> Tracking technology can arguably benefit us as well. For example, it could be helpful if an online store reminds you every three months you need a new toothbrush, or that this time last year you bought a birthday card for your mum.
fuck off
fuck off
> Offloading cognitive effort, such as reminders like these, is a great way automation can assist humanity.
Does that pass for journalism? I really don't want to read the rest of the article.
I read the article; it's actually one of the better pieces I've read in that domain (tech news for the general public) IMHO. People say those things (take-downs) about everything on HN. Don't trust the threads - why would you trust anonymous people writing one-sentence hot-take rants, some of whom probably also didn't read the article and are just repeating things.
The Internet tide isn't a reliable indicator of anything, any more than the tide at the beach.
"Academic rigour, journalistic flair"I think it passes for a press release disguised as a news article.
Google didn't write a press release that raises questions - insightful ones that I hardly ever see in other coverage - about their privacy practices and recommends competitors such as Firefox and Brave.
It was great. I'd give it to lay-people who were interested, and as a technical person I don't need to read more.
It can be better solved with a calendar notification. No privacy violated and you can add your own information to your notification: you liked this toothbrush, your dentist recommended that toothbrush, you didn't like this store, blah blah.
Is there value in that? Sure. Does that mean that value must be extracted by a business? No.
Regardless, that's a debate to have with Chrome devs. It's already in the browser and the article is reporting on the browser.
> Lastly, it’s good to remember nothing truly comes for free. Software costs money to develop. If you’re not paying towards that, then it’s likely you – or your data – are the product. We need to revolutionise how we think about our own data and what value it truly holds.
Ignoring the fact that this is not how it works - there are plenty of services where you pay and still are the product - the last sentence makes it clear that the author sees privacy as the problem, not tracking.
I wouldn't assume that; I would donate what you can. I've been to two pay-what-you-can theater performances recently. How can I not give those people - who value every dime, who many others stiff, and where you know 100% goes to a worthy cause - more than the corporate productions, who couldn't care less about me or community and where the money goes to some billionaires and shareholders who couldn't care less about art and look forward to AI and cost-cutting layoffs. The last thing I want is the local artists, who do it for the art, to not see people's love and appreciation or to stop.
Around 5-10 years ago, IIRC the maintainer of a relatively well-known Linux distro moved home to (Minnesota?) because they had no health insurance and couldn't afford the Bay Area (or something like that, my memory is sketchy).
Also don't forget the sh-t-ton of abuse open source maintainers take.
2. There are services that you pay for where you are not the product
3. All services that you don’t pay for you are the product.
So the first step is getting people to pay for the service
Even in the US, the median cost of an Android phone is less than $300 and then you expect them to pay $200 for a browser?
Besides, it’s never just a one time purchase. Is that one time purchase going to get you security updates and if so, for how long?
I can eat junk food cheaply every day, I pay the price later.
Let them eat cake?
Meanwhile over in "lets not cede all control to corporations" land, did we forget the the internet was actually funded by the government in the first place? Have we already tossed away ideas like the rural electrification project?
Who is going to pay for the browser?
Do you really want the government controlling how you access information?
You've already given that power to corporations, and corporations have far fewer regulations on actually performing said control (as in they are able to control you far more).
You are so deep into Reganomics "government is bad, corporations are good" that you don't realize these large (near) monopoly status corporations are effectively their own governments in amount of power and control they have.
I have a lot more power not to use Chrome or Android than not to be under the rule of a hostile government.
Whether it’s the religious right who are in control of one party or Tipper Gore going after rap music in the other party, do you really want the government controlling the web?
Reagonomics was about thinking the government is incompetent. I think the government is hostile.
Enriching these large companies will ensure you live under a hostile government too. Once they are big enough to rent seek, they become the primary lobbying power, and you're back in the exact same position of being under a hostile government.
Next I expect to hear something out of you about private water companies and roads as the solution to all of our problems.
> Once they are big enough to rent seek, they become the primary lobbying power, and you're back in the exact same position of being under a hostile government.
