that food for dinner.

Of course, this type of ad result is very difficult to track.

it's not about your clicks, it's to influence you, it can influence people in multiple degree, maybe next type when you go buy something think about it

Only did it once. The Rest EverCool comforter ad I kept seeing. Looked up a bunch of reviews and as someone who is a very hot sleeper. I can't recommend it enough. It's the softest coolest blanket I've ever felt. Every square inch is as cool as the other side of the pillow.

Upvoted for saying the phrase "as cool as the other side of the pillow". Heard that once when someone was talking about a sports commentator and haven't forgotten it in probably 35 years at least.

ESPN's Stuart Scott used this as his catchphrase starting in the mid-'90s, so not quite 35 years (but damn close). Like all ESPN catchphrases, it was clever and funny the first time, not so much the next 5000 times.

Ads work on the general population or else these companies would stop paying for them.

The only time I click on ads are on websites that actually have people buying ad space on websites that make sense.

Like... Fountain pen ads on fountain pen blogs. Or Linux product ads on Linux learning websites.

Basically the only times I click on ads is when I'm searching for something and the search engine I'm using has paid ads for the thing I'm searching for at the top.

Beyond that I can't think of any times I've ever clicked on an ad intentionally.

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"new privacy feature" and then "sites you visit can determine what you like"

translated: "this new privacy feature reduces the amount privacy you have!!! what a great thing you like!!!"

Idk why the heck you just got downvoted into oblivion for pointing out the irony in google calling this a "privacy feature." Good old reddit moment it seems.

lol it's no worries. actually I have the privilege of being bot-downvoted by CCP sympathizers because of comments on this post https://lemmy.world/post/2338419, there is also the possibility that I’m just an asshole.

Damn, you're still copy pasting that? That link doesn't even go anywhere lol

He thinks he's getting bot downvoted, but there's actually people invested enough to stalk him. Cute.

Yeah, he's definitely "important"

I don't particularly care about your or his internet spats or attempt to control the all important narrative on lemmy. You are the one giving him rent free space in your brain and on your keyboard though.

See WarmSoda!? This is why I shouldn't have stopped. People ask this question, your advice was wrong! I'm going to continue what I was doing before you called me stupid.

edit: The link points to lemmy.world which is intermittently getting DDOS'ed.

Please ignore my negative initial vote score, as I have the privilege of being bot-downvoted by CCP sympathizers because of comments on this post https://lemmy.world/post/2338419, there is also the possibility that I’m just an asshole.

It's funny how small incremental changes over the years felt like nothing big was happening and then at some point we all woke up to a world where the largest advertising firm in the world basically is the internet for the vast majority of people. Everyone uses chrome and rarely types in a web address, they just type the name of the thing into Google and trust mommy to show them what's appropriate. They've back doored the entire population into basically what AOL was trying to be 20 years ago.

"we are going to help protect your privacy" from WHO Google? Is it from you? Because it seems like we need protection from you most of all. Constantly being gaslit by mega-corporations is the new American dream. It's okay because they love us, deep down, and we know that even though they don't show it.

It's funny how small incremental changes over the years felt like nothing big was happening and then at some point we all woke up to a world where the largest advertising firm in the world basically is the internet for the vast majority of people.

In a microcosm of the same kind of creeping normalcy, Bethesda charging a few bucks for horse armor in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was once a reach too far, until it wasn't.

Now we have Star Citizen levels of grifting as well as ActiBlizz "buy a currency to get a currency that is leveraged as currency to get credit toward a currency in a battle pass" layer cake grifting.

EDIT: Typo'd on the sequel count.

Can you expand on the last paragraph? I am not a gamer, so although I understand most words in that sentence I really have no idea what you're referring to.

Well, to put it simply there are these things called microtransactions, basically you want items in a game or extra lives or something like that, you can pay for them instead of earning them, sometimes they make it so that certain items can only be paid for, worse they make it so that certain items can only be paid for and will only be offered for a limited amount of time. If you miss the window to buy them now you will never be given another chance. Normally this is something cool like a tie in with a new movie that came out or something of that nature. Fortnite does this a lot, hope you got those Marvel characters when they were offering them cuz you're not getting them now.

But as if that wasn't bad enough there was another layer to it, one of the things you can buy with microtransactions, using real money, is a form of money that can only be used in the game.

