I’m fucking done with Chrome. Fuck this.

        • vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de
          21·
          1 year ago

          a protocol for the distribution of arbitrary files, like http. A hypertext format, which http was intended for. Using mature technologies such as a bunch of stuff that http already uses.

          This is just http with extra steps. The problem is not in how the data is sent, but what data is sent. This is the equivalent of noticing people sending a lot of hate mail via snail mail, and the “solution” to that being to use square envelopes instead.

        • sir_reginald@lemmy.world
          9·
          1 year ago

          we need a company-free web. today you search the web for anything and you only obtain garbage SEO optimized results because of the commercialization of the web.

        • KelsonV@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          “What would incentivise companies to use it over a regular website with tracking and whatnot?”

          Nothing…and that’s kinda the point.

    • 11181514@lemm.ee
      43·
      1 year ago

      Hey you’re in luck! For just $99.99/mo* we’ll remove those ads.

      But we’ll still collect way more data than you think and in a couple months we’ll raise the price for the True Unlimited* plan

      **True Unlimited plan has like, so many ads, because fuck you.

    • superguy@lemm.ee
      201·
      1 year ago

      But how will the already-profitable company make more profit at your expense?

  • neonred@lemmy.world
    651·
    1 year ago

    Firefox it is and was for over a decade and more. Add uBlock Origin, uMatrix and some smaller stuff and the web suddenly becomes accessible.

      • neonred@lemmy.world
        30·
        1 year ago

        Add-Ons I have installed are:

        • uBlock Origin
        • uMatrix (sadly deprecated)
        • Privacy Badger, shows/blocks trackers that made it through uBlock/uMatrix (which are not many if at all)
        • Decentraleyes, which caches libraries from CDNs so you don’t connect to these central servers again, disclosing your usage pattern
        • Cookie AutoDelete, mostly optional but clears cookies while browser is running and not only on close
        • DarkReader, so bright pages go dark
        • Sidebery, for organizing tabs (I miss true tab groups in Firefox, but only a bit)
      • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
        18·
        1 year ago

        Firefox actually has most privacy stuff you need built-in nowadays. There are surprisingly few steps you need to harden it after install (on both desktop and mobile):

        • Install the uBlock Origin extension.
        • Switch Enhanced Tracking Protection to “strict”.
        • Turn on HTTPS-only mode in all tabs.

        Optionally:

        • Switch your search engine away from Google. I’ve been using DuckDuckGo with zero problems for years, but there are others.
        • Install the multi-containers extension, it can be used to load websites in isolated color-coded tabs so no data “leakage” can occur.

        You do not need any other extension. There is some advanced stuff for fingerprinting protection but they can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing. Stick to the above, update Firefox when prompted and that’s all.

        • rikyu@sopuli.xyz
          6·
          1 year ago

          I love the possibility to have uBlock Origin on mobile. I have Privacy Badger and Decentraleyes installed as well. Toolbar on bottom is another thing I can’t live without anymore. That’s configurable through settings.

          • popemichael@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            You can use uBlock Origin on mobile in the Firefox nightly build.

            In the nightly build, you get to use pretty much all addons from desktop.

        • neonred@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 year ago

          Yup, solid advices.

          I would add disabling recommendations for Add-Ons and Themes and clearing the initial default bookmarks.

          Of course you can pimp it out like setting config properties to enable experimental stuff like Wayland, WebRender, hardware decoding, etc. pp. before they get enabled by default in later releases.

        • Squizzy@lemmy.world
          2·
          1 year ago

          I’ve noticed DDG giving poor results lately and definitely putting me in a bubble. No matter what it gives hyper local results.

          • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            Same, I tried it for a while a few months ago but it never gave me as good results as Google. I’m very aware of the enshittification and will switch away as soon as I notice it not showing me what I want, though.

            • Squizzy@lemmy.world
              4·
              1 year ago

              For the record I find it miles better than google, I just think they are getting to be more like Google in their results being tailored.

              When I search something I want to learn about I’ll often get local examples whereas I used to get the wiki or some general discussions.

              When I google it I get ads and pictures of myself in the shower.

    • lemmyingly@lemm.ee
      6·
      1 year ago

      uMatrix has been abandoned hasn’t it? I thought the dev had incorporated some of uMatrix into uBlock?

      Am I wrong in believing this?