Can any of the corporations with power put people in jail or confiscate your property for disagreeing with them? Can they get you fired for teaching something that is “too woke”. Did you not see what the governor of Florida did with Disney because they had the nerve to disagree with him?
Are you really okay with giving government that power?
Show me the steps that would need to happen for Google to harass me for walking down the street because I don’t look like I belong in my own neighborhood.
You attempt to go to your local grocery store. They use 'Google Identity' which they are perfectly allowed to as a private business. You are accused of sending spam by Google (who the hells knows why, they never explain anything) and you are barred access.
Being the staunch libertarian you are, you leap over the public roadway afraid of catching communism if you touch it and go to the grocery store across the road. It turns out they are using 'Amazon Identity' and via an information sharing agreement with Google (private businesses can share information about you, right?), and you're also denied access to that store.
You'll go to another store, right.... Oops, turned out after we got rid of monopoly laws there are only two different stores in your community after consolidation of the industry. Luckily for you there is a toll road that you can take a 30 minute drive to another place that uses a different set of identifiers to let you in.
We busted monopolies and company stores years ago because businesses harassed and murdered people left and right!. Have you forgot the history of the Pinkertons, or are you just blindly ignorant of that part of US history?
This is what police will do today to people who disagree with them
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/08/23/us/marion-county-record-n...
> We busted monopolies and company stores years ago because businesses harassed and murdered people left and right!….
I’m sure I need to be more worried about Google murdering people than some yokels claiming they were doing a “citizens arrest” where the prosecutor covered up video taped evidence…
https://www.wtoc.com/2022/12/28/timeline-former-brunswick-da...
But I guess I should be more worried about Google putting a cookie on my computer…
Not that I would ever personally use Chrome
Even better, we had your magical word where the police didn't exist in the past... It was not a pleasant place unless you were the strongman. The police state was just as bad back then, or bully state.
Yeah, you can choose between Google or Apple. Hooray.
It's practically impossible to avoid Google if you value having a social life. Enough people have tried.
> Reagonomics was about thinking the government is incompetent. I think the government is hostile.
Oh yeah great, so it's even worse than Reaganomics.
At least a government csn be kept in check by a construction and can be changed by elections.
On the other hand, corporations have no obligations towards you at all. It's the entire point of private enterprise that they can do what they want and don't owe any responsibility.
That’s cute in theory. But the way that the electoral college is designed, the Senate with two votes, gerrymandering etc that doesn’t work out too well in practice.
Democracy works fine if you’re in the majority - well not actually see all of the caveats above - but that doesn’t work if you are in the minority - any type of minority.
> It's the entire point of private enterprise that they can do what they want and don't owe any responsibility.
I could argue the same about law enforcement, imminent domain, civil forfeiture, and getting harassed because I “look suspicious”
We already pay a price to have regulatory watchdogs intervene when companies cheat the market and or distort the rules and impact society as a whole, so it wouldn't be unprecedented either.
We could write PHD thesis about why, but we can take a meta look at it: there's reasons they became dominant in the first place, and those reasons need to disappear before it's easily replaceable (of course additional reasons will pile up the longer the browser stays dominant)
I certainly don't feel like I am the product when I use Wikipedia.
Do you think large corporations will donate to support Chrome developers who get paid at the level of Google employees?
People aren’t willing to donate to support Firefox. It’s funding mostly comes from Google.
> Ignoring the fact that this is not how it works - there are plenty of services where you pay and still are the product
That refutation of their statement is not how logic works. They made a !A -> B statement ("not pay" -> "you are product"). Your statement, ! (A -> !B), which is equivalent to B -> !A is orthogonal to their statement.
The article seems pretty reasonable to me actually. It establishes what a cookie is, then contrasts that with what Chrome is doing, then explains the tradeoffs and Google’s claims, then gives the reader options to make their own choice.
Seems like good journalism to me.
reads like so much sleeper propaganda for The Selfish Ledger style abuses.
