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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Question: if personalized ads are so great, why can't I just go into my google account's settings and put there all the info about me? My income, my interests, ages of my children, my favorite food... Since personalized ads are so good every google users will just fill it in to get the best ads possible, right? Why not give people this option instead of implementing all this trackers?
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.
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
“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.
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).
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.