So, what you give them a dollar, they give you 100 coins, and there isn't even exchange rate? Of course not

There are various bundles where you can buy the premium currency as it is often called. Typically the more expensive bundles give more, and it's not tiered properly, so let's say $5 gives you 800 coins, but $10 gives you 2,000 coins, it's to goad you and to always buying the higher amount, even if you only want that one item.

But it can get worse, they can set the prices so that you can just barely afford the item you want with that $10 tier, so the next year is 5000 coins for $20. And with that you can get enough coins to buy the item you want and have just a little left over, but not enough for you to do anything with unless you buy a lot of coins to supplement that amount, which can trick you into thinking that you're getting a good deal when you are actually being fleeced pretty hard.

Fortnite is so bad because despite it being a good game, it does all of the above and targets to children who don't know anything about money.

There are cases where you can buy one form of Premium currency with real money, so that you can buy a higher tier of Premium currency with the premium currency you bought with real money, forcing you to pay even more.

And this is one reason why modern games suck, the other reason is that everyone is using the same Engine.

That's fascinating, it's like microtransaction recursion. I actually want someone to say fuck it and pull the wool off and just create a legitimate gambling first person shooter... I would love that. I used to play counter strike a long time ago and love poker. Just have like an ammo buy in cost that forms the prize pool. Make it tournament style with a bounty a top 3 and just rake part of the pool for profits and all that money your going to have to pour into cheating detection.

I imagine one day these practices will be cracked down upon when the European Union comes out for blood, the European Union is actually pretty good at getting us new laws that help regulate the internet and Technology.

I don't have a problem with a game that is based on gambling, I just don't think one should be targeted to children, and I definitely believe that you need to be upfront about what you're actually doing.

Sadly the European Union is a case of, the wheels of Justice move slowly, but they are moving. Only recently did they make loot boxes illegal, but loot boxes had already been abandoned by the industry in favor of something far worse, the battle pass.

Basically you pay a fee, and then you can unlock various features by doing certain missions, but if you don't claim everything by the time the battle pass goes off of sale, then tough luck, and if you don't get that battle pass, you are likely never getting a chance to get those features. So not only does it encourage you to buy a battle pass, but to play the game obsessively to make sure you unlock everything from the battle pass in time. And all that time there are bombarding you with ads for various other products that you can buy with micro transactions. It is Devious.

I play World of Tanks which has frequent battle passes. I used to try and grind earlier but then came a moment where I said fuck it, this feels like work and not fun. So now I just treat the base game as what I get. Any other reward is just a bonus. This change in mindset has worked quite well for me.

small incremental changes over the years felt like nothing big was happening and then at some point we all woke up

I (and many others I presume) has been saying Chrome is shit since the beginning. It didn't feel like nothing was happening, it felt like we were slowly getting to the old days of IE and Netscape.

There are always a few that see this stuff coming, but they usually get looked at like a crazy person shouting about the sky falling.

It also feels like they really push a lot of the terrible on mobile first, get people used to concepts with the "that's just how mobile is, it's a different world" and then when most are accustomed to it they move to regular pc enshitification.

I do not like how websites prioritise the mobile view over desktop view even when it is on a desktop. You have a widescreen and want to waste all that horizontal space? Just ridiculous!

Yeah yeah, I understand it is less maintenance from a developer point of view, but still it is infuriating as a user.

They gotta their digital peasantry, I mean users, from other feudal lords, I mean corporations, to maximize their power over them and ability to exploit them, I mean ... No wait that's right.

This is why I use Linux at home, along with TOR and a VPN. I'm not doing anything other than looking up woodworking and camping stuff, but fuck all ya'll for being nosy.

Same here I only do mild stuff like look at computer parts, servers and burglar tools. Damn nosy bastards.

What's the benefit of Tor and a VPN? Isn't a VPN sufficient?

That really depends on what you're trying to do.

A VPN just makes it look like you're somewhere else, but it doesn't really add any amount of anonymity. You'll still get tracked around the Internet like you normally would, but sites will just think you're somewhere else.

Tor is an anonymizing network, so your traffic gets mixed with a bunch of other people's traffic so websites get really confused about where you are. It's almost impossible to track someone using Tor because Tor will change how your packets are routed from request to request.