    • KelsonV@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Firefox, and Vivaldi for the occasional site that doesn’t work on Gecko. (They’re built on the Chromium engine, but absolutely refusing to implement this crap)

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
      27·
      1 year ago

      Piggybacking here to let people know that hitting “no thanks” on that dialog only disables 1 out of the 3 new tracking methods added to Chrome. Besides turning off “ad topics” you need to go to preferences and also disable “site-suggested ads” and “ad measurement”.

    • Fungah@lemmy.world
      127·
      1 year ago

      It was never good. It’s performance sucked ass and I can’t think of s single feature it had that I got anything out of.

      I want my browser to do 2 things: load the fucking webpage and save bookmarks. That’s fucking it.

      • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        1 year ago

        Chrome actually used to run very well compared to Firefox, much lower general RAM and CPU usage doing the same thing. That was quite a while ago though

      • orphiebaby@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        If you ignore privacy issues, it was the best browser a long time ago, for some years after it was new. I remember those days, installing AVG every time I reinstalled Windows Vista. My first laptop, my first time with internet, Twilight Princess and Sonic '06 was out, it was great. That was back when we liked Sonic '06, because it was new and we were young and dumb. I was in the USAF doing computer technician work.

      • SuperJetShoes@lemmy.world
        66·
        1 year ago

        It was the first browser to have tabs. That simple feature was cool AF at the time, especially the “Reopen last closed tab” and “Duplicate Tab” features.

        “Duplicate Tab” was awesome, letting you risk going down some sites rabbit holes without losing your starting context in the original tab.

        Awesome innovative features, now natural requirements for any browser.

        But it was all downhill since there.

        • LostWon@lemmy.ca
          11·
          1 year ago

          It was the first browser to have tabs.

          Not true. I was definitely using tabs in Firefox and Opera before Chrome even existed. I’ve used CTRL/CMD+SHIFT+T to reopen last closed tab in all browsers for many years now so I can’t remember if that existed as a menu option for people who prefer to use a mouse, but the guts of the feature itself was there before Chrome existed as well. (I avoid duplicating tabs so I can’t say if that existed before.)

          I remember clearly when Chrome came out, it felt like this stripped down skeleton with less built-in features than I was used to, less customizability, and less features privacy that promised to be “fast,” yet didn’t seem any faster than a fresh browser install would normally be. The one innovation I associate with Chrome is browser-based online and offline web apps, but I don’t know if that started with them. (I’m guessing it probably did since they were in their heyday when that got to be a thing.)

          I was so disappointed when Mozilla spent years trying to make Firefox more like Chrome (which meant stripping down features and customizability) to attract people-- which clearly wasn’t working-- and it’s been such a relief to see them get back to being simple on the surface but poweruser-friendly under the hood, recently.

          small edit: to fix a mistake above (see strikethrough text)

            • LostWon@lemmy.ca
              2·
              1 year ago

              Oh absolutely! I almost included more about who created tabs myself but my comment was already becoming a wall of text and I hadn’t used InternetWorks myself. 😅

              Since you bring it up, I’ve wondered for a long time if the folks who brought tabs to browsers might have also worked on TabWorks-- a very customizable (and much prettier) alternative shell/GUI for Windows 3.x.

        • KelsonV@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          Oh geez, thinking back to the “we had it first!” wars between Opera fans and Firefox fans about tabs back in the pre-Chrome days…

  • 🅱🅴🅿🅿🅸@sh.itjust.works
    481·
    1 year ago

    Ah yes, “hey instead of us tracking you, can you just save us the computation effort and just tell us what you’re into? We’ll still keep tracking you though.” And this is somehow a privacy FEATURE? Even though they clearly say they’ll be sharing thisvinfo with websites you visit? Boggles the mind

  • regbin_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    538·
    1 year ago

    Firefox has always been my main browser but I don’t get OP’s point.

    Isn’t this a good feature because it allows personalized ads without tracking?

    Can someone explain to me?

    • DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      733·
      1 year ago

      “To stop everyone else from stealing your data, let us steal it for them!”

      It’s like trying to stop a fire by committing arson.

    • Cyborganism@lemmy.caOP
      522·
      1 year ago

      According to this popup, Chrome is essentially sending my entire browsing history god knows where in order to build a user profile that is then used by advertising companies to display targeted ads on the websites I visit. But it allows me to control which topics get shown or hidden and somehow that is a “privacy” feature.

