The main idea behind it is to improve the creation of tab groups for the user. The process is automated when the feature is used, which means that you do not have to create tab groups manually anymore and put tabs into them.
Edge sends information about all open websites to a Microsoft server when the option is selected. The AI processes the request then on the server and returns its suggestions after a moment.
While the automatic tab group creation features of Edge and Chrome look useful, privacy conscious users may want to skip those and create tab groups manually instead.
Having your entire list of open websites submitted to a company server without really knowing what is done with it and how it is stored outweighs the convenience of the feature.
I honestly just assumed this would more or less be happening all along, even pre-AI. Google and Microsoft are established Peeping Toms. If you care at all about privacy they should be avoided. (I type from my Android phone…)
because the other options are living like a caveman, or buying into a walled garden that will fuck you over every step of the way.
i don’t blame you. try to use as many privacy-respecting apps as possible though, once degoogled android becomes mainstream you can easily switch.
one could argue it already is, but many workplaces mandate the use of microsoft or google products. the monopoly/duopoly is real right now.
This is indeed the way. In my personal life I’m like 50-75% there: I run Linux on my primary computer, use Firefox and LibreWolf, self-host as much as possible, etc. But you’re right about the duopoly (triopoly, if that’s a word? If you consider MS, Google, and Apple as being the main gatekeepers to the average person’s technical experiences). As much as open-source and privacy-respecting alternatives have gotten vastly more accessible over the last decade or so, it still almost always requires effort and at least some technical knowledge on the part of the user. Sometimes at the end of the day I just want to chill out, so I pick my battles and approach this as a long-term, gradual process.
To your last point I’ll even admit that I’m part of the problem. In addition to some other roles I run IT for the small business I’ve worked for over the last decade+. About a year and a half ago the owners decided to retire and my family pooled our money to buy the business (a bunch of us had worked there a long time). Newly promoted to treasurer, I had the keys to the castle and could have used this as an opportunity to push for a paradigm switch in our IT to Linux. I didn’t though, because with all the other moving parts and major financial risks we were taking, it would have just been one more source of friction in an already -stressful time.
So, instead, I doubled down on the MS tax and moved us to MS365. The thing is, though, outside of two Windows-only apps (only one of which is mission-critical) 90% of what my users do is all browser-based and they probably wouldn’t even notice a difference in their OS. But, a) I didn’t want to waste the political capital when I had other priorities I wanted to push for with the new owners, and b) again - sticking with the status quo is just easier in the short term. The thought of teaching a new OS to a dozen non-technical admins and salespeople was just too much at a time when I was scrambling to make sure we could pay our bills. As the old adage goes, “no one gets fired for buying IBM.”
What makes this even more ridiculous is that, in part due to my lack of super-in-depth Windows admin knowledge, I ended up setting up a co-management agreement with an IT provider so I had a fallback option when my other duties kept me from responding to IT issues myself. The really crazy part, looking back, is that I regularly run into way more weird bugs on my Windows 11 work laptop than I do on my goddamn Arch desktop. Perhaps if I’d have just pushed for this back then, I’d have saved the company thousands of dollars in subscription fees - money which could have instead been spent on my main priority of raising wages. But, alas, the tech establishment is really good at marketing themselves as a turnkey solution (which really isn’t true).
Anyway, thank you all for coming to my Ted Talk.
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Android doesn’t really have telemetry or privacy issues unless you use stock android from google.
What’s that, like 90+% of Android users?
Probably more like 99.99% if we are being honest. However this is a privacy community so in just this community its likely much lower.
Shifts nervously
For real though, I’ve been meaning to switch to a de-Googled variant but just haven’t found the energy. Baby steps.
I type from my not-Android and not-Apple phone.
Outstanding! I always wanted my browser to group my tabs based on my porn tastes! Doggy in one group, missionary in another, and GILFs too! Now I’ll never get confused when hunting through my open tabs!!
I use Tree Style Tabs addon for that.
Edge is also pulling in tabs from other browsers unprompted. How convenient.
https://www.theverge.com/24054329/microsoft-edge-automatic-chrome-import-data-feature
of course it does
Why are we making such huge steps backwards. Didn’t we get federated learned to reduce data collection like a decade ago?
FLoC was never designed to make you more private, just for Google to monopolize data collection. Anything that contributed towards privacy was mostly undone, and mostly unintentional.
I meant more on the tools side of things like https://www.tensorflow.org/federated/tutorials/federated_learning_with_differential_privacy
With Gboard being user of federated learning to reduce data leakage.
Well, it’s Microsoft Edge…
Sounds like really useful technology. Can we get it without exhibitionism now?
There’s pretty much no reason this has to be done on the cloud. For one example, just download a tab tree sidebar for Firefox. Either the stuff you see in it will be managed by the browser itself, or by something as simple as an extension.
Even calling this feature AI seems rather disingenuous on the part of Microsoft. It looks more like a way to grab data about you and about non-consenting websites…
I wonder if that is even legal in europe.
Chris Titus Winutil for the win!