So if you just want to get access to different Netflix shows, a VPN is probably what you want. If you want to truly be anonymous, you need Tor. Just know that anonymity through Tor comes at a price, a lot of sites block Tor traffic, and performance is nothing to write home about because your traffic is routed through a bunch of other people's machines.

Doubly paranoid, doubly protected. Lol.

Ironically enough, using a VPN makes TOR protection weaker

Can you explain this, or point me in the right direction to learn more?

stop using chrome

Well, you see, our work environment is optimized to use chrome so there is really no other choice.

I wouldn't sacrifice my irl income just to tell google to go fuck itself.

Caught by the Jaffa's

I have converted over to Linux for a huge portion of my work flow but there is still the 20% I either can't efficiently replicate or there is just not the software I need.

Where possible I choose to work outside of Microsoft, Google and Apple but to keep a roof over one's head, I must endure too.

Stop using Chrome outside of work then. Unfortunately we usually can't control the software environments we work in, but separate your work computing from your home computing. The stuff that Google would gain about your personal life is mostly gained from your personal browsing anyways, assuming you don't use your work computer for personal browsing (that's what phones are for).

What is stopping you from using Brave? Don't you just need a chromium based browser?

Our laptop is locked. We cannot just install programs into it and there are regular audits on the content of the laptop so no portable applications also.

Of course on my personal laptop I've always used FF since I became aware of it, about the year 2007 or so.

OK, I don't think your work laptop really counts, that's entirely the decision and fault of your employer. We use Google apps at work but I don't consider myself to be a Google apps user, just my work is.

Yeah but that in itself underlines the problem. A large part of people's time is spent on work. And yes people do tend to use what is familiar.

Think of adobe. They offer students free access to adobe products. Which in turn transfers to a workforce that mainly use their products which in turn bleeds unto nonprofessionals using their products because of the abundance of youtube tutorials by professionals on how to use adobe products.

True, on the other hand this is very much employee driven. Some IT guy picked chrome as a company policy, and the reasoning behind it was looking at which browser would cause the least amounts of tickets with people complaining about browser choice.

The same is with office. Do you think a company likes to pay MS for it's shitty office suite, for when people have to type out 3 lines of text? Of couse not, but it cuts down on whining. (obv. there are places that are "full contact" ms office users, with excel sheets full of macros, but these are quite a minority)

Point is if public opinion would shift to firefox, companies would just roll out an update to use firefox from now on. Yes some webapps would break, but that is like "activeX" dependent sites in 2018... A bit pathetic.

I used to be IT and now I'm in sysadmin work. I don't make corporate software decisions personally but I work with the folks who do. You're not entirely wrong but you're being extremely reductive.

Browser decisions are less about complaints and more about minimizing the ability of third party vendors to blame issues with their sites and occasional business required extensions on our browser choice.

Vendors would be more likely to support Firefox if it was more popular with the public, but that's more of a second order thing than some arbitrary "avoid complaints" decision. Fuck, half of sysadmin is selling the business on whatever shitty change you have to force on them because you don't have a reasonable choice. Avoiding complaints is so far down the priority list that it's routinely ignored.

The move to Chrome from IE where I work was caused by the vendor providing our timecard site making changes so it would only work in Chrome. One could argue "just drop the timecard vendor" but that's a decision outside of IT's hands (timecard and payroll is HR's domain) and a change like that is too massive to kick off due to something like what web browser needs to be used. That effects payroll, time cards, employee reviews, taxes, access to benefits... too much to just go "IT says no"

For reference, this was ADP. I know not all of their contracts went through this (my wife's workplace uses ADP and somehow is still on IE, their lack of IT security scares me) but again, not for IT to negotiate. Best part was that we had other business critical sites that still required IE, so while Chrome was the default, we had people using both.

We've since changed to Edge as default as vendors were dragged kicking and screaming away from IE and activeX (shudder), but now we still keep Chrome around for the vendors trying to get out of fixing their shit. Avoiding complaints does come into it, but far less than you'd think.