I don't think any discussion of the trade-offs between privacy and tracking is complete unless the horrifying abuses of tracking are also discussed, like government contractors spying on people without cause.
The last line of the article for me is different: “We need to revolutionise how we think about our own data and what value it truly holds.” (Emphasis mine)
Which in context:
> Lastly, it’s good to remember nothing truly comes for free. Software costs money to develop. If you’re not paying towards that, then it’s likely you – or your data – are the product. We need to revolutionise how we think about our own data and what value it truly holds.
Is a very clear pro-privacy statement to me. This is our data and is owned by us and we should revolutionize how we think about that.
Online stores can (and do) remind us about this stuff via email. No third-party tracking cookies needed – you're already a customer of theirs. If they want to get in touch, they already know your order history and contact details.
Or, you know, we can add our own reminders to a personal calendar.
The article gives instructions on how to turn this off and concludes with the classic warning about being the product.
At no point does the article claim cookies are required for “good” automation.
Hell yes.
Those benefits don't require us being stalked around our entire online lives: the online store already knows when I bought a toothbrush¹. Unless they are trying to argue that telling every retailer on the planet when I last bought a toothbrush, or other healthcare products, is a good idea?!
Same for the birthday card if I bought one online. This example is even worse: potentially not just tracking my personal information but that of another person too, much like Facebook's “shadow profiles” for people who aren't even using the service themselves.
If I were a millionaire, and still as bitter at the world as I am while currently not being one, I might have a PI follow that writer for a bit, so I can helpfully send reminders, to illustrate how badly ill-conceived this take is…
That’s not a healthy fantasy. The “following” part is especially creepy. There’s a contact the author link on the site. If you care to contact her it’s just a couple clicks away. No reason to hire a stalker.
Why are you so angry at the author and not at the people who actually made Chrome do this?
/s
But; there is now the robot equivalent of a PI stalker in your browser. It's not a person, but it's still reporting all your browser activity. Except for the 'physical human', that seems like a pretty similar analogy, right? Because for me, it's equally creepy.
You should really re-read the article. It does not support the change to Chrome or the tracking that Google does.
I can call out that danger without supporting widespread user tracking.
That’s not an ok thing to say or believe.
1) The author doesn’t support what Google is doing.
2) The author isn’t tracking anyone.
I think that was the point. It's an analogy for what the article is talking about. The behavior of Chrome is legitimately creepy.
I'm not advocating this approach. But it's not entirely off base.
Further this is a pro-privacy article. The author seems to have a good grasp of the situation and has communicated it well to a general audience. It even concludes with how to turn the feature off and a call to reconsider how your data is being used.
But I do understand the temptation.
- The author is defending analogous behavior
- Therefore the author is ok with this behavior
- Therefore the behavior is ok to use on the author
It's not actually ok, but nobody actually did it either. They just made a snarky comment on the internet to make a point, which has a much lower bar than actually doing the thing.
There are better ways to make a point than sharing a fantasy about having someone stalked. It’s a joke until it isn’t.
My reading of the thread is that this is the fundamental presumption of the thread.
I think your differences with the OP go deeper.
> It’s a joke until it isn’t.
My reading wasn't that it was necessarily a joke, but making a point.
Sort of like threatening to put a camera in the bathroom of someone who says they have "nothing to hide" when discussing the patriot act.
It makes the point in a more visceral way than a simple argument ever could, and gets the point across quite well.
Top two readings on my end are that this is either a person who really didn't want to write this article that was ordered to, or someone who is trying to be maximally defensive of google without actually lying (possibly someone with nostalgia for the 2000-2005 era when they were the internet's good guys).
You have simultaneously completely missed and directly stated the point I was trying to make. Yes the following part is creepy, and that is exactly what the author is extolling the benefits of in an online context.
Maybe for you² or I the collection of personal & habit data poses little risk when³ it leaks out. My life is too boring and on the beaten track to have much juicy to hide! But there are people for whom the collection and subsequent leaking of data about their habits could be significantly harmful. I do not trust that this system is safe from un-de-personalisation. And from a more selfish & mercenary PoV, if Google are going to use my device to serve their business plan⁴, they aren't doing it for free.