      I just don’t want my browsing history to be used for anything except finding what pages I visited in the past and that’s it. I’m sick of being tracked and having my whole god damn digital life being shared to fucking greedy corporations who want to send me ads to buy crap I don’t need.

      • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
        4·
        1 year ago

        According to Steve Gibson’s podcast, the analysis of your browsing history that converts it into topics is done in your browser, so presumably on your computer, not by sending the browsing history to a server. Only the resulting topics are shared with Google’s servers.

      • voxel@sopuli.xyz
        1·
        1 year ago

        the user profile is stored locally, websites get a random list of three topics

    • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      123·
      1 year ago

      There’s still tracking. They’re just streamlining the process and making it sound “extra private”.

      Personally, I find the entire concept of personalized ads offensive. Tell me that advertising pays for content and I’ll punch a kitten.

    • joenforcer@midwest.social
      915·
      1 year ago

      Most of what Google is mentioning here is not new. They’re still tracking you, and still learning about you and what you do on the Internet. They don’t sell your browsing history or identity to advertisers, and as far as I’m aware, they never have; that’s their golden goose. What they sell is access to a certain type of users based on what they’ve learned about you from your browsing history. For many, many years, users didn’t have a choice. They’d be served ads for things that might be wildly irrelevant based on one errant search, or when shopping for a niche gift for a friend.

      The difference now is that they’re opening up topics to users. It’s win-win-win: Users don’t see irrelevant ads, Google doesn’t serve up ads that users won’t click (thus driving down the value), and advertisers pay less for useless impressions and are more likely to reach users interested in their products.

      Make no mistake… Google isn’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. It only makes their ad-based business model more efficient and valuable.

      If the word “ads” makes you turn red as your blood boils like most of Lemmy, I can’t help you. But if it weren’t for ads, we’d still be paying for Netscape.

      • beta_tester@lemmy.ml
        102·
        1 year ago

        Wow.

        It’s not win win win

        If I see “relevant ads”, i.e. products I buy because I saw an ad for it, I lose. I lose money. I wouldn’t have bought it without the ad. The ad created a need in my brain that I want to fulfill. Without the ad I wouldn’t have had it.

        No, I do not win with relevant ads. I win with irrelevant ads. I don’t care about those and don’t look at them and waste my time and money.

        • jadero@lemmy.ca
          4·
          1 year ago

          There are actually such things as relevant ads. One of the paper magazines I used to subscribe to was “Small Craft Advisor”. In addition to the articles and editorial content, there were articles written by vendors about their products and traditional ads. Literally everything in that magazine was aimed at small boat owners and builders. No BMWs, no Rolexes, no shaving products, just very specific content and ads for those passionate about small boats.

          When they switched to online only, enough subscribers reached out to them regarding the loss of vendor articles and ads that they now occasionally put out something to address that loss.

          I don’t know where else I could learn about a new epoxy product or a new boat design so easily.

            • jadero@lemmy.ca
              2·
              1 year ago

              We used to get at least some of them before the advertisers conned themselves (with the help of Google et al) into thinking that they had to know who we are instead of what our active interests are.

        • joenforcer@midwest.social
          46·
          1 year ago

          Hmm. You only buy things you don’t need because of ads? You only lose money and get nothing in return, every time? That’s a shame.

            • joenforcer@midwest.social
              32·
              1 year ago

              Eh. Perhaps you’re right. I just know that on a personal level, I have purchased goods and services learned about through ads over time that have enhanced my life and allowed me to have meaningful experiences and create memories with the people I care about I wouldn’t have otherwise had. Perhaps I’m naive, but it seems awfully silly and shortsighted looking back to have missed out in exchange for a knee-jerk angry reaction to anyone trying to sell me something.

  • MaxHardwood@lemmy.caEnglish
    431·
    1 year ago

    There is a lot of misinformation being shared in this thread.

    A good excerpt from Steve Gibson covering Topics on SecurityNow #935

    What I do know, though, is that user profiling via tracking represents the height of privacy intrusion. As far as I know, an immutable record of every website I have ever visited is squirreled away in multiple massive hidden and inaccessible-to-me profiling databases. And I have zero control over that. That’s the world we’re in today. But if Topics succeeds, and Google would appear to be in the position to singlehandedly deliver its success, it is a far less intrusive profiling technology. And in addition to being a much weaker information gatherer, Google has chosen to provide its users complete control over the Topics their browser presents to the world, including turning it off altogether for full anonymity. I’ll explain that further in a minute.