As far as MS Office goes, yes familiarity to the office workers comes into it (employee efficiency and saving time on training trumps personal stands about open source). There's a lot more to it though. You can't call up GNU support when OpenOffice shits the bed, we can and do with Microsoft sometimes just to calm a VIP. Having someone external to blame for things users don't understand is a valuable tool. We can rely on MS Office having easy configuration options so we can meet the various regulatory requirements our company has. MS Office can be managed through the same tools we already use to manage OS settings in our environment with no custom work or additional software. We don't rely on sometimes janky open source reverse engineering to open document types we recieve from outside our company, risking formatting issues causing problems with legal documents (yes, incredibly unlikely, but why even open yourself to the risk).

Admittedly, my workplace is "full contact" Office use. The things these bastards get up to with functions and macros is amazing and horrifying. When I was on the helpdesk I lost track of how many times I had to walk high level people through the fact that no their machine was not underpowered, they did not need more RAM, but that they had hit the limit for data in a single sheet in Excel and the only solution was to work with smaller amounts of data at a time. Since I've moved to sysadmin I've lost track of how many times we've had issues escalated to us because some department has constructed a faux DB using a bunch of Excel workbooks and data connectors between them. Just happy I'm not our SQL guy trying to move them away from that, poor bastard.

Anyway, at any medium or larger companies, these decisions have a lot more going on than tech dude preference and trying to avoid complaints.

I lost track of how many times I had to walk high level people through the fact that no their machine was not underpowered, they did not need more RAM, but that they had hit the limit for data in a single sheet in Excel and the only solution was to work with smaller amounts of data at a time

Ooh ooh ooh! I got to do this the other day! Out SAAS database software gives us only limited functions and no SQL access so I dumped half a million rows to Excel to make a spreadsheet following a request from the top. After a couple of hours I had crafted my spreadsheet was about to send it when I was told "oh nevermind, they foind they already have a custom report that shows them the same information"

Yeah you are also correct. Now what we need to figure out is how to convince the majority, given that the proliferation of advertising from corporations and sheer exposure due to mere universal availability of chrome and other corp products is a major roadblock to overcome.

You nailed it. I use FF for personal stuff, but I need a chromium browser for work (internal sites are wonky on FF).

But I work 8hrs a day for 5 days. I don't even have 8 hours of total free time on saturday and sunday combined, much less use my pc for that long for personal things.

Don't use Brave.

Why not? Brave is way better than standard chromium or even ungoogled chromium. Brave Shields is one of the best adblockers I've seen. Balances blocking trackers and not breaking websites really well.

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I'm already seeing all the ads I want to see.

Fucking. None.

Firefox ftw

Just want to point out that Firefox has sponsored links, sponsored articles, and Mozilla ads that randomly pop up. Is it way better than Chrome and anything Google? Absolutely, by miles and miles. Is it completely innocent in the ad game? No.

I use LibreWolf. It's a Firefox fork with enhanced privacy and it gets rid of the built in adware. Combine with uBlock Origin for an ad-free experience.

I just use ublock with Firefox, I'm fine with the baked in ads on Firefox I don't mind supporting them. Considering what the other option is, I want to support them.

Mozilla at least goes to great lengths to ensure any advertising they do is about as privacy friendly as it can be, plus it's easily disabled in the settings

From where comes the idea that personalised ads are good? I hate this timeline.

Google is a large company, they need to pay their employees and server. It's pretty entitled of you to expect them to work for free. /s

I read this everywhere these days. Shilling has become culture.

No I understand why websites show ads. I don't understand why whenever I disable personal ads, I get a message saying "Are you really sure? If you disable this you won't see your favourite ads anymore and only see ads for things you probably don't want to buy. That'd be awful wouldn't it?" and expect me to change my mind because that's definitely not why I wanted to disable it in the first place.

They act as if people like to see ads because then they can buy stuff they think they want/need. And I'm getting afraid that's actually true for a lot of people too.

I dunno how other people operate but I never once bought something off an ad.

me neither I think? but it probably still subconsciously affects me

Does it? Can you even remember a product that you bought after looking at its ad?

Games probably. If I'm browsing the store looking for new games, any games I've seen in ads will probably pique my interest more because I recognise them.

Same with food, movies, so many other things.

Let me take a look at what I buy. No, everything has been reviewed, thought upon (cos I ain't rich) and then maybe bought.

They frame it that way to reenforce the notion that ads are an inevitable thing.