--
[1] no, it won't, if I was going to learn the lesson I would have done so on one of several past occasions…
[2] I presume
[3] not if, when
[4] by blocking third party cookies in their browser and replacing with a system they control, they would gain an advantage over other ad-tech businesses
> Lastly, it’s good to remember nothing truly comes for free. Software costs money to develop. If you’re not paying towards that, then it’s likely you – or your data – are the product. We need to revolutionise how we think about our own data and what value it truly holds.
You made some edits. It’s strange to me that you seem to be interpreting my position as somehow ok with what Google is doing. I am not ok with that. I don’t think the author of TFA is either.
These things don't change unless someone important becomes a victim, otherwise its just collateral damage.
you only believe that because it was advertised, by the company who is the number one for advertisement, who would have though?
i workedv with JavaScript performance at a top10 alexa site when that was talked about. chrome and firefox (and ie, heh) were always close. but all the chrome promoters focused on the aspects chrome was better... which changed monthly btw. today chrome string concatenation was fast. tomorrow firefox using string array mergers, etc.
anyway, just created an account to point this wrong assumption out, even if it was posted as a joke. and i did have to solve a challenge (captcha) by the very advertising company we are talking about. sigh.
on edit: admittedly this was because I was too lazy to change, but later on that laziness started looking like moral backbone!
And every time I mention this, I get a ton of excuses, from people that should know better, that they can't leave Google. Boo woo.
There might be exceptions, but to the large majority of other lazy tech users, this is on you. Enshittification doesn't happen in a vacuum. You are passive actors to a shittier web.
Chrome is installed by default on the handheld computer system most people use, with AFAIK over 50% market share. Given that unfortunately more and more people are using handheld computers as their main or even only computing device, this is very relevant.
> Everyone that uses Chrome, went out of their way to download it.
Wasn't one of the drivers for Chrome's popularity that it came bundled with other desktop software people downloaded and installed? These people didn't go out of their way to download and install Chrome, that decision was made for them by someone else.
> government should stop people from using their own free will?
I believe those who want government intervention want it on the browser manufacturer side, not on the user's side.
And if that 50% (actually 40% in the US) didn’t have privacy invasive Chrome installed - they would still be running Android which is made by the same company.
Rather, if the authorities were to do anything, they would regulate to redress the imbalance and give back power to users to control how corporations use their data. There is no voluntary solution as it is, and the state says it exists to protect our rights.
I might even be so bold to say it is necessary because advertising is a mental health problem.
Additionally, the monopoly is enforced because of the manipulative brand recognition. Chrome = Google = The Internet in many people’s heads. It is difficult to break this hold without intervention, but if it could be done that would be great.
It’s a poor excuse that most people think Chrome is the internet. When they are connecting to the internet do you really think they think they are connecting to Google?
a nod to a fragment of well known manifesto. The sooner we ban all forms of such tracking the better we will be as society.
Upvoted, of course. You summed up everything we have to say about it in just two words, in perhaps the best possible way.
If not, I don’t think the comment is appropriate.
i think it's an absolutely disgusting invasion of supposedly personal communication spaces. My ex "works" (cold messaging people on linkedin) for a startup that does this and i genuinely don't understand how otherwise lovely amazing people can throw their morals under the bus like that and willingly dedicate 40+ hours of their lives week after week to making the world a shittier place.
But bad actors are a much harder problem than computer vision or AI or recommendation engines or just about anything else non-adversarial. It's why discovering climate change 50 years ago hasn't led to a solution since. It's why we can't just educate people out of misconceptions, we have to actively fight against people trying to keep them wrong and make them wronger (and it's why institutions have lost so much trust that this becomes possible).
The only defense against this is virtuous people in power, but our system has done an incredible job - somewhat intentionally - of making sure that they aren't. Investors aren't lining up to support someone who'll make 10% less profit to avoid some horrible externality.