    So if only on that basis, Topics at least represents a huge step in the right direction. Yes, by default some interest profiling remains. But the means of obtaining those significantly weakened profiles is no longer tracking. And users have complete visibility into their online profile and are able to curate, edit, and even delete any of it or all of it as they choose. So it’s a compromise. But there are many websites begging for our support. My feeling is, if voluntarily letting them know something about who we are allows them to generate, as they claim, significantly more revenue from our visit, is that too high a price to pay? Again, it’s an individual decision. But now, in a world with Topics, at least, it’s one we’re able to make.

    …

    Okay. So here’s how Topics works. The essence of Topics are individual topic tokens - zero, one, or many - which are assigned to individual websites. For example, my GRC.com site might be associated with Computers and Electronics/Network Security, and Computers and Electronics/Programming, and Networking/Internet Security. So when someone visited GRC.com, their own web browser would record their interest in the topics associated with GRC.com, those topics, those three. But their visit to GRC.com itself would never be recorded other than in their regular local browser history as is always done. The only thing retained by the browser to indicate their interest in those topics would be those three numbered parameters.

    For example, in Google’s current 349-topic list, which they refer to as a “taxonomy,” there’s “Arts and Entertainment” as a general topic if nothing more specific is available. But then there’s “Arts and Entertainment,” and then under that “Acting and Theater,” and “Comics,” “Concerts and Music Festivals,” “Dance,” “Entertainment Industry,” “Humor.” And under “Humor” is the subtopic “Live Comedy.” And it goes on like that with “Arts and Entertainment” having a total of 56 token entries before we switch to “Autos and Vehicles,” which has 29 subcategories, which brings us to “Beauty and Fitness” and so on. You get the idea.

    So here’s how Google’s specification explains this. They said: “The topics are selected from an advertising taxonomy. The initial taxonomy proposed for experimentation will include somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand topics.” They said: “Our initial design includes around 350.” And I counted them, it’s 349. “As a point of reference, the IAB Audience Taxonomy contains around 1,500 individual topics and will attempt to exclude sensitive topics.” And they said: “We’re planning to engage with external partners to help define this. The eventual goal is for the taxonomy to be sourced from an external party that incorporates feedback and ideas from across the industry.”

    …

    Google explains: “The topics will be inferred by the browser. The browser will leverage a classifier model to map site hostnames to topics. The classifier weights will be public, perhaps built by an external partner, and will improve over time. It may make sense for sites to provide their own topics via meta tags, headers, or JavaScript, but that remains an open discussion for later.”

    SecurityNow #935 transcript

    • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
      14·
      1 year ago

      It seems unlikely, though, that advertisers will give up on the nuanced tracking they can get by other means, right? Whether to show you the $2 rip off umbrella that works for a single rainy day, or the $52 Proposal Pink ™ ultra-certified umbrella that keeps the rain off for a single rainy day.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
        11·
        1 year ago

        They won’t be given the choice. The point is giving them some compromise in order to disable other tracking abilities from the browser. The big question with all of this isn’t whether it improves on the user’s privacy from the status quo. It’s what happens when Google effectively monopolizes most of the access to advertising data. I’m not crying for third party ad companies, I think there might be some unforseen consequences for users down the road.

        • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
          6·
          1 year ago

          They won’t be given the choice.

          But how so? Just that Google will stop feeding them personal data the ways it currently does? Or that Chrome would actively work to block fingerprinting and trackers the way and blockers and Firefox do?

          Because fingerprinting happens whether the user’s browser ‘allows’ it or not.

          Google effectively monopolizes most of the access to advertising data.

          Ok, so you mean most of what most companies get is fed from Google’s tracking? So most would lose most of their data. But not that rely on Amazon/Meta/etc who are doing their own dirty work.

          • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
            4·
            1 year ago

            Or that Chrome would actively work to block fingerprinting and trackers the way and blockers and Firefox do?

            I think they’ll do this.

            Ok, so you mean most of what most companies get is fed from Google’s tracking?