As Netflix and producers of toilet paper know well, people in the end are happy to pay for things they like or need. But Google and its like have discovered that instead of selling stuff to me, it's much more profitable to sell me to others.

No thanks.

God I wish the days would catch on in america, you just don't get the same level of clean with toilet paper, seriously I used to have problems with an itchy anus, doctor always said it was normal. Even when it was red from wiping too much just to try to get rid of the itch.

Switching to a bidet cured everything.

If I start to itch back there I just use the bidet, clears it right up

Sadly it hasn't become culture, that was a thing even back in the days when the internet was just gamefaqs, new grounds, and whatever Message Board your mates went to.

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They are good on paper

But not in execution

If you're going to show me ads thag I give a shit about they may be less annoying.

We wouldn't have gotten this far if they weren't good in execution. Ads may not work on you or many people in this thread, but it works on enough people to make this worth it.

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more choices over ads you see

Who in their right mind want to see ads

I want for very little. Therefore I clearly want ads personalized to me that try to make me feel inadequate so that I do want more.

People who are used to ads somehow just glaze over them and seem to not actually see them. It's quite Impressive really

"More useful ads" Well the best ads is no ads.

This is why I use Firefox

Please disable firefox telemetry if u care abt ur privacy

I never understood what is so problematic about anonymized telemetry, especially for a open-source product.

It provides a really valuable feedback for developers regarding feature usage, performance and error logs – you get the product for free so give something back.

Exactly! It’s more “Help me help you” than anything nefarious.

While it is mostly helpful, I still do it. To be honest, I would have been alright with it if it was a little more relaxed. What I mean by that is I'm okay with opt out, as long as it's a product I trust, and I would say I do trust Firefox as a project (Not too sure about the Corporation, the Foundation is fine). What I'm not fine with is the "Data will be deleted within 30 days". What if someone does not want to give that data in the first place, huh? I'm okay with it, because it's Firefox, but many people arent, so it's a matter principle for the people that aren't. So if someone didn't want any telemetry collected on them, that telemetry has not only been collected, but is now stored on Mozilla servers for 30 days, which means they can use it for analytics, whether you like it or not. Again, I don't care, because it's Firefox, but for the people that do, at the very least, don't give me or them or anyone else fhat "We will delete within 30 days" thing. Automate it and do it now.

I mean, at least FF allows that. Hardened FF is a blessing.

Plain Jane Firefox ain't any better than Chrome. Just putting your info in a different database.

Would you rather your data be sent to a browser company or the largest advertising agency in the world?

... Tell me again how these are the same?

That's a false dichotomy. I'd rather it not be sent to anyone...

Your data isn't just sent to a browser company. The browser company shares all of it with an ad agency.

You said "isn't any better" than chrome. Given the choice between the two, there is clearly a better option

In regards to privacy, I disagree.

That ad company is probably just selling your data back to Google anyway.

... the ad company IS Google

Firefox collects diagnostics and some usage data, not browsing history, Google collects absolutely anything and everything.

Their primary, nor secondary, source of revenue is not selling your data. You can also disable it entirely pretty easily. You cannot do that in Chrome.

Given the two options, one is clearly better.

the ad company IS Google

No it's not. It's called admarketplace

Firefox collects diagnostics and some usage data, not browsing history,

They collect everything. It's all spelled out in no uncertain terms in their privacy policy. I'd suggest you have a look.

No it's not. It's called admarketplace

Uh. Google is an advertising agency. Their entire business model is collecting data. Chrome is made by Google, ergo the ad company that Chrome uses is Google because Chrome is Google.

They collect everything

Nowhere does it say they collect browsing history. There are multiple places across their site where they explicitly say they do not.

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The browser company in question is primarily funded by the advertising company in question.

Doesn't really make a difference. Google pays to keep their search engine the default, same as they do for Apple.

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I've never, not once in my life, saw an ad which managed to make me buy something.

It doesn't matter what it's selling. The fact that it's disrupting whatever I'm doing or making my experience worst makes me refuse to buy whatever it's selling, and it doesn't matter how personalized it'll get. I will never be influenced to buy something just because I saw it on an ad.

This feature will literally do nothing for me. I'll still block ads, or if they are unblockable for any reason, I'll just ignore them until they're done.

true, but remember the ads are mostly subconcious. you often wont think about buying something after seeing an ad, but in the back of your mind you might have a slightly better opinion, or mental association to the brand. so next time you go to buy a product your more likely to remember that brand and buy from them. as much as i would like to believe otherwise, no-one is immune to propaganda

If you’re the type of person who buys new things often then yes. But if you buy the exact same stuff that you’ve been purchasing for 30 years, ads aren’t going to impact you today.

Or if you're ADHD and need to do a ton of research for a week on stupid little purchases before you commit to something.

If only it worked the other way as well:

Doctor: "Your blood cholesterol is abysmal. Your blood is more similar to maple syrup than blood."

Subliminal advertising: "Mmm, Coca-Cola means DEATH."

It's mostly unsettling and a bit creepy. Like you'll be doing something during the day and then later you'll see it on Google. Like someone's watching you.

At this point I assume everything about me is known to all the corporations. When stuff like that happens, I just go "yeah that tracks".

I’m just like this too, but you have to remember that for every person like us, there’s a person like my wife, who’s buying garbage that she sees on instagram ads nearly every week.

I beg her to at least search for the item and buy it directly so that the website she’s on isn’t getting revenue for ads. It’s petty but makes me feel better.

Many friends of mine are like saying why would i care i'd rather see ads that are relevant than ones that arent. Like dude i dont want ads at all and i dont want my data to be used to influence my buying behavior.

I don't care if I have to see unobtrusive ads (not overlays, not popups, not unskippable videos) ads help keep many web services free, sometimes I even find it helpful when ads are relevant to my recent searches or the page I am looking at. But having companies build up profiles about me and then share that between themselves is bullshit, that kind of behavior would be treated as stalking if done by an individual, why is it ok for a business?

While this is an understandable desire my question is as follow:

If you don't want ads, and don't want to pay for every service, how's all the internet system supposed to be sustainable on the long run? How should things be financed?

Honestly that's not our problem to solve. If we disagree with a business model we can choose not to use it, the onus isn't on us to find another one for the business.

If your product isn't worth paying for that's a you problem and if your business goes under because it wasn't sustainable that's also a you problem.

Is pretty likely that the business offered nothing new or innovative at a price people would part with their money for and just because you want to start a competing business in a market means nothing.

Competition is great but no business is entitled to a piece of the market solely because they want to exist. There's no point being a carbon copy of an existing service if you expect people to pay when your offering already exists somewhere else and if you want people to pay your business instead of another you need to improve something or create something of benefit for them to at a price point both sides can work with.

You're absolutely right, but this is a different case I think: It's freerider problem, people WANT to use internet services, want to use social and so on, the problem is, if possible, they don't want to pay for it. In the scenario where we make ads completely illegal, companies will look for other ways to monetize the service, because a system which is not in break even on the long term is cursed to bankruptcy.

People want to watch Netflix, but without paying, that means that if everyone do like that, Netflix will find other ways of monetization. That's why games became full of microtransanction and always online stuff, for example. That's what made ads popular in the first place, don't want to pay? No problem, here's a free sites with ads. should socials be closed community where you can access only paying, like pay tv? Because even right now removing ads on Reddit or YouTube paying is possible.

Even Lemmy growth at a certain point will incur in this, because a platform can't hold itself on 2 unpaid developers and free labor of volunteers who pay for server costs too.

Would we better off without these sites if we're not willing to pay for them? Maybe yes. But what certain is that without financial stability a project can't go far. The problem is both of the producer of the producer, sure, but also its users should wonder how much they want the platform, because it will evolve accordingly.

Honest answer: by op's friends!

Most people don't mind the parasites? Great! Let those who wanna be part of the system subsidise those of us in the margins who don't.

We already paid for the Internet though.

You pay for internet connection, not internet content.

Services don't get a penny out of what you pay your ISP

Ok then hear me out. Let free content supported by ads die out. Make everything paid.

This is practically impossible because piracy is easy and convenient.

Ads emerged right because they are a simpler way of monetization

Why don't businesses do away with free and go to a completely paid model?

Let's continue on this path of thinking: Customers already pay using their data. So if you want to show ads you have to pay customers since you are scrapping their data?

Unfortunately, a majority of the population like the ad based free service model, so here we are.