            Today everyone installs cookies and what not and tracks however they can. Once Google goes the Firefox route disabling and mitigating tracking abilities in Chrome, the only gateway to tracking data will be the data gathered by Google via Chrome and exposed via some Google-controlled API to third parties. So I think that eventually what most companies get fed by will be Google’s tracking.

            So most would lose most of their data. But not that rely on Amazon/Meta/etc who are doing their own dirty work.

            Yup. And probably.

            So better than the status quo, unless you’re a smaller ad company.

    • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      Yeah - this is the privacy model that ad targeting should have always taken. People are grabbing pitchforks not really knowing why.

      Moving profiles to the edge and only letting ad servers know what to send rather than connecting the ads to profiles of centrally located browsing data and history would be a huge step forward in privacy for the average user.

      The even better version of this would be the ad server sending “ad options” and the browser selecting what to show based on the internal profile, so even category data isn’t sent, just the potential linking of which ad is shown to which user (but not knowing if that correlated to an actual preference or if the other options were just equally poorly targeted).

    • snitin@lemmy.world
      614·
      1 year ago

      Max that’s a wonderful comment, but could you just tell me what to do, I ain’t reading all that.

      • RaoulDook@lemmy.worldEnglish
        213·
        1 year ago

        You should really practice reading more if something that long is difficult for you.

        Reading is a crucial life skill that everyone should practice daily.

      • MaxHardwood@lemmy.caEnglish
        71·
        1 year ago

        TL;DR: If you want to use Chrome then don’t be worried about Topics. It’s better privacy than third party cookies and other tracking methods.

        • jadero@lemmy.ca
          7·
          1 year ago

          Within the context of the subject matter, that was a quick excerpt. And, in fact, the transcript from which that excerpt was extracted can probably be considered a relatively quick excerpt from the entire system.

          Sometimes it is just not possible to simplify further or be more concise without just saying “trust me, it’s better than what we had up to now.” That is especially true when we have all learned, I hope, that “trust me, I saw it on the internet” is a really lousy way to make decisions.

      • psivchaz@reddthat.com
        41·
        1 year ago

        tl;dr There are valid reasons to not use Chrome, and to be suspicious of Google. This, specifically, is not one of them and the fear is mostly overblown by people who have done zero research.

    • Free Palestine 🇵🇸@sh.itjust.works
      11·
      1 year ago

      You can say ‘Fuck this’ and switch to Firefox or LibreWolf (fork of Firefox with privacy improvements and preinstalled uBlock Origin, it also removes all the crap from Firefox like Pocket or Sponsored sites). Mull on Android is another great Fork of Firefox with improved privacy.

  • Swarfega@lemm.eeEnglish
    35·
    1 year ago

    I turned it off the first time I was asked. Something on my phone opened in Chrome, rather than Firefox, and this came up again with a different question. I was pretty sure I said no but wasn’t convinced that what I had chosen was doing what I asked. Sure enough diving into settings it was enabled.

    I’ve loved Chrome for years but this is bullshit. Firefox isn’t perfect but I love that I can use uBlock Origin. Fuck Chrome.

  • UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works
    33·
    1 year ago

    Time to switch and start donating to Mozilla.

    I was still using Chrome for some things at work, just because that’s our assumed default, but I know enough to switch over there too now. Maybe I’ll update the documentation to help other people switch too…

    Insert “I’m doing my part” meme

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      213·
      1 year ago

      The fact that anyone in /privacy/ uses any google products or services is also quite laughable.

          • wandermind@sopuli.xyz
            85·
            1 year ago

            What does it mean then, if not implying that you’re not a real Privacy user or cannot be interested in improving your privacy situation if you use Google products?

            • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              1·
              1 year ago

              That’s like worrying about privacy while using Facebook and tiktok. Moreover, accessing all of your personal information on a device created by Facebook.

    • Dave@lemmy.nz
      321·
      1 year ago

      Definitely! I remember how awesome and exciting it was when Google was handing out all this great free stuff, before we learnt how we were paying for it.

    • Cyborganism@lemmy.caOP
      151·
      1 year ago

      It was! When Chrome first came out it was blazing fast and could render pages better than any other browser. It wasn’t this spyware that sent all your web usage for targeted ads.

    • thehatfox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      This was the intention of Chrome from the start. A browser made by an advertising company was never a good thing.