Wonderful, my day is complete. Thank you Alphabet for providing me a choice in which flavor of dystopian nightmare I'd prefer.

They are good times indeed.... Good times.....

Ah the privacy sandbox that was overwhelming disagreed with, but that Google forced onto the web because they're a monopoly.

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It really is unfortunate that almost all their users are asleep at the wheel and don't care.

The mundanes/normies whatever you wanna call em.

They won't understand anything without a song and dance number

That describes all of us in at least a few areas beyond our competencies and interests.

You should swap to something else. Anything else, tho ideally something that actually respects your privacy like Firefox. If more people did, maybe WEI would not be on the horizon.

This is why I decided to migrate to Firefox a few days ago

Why are you using chrome if you care about things like this?

They're at work.

What kind of cruel IT person installs Chrome and forbids Firefox

A lot. My IT company does the same. Fortunately, my team got an exception and we don't use IT's computers, but instead we manage it ourselves.

So I use macOS for work, while the rest of the company is on locked down Windows. I'd prefer Linux, but beggars can't be choosers.

In IT’s defense, there are a lot of REALLY stupid people. Plus given the added cost of developing internal apps that work for both, I can understand why corporations would choose to lock you into Chromium. I don’t like it, and I wish there was more trust in the end user, but I do get it.

The kind that needs to maintain their users' access to lazy shitty vendors who only develop their sites for the browser with the largest market share.

Half the vendors we use webapps/websites from jumped to Chrome when IE was dying, the other held on to IE kicking and screaming until forced out, then jumped to Chrome. They aren't going to spend the resources to ensure cross compatability unless they have significant financial incentive to, and they don't. And IT isn't going to tell the business side to forget about getting work done until they find a better vendor just because IT wants to make a stand on browser vendors.

Chrome is now - and has been for a while - actively a threat towards its users (on top of being one towards the web itself). Here is a recent list of hostile moves, for example.

In terms of threat towards users Windows 10/11 is even worse, by a large margin - it actively and very aggressively spies on you.

Use firefox and switch to Linux (I suggest Debian), comrade penguin-love

I'm poor and I hate stupid bullshit. The only way to personalize ads for me is to make them go away.

"Give us your preference data to prevent your preference data from being used in advertising."

Why tho? Just block ads at all. They just want to be "friendly" when the web drm changes hit

It is the illusion of choice granted in order to minimize the Damage Done by experts pointing out why Google is trying to kill the internet

“We changed our privacy settings to allow us to snoop on what you’re looking at and shove you ads accordingly. Feel free to opt out, but we’ll probably opt you back in when you aren’t paying attention.”

-Me wiping the coffee I spat after reading this. Hilarious 😂

Serious question: Why do you use Chrome, a browser made by the world's largest advertising and spying company, when you give the slightest f* about privacy?

At least use Ungoogled Chromium if you're not gonna switch to something actually privacy-focused. Basically the same functionality, but without Google's spyware.

I use it because of inertia. I jumped from Firefox to Chrome back when Chrome was new and came with hot features, like tab isolation, or being ultra fast. Google has gone through enshitification though, and FF has gotten much better since those days. I've started the migration back to Firefox now though.

Personally, I use Chrome because it and Edge are the only browsers installed on my work PC.

At home, it’s either Safari on my Mac or TOR on my Linux box with a VPN.

I swapped to Chrome a long time ago, probably around Firefox 7 or so, and never really looked back. I didn't really have an issue with being part of the Google ecosystem, and they were still in their embrace phase. It's been a while.

I have both browsers installed at the moment and under Linux/Wayland/Nvidia, Firefox definitely performs miles better (actual HW acceleration!) but Chrome still feels more practical to use, in my opinion. I think my main hang-up is that Chrome's "Tab Groups" suit my approach to web browsing better than Firefox "Tab Containers", even factoring in how Multi-Account Containers can make them more useful.

me hugs Firefox

Which is literally kept alive by Google. They have a monopoly, stop deluding yourself intot hinking there are any good guys (except maybe the Librewolf, Mullvad, and Tor devs)

Librewolf is based on FF, you know right? Mozilla does receive Google funding (that's why their default search engine is Google), but adopting FF and derivatives is also about Chromium not being the single dominant engine: that would only strengthen Google's monopoly.

As long as we don't use Chromium-based browsers (and Google services) we're doing good against Google's monopoly already.

While I agree, most people fail to see the bigger picture. They use Firefox to prevent Chromium from having a monopoly for browser features, but what they fail to see is that in most cases, Google already has full control. If Chromium browsers get a feature, Firefox will inevitably implement it in Gecko and the browser so that users don't say things like "Firefox sucks". Firefox does not suck, Google and their monopolistic practices suck. Now it does provide some practical benefit, for example when Google decides to introduce a more restricted version of a pre existing feature, Firefox can opt to keep on using tje less restricted version as well. The most prominent example of this is the whole Manifest v3 mess. But with something like Web Environment Integrity (or as many, myself included, call it, DRM for the Web), Firefox will inevitably adopt it after Google does, so as to not have users upset and leaving.

I agree with what's gonna happen. At the same time, I guess Mozilla won't make it hard for "Google's web DRM" to be either toggled off via user config, or sandboxed from user data. They have interest in catering to people fed up with Google's constant privacy invasions, so I'm currently waiting to see their next actions with moderate confidence and a healthy dose of skepticism as well.

Who the duck thinks ad personalization is a good thing. I'm glad YouTube shows me ads for seniors on Medicare. It keeps me disaffected and hating ads.

Why are you using Chrome?

At work I can choose between Edge and Chrome as my only two options. I use Edge, but there’s really no benefit for me to use one over the other. Technically I think I can request Firefox, but it’d have to go through VP-level approvals or something stupid like that.

Based on the “coming back from lunch,” I’d assume this person is on their work computer.

You will use the internet and I will creep on your every move because you are a pleb.

Ain't creepy at all imho

My android phone showed me something similar yesterday. Not even in Chrome. I think it's account based.

Soo enhanced privacy means "Give as more data"? I'm so happy I moved to firefox. It was pain, but worth it.

I'm in the process myself, definitely feeling good about it; the plugins alone make it worth it.

Just opted in.

Am I supposed to disable uBlock Origin and Pihole now? 😈

Does anyone know if this is coming to (Chrome based) Edge?

For the last year and for all of the crap Google has been changing in Google Chrome, I've actually been pretty happy with Edge (never thought I'd be saying that).

My guess is that it's unlikely, Microsoft doesn't want to empower Google even more, and running your OS is everything they need to plunder your data

Side chat... am I the only one who has started finding Bing more useful than Google? I never thought I would type that statement out in my life...

It's truly shocking but yes, I don't immediately change search engine preferences when Edge defaults to Bing now.

How kind of it to think about your privacy. Such a nice google. /s

I think wanting stuff for free and not wanting ads don't go together. Either we pay or we watch ads or use open source.

That's like saying we should gouge out our eyeballs if we don't want to see banner ads in real life. Fuck that noise.

I think a balance can be struck. Early internet ads didn't have to watch you all across the internet. As far as I know DuckDuckGo ads are just old school keyword matches, too. Newspapers don't feel the need to know the last 10 stores you visited. It's this obsession with personalized, targeted ads that brings up all this spyware crap.

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Saw that, immediately reinstalled Firefox, saw the tab bar was still a mess and reuninstalled Firefox. Is there a non-chromium browser with a decent UI. Firefox is a disaster after 3 tabs.

I am genuinely curious what is your issue with the tab bar? I got a long list of issues I have with FF (still my main browser anyways) but the tab bar is not one of them and I always have 20+ tabs open. Not saying your opinion is wrong, just trying to understand why you think so.

Not OP but I really dislike the way Firefox handles multiple tabs. When there are too many tabs, Chrome would shrink the tabs to icon size, but Firefox insists on keep a weird minimum tab size and make you scroll the tabs awkwardly.

I stopped using Firefox for a long time because of that, until I discovered Sidebery (vertical tabs).

Oh yea, that makes sense. The Chrome ones get super super small I think right? Has been a very long time since I last used it. I personally like it the was FF does it because I can more easily tell what tab is what, but I can totally see how it you would dislike that.

Also good to know something like Sidebery exist.

Thanks for your answer :)

Besides just jumping ship to veritcal tabs, I'd be shocked if there wasn't a user .css customization, settings option, or other small extension to get that in Firefox.