this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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It’s a little ridiculous how people misunderstand this issue. This is literally to do away with the extremely privacy-invasive tracking that has been done using cookies and telemetry for years. You will be tracked less in Chrome than you did before, because the browser will hand off less information to sites you visit and there will be a degree of randomisation. This is to get rid of cookies soon, and to randomise the information a site gets when you visit instead of the whole deal.
It is, of course, more personalised than blocking all cookies and randomising telemetry, but if you were doing that, I expect you weren’t using Chrome to begin with. Using a Chrome browser with Topics is inherently more privacy-forward than using Chrome as it has been so far. Honestly, I hope that the deprecation of cookies will even help *Fox users down the lines as they become irrelevant to a large part of the web users.
If you want a solid explanation of what is actually happening with Topics, Security Now episode 935 explains the details. The transcript dives into Topics on page 9, explains the technicalities on page 12 and if you just want the conclusion, you can skip to the penultimate page and read the last few paragraphs in here: https://www.grc.com/sn/sn-935-notes.pdf (you can listen as well if you’d rather.)
Unlike Web Integrity Protection this is a reasonable step in the right direction. Can it break down the line? Sure. But then we’re back at where we were. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to use Firefox and Safari and hope that this will eventually help stop the cookie banner nightmare on those browsers as well (even if the cookies do nothing.)
People aren't misunderstanding the issue. Third party cookie support is being dropped by all browsers. Chrome is also dropping them, but replacing them with topics. Sure, topics is less invasive than third party cookies, but it is still more invasive than the obvious user friendly approach of not having an invasive tracker built into your browser. No other major browser vendor is considering supporting topics. So they're doing an objectively user unfriendly thing here. This is the shit that happens when the world's largest internet advertising company also controls the browser.
I don’t disagree as such, and I won’t use Chrome, but objectively it is better than what we had in Chrome. While many of us refuse/block ads/tracking completely, many users will now have better privacy with ads that are not micro-targeted on their individual but more broadly targeted with a generalised interest area that varies per visit and adjusts over time to keep it relevant.
IF a user doesn’t disable ads completely, this seems a decent way to make the ads somewhat relevant to the user without the horrible tracking methods in use today. Objectively that’s a better state than seeing ads for something completely irrelevant to the user. Again, this is not relevant for most of us in here, and I sincerely hope most of us don’t use a Chrome-based browser to begin with, but for the average internet user, for whom this is designed, I’d argue it’s a net positive.
It's because ANY COMMERCIAL TRACKING AT ALL is unacceptable!
Chrome is trying to have it's cake and eat it too by removing 3rd party cookies and baking in another tracking methodology anyways.
The User Has Spoken and we DEMAND that there be NO TRACKING! The browser devs are complying with that demand in various ways to various degrees.
Firefox complies with this demand openly and honestly. Third party cookies are not a thing much anymore and the browser actively tries to punish companies who try to do it anyways; while also allowing us to turn to other plugin developers to further punish companies who try to aggressively invade our privacy.
Google Chrome, on the other hand, complies very maliciously because it's made by one of those companies who are trying to track us anyways. It removes third party cookies on the one hand and on the other hand tries to introduce other tracking technologies and WebDRM while also trying to severely curtail browser plugins that we choose to install to assert our rights to privacy our way.
You can't tell me that's not an evil dick move on the part of Google and the Chrome team. Chrome needs to clean up it's act and the development team of Chromium needs to forcefully eject it's Google developers and find new ones to retake the internet.
Google developers cannot be trusted not to put the interests of Google first; it's literally what they're paid to do.
See my other post in this thread for more nuance, but you sound like you shouldn’t be using Chrome in the first place (and maybe you don’t?) I feel the same way personally about browsing and use software accordingly. It is, however, still an improvement for the average Chrome user who is not tech savvy and won’t be using ad-blocking anyway (brrr - imagine using the web like that).
Please. Stop defending Chrome. It needs to do way better than what it is doing currently; which is utterly disrespectful and malicious to all users.
It’s a shitty browser. Wouldn’t use it myself. That doesn’t mean that this isn’t an improvement on what was there before. The world isn’t black and white - and privacy conscious people stay away from Chrome.
Stop defending the indefensible.
Stop repeating the inane and misunderstood.
In addition, there seems to be a sentiment that there should be no targeted ads altogether. To be honest I'm not sure how this looks in practice. I think it's pretty obvious that no targeted ads mean fewer sales and therefore less revenue. Google has margins that could be dug into, fine. However this revenue is also shared by the open web that's funded by ads. It's also shared by small businesses that advertise. Generally those two groups have less margin to spare. How does the open web look like in this kind of status quo? How about local economies where the actual businesses who advertise operate? Ads on the web aren't some small thing that is kind of up in the air, separate from "the real economy" anymore. 🤔
Besides all of that, targeted ads help people find stuff. Web ads used to be terribly useless in the 2000s. Over time they actually got pretty useful for me. Over the years I've found many products that I had no clue about as well as promos via well targeted ads. I don't enjoy ads, but some of the things I use and love came from them. I definitely don't want to go back to the useless ad shit show landscape of the earlier internet.
An ad-free web is definitely a pipe dream. But a targeted ad-free web should be a simple option available to users. I'd guess that the majority of the public doesn't care too much about being tracked, and may even appreciate having their relevant interests targeted so that they see an ad that is more interesting to them. The problem is that, for those of us who don't want to be targeted, there is no simple way to disable that. Companies have baked their ad targeting directly into the functionality of their platforms so it's incredibly difficult to avoid targeted ads if you still want to use the most popular sites. I think this is the reality that is unacceptable.
Every browser should have a simple toggle to enable targeted ads and it should be every site should respect this. I'm not super educated on Google's Topics solution, but maybe the step away from cookies could theoretically support that kind of reality. I don't think Google is going to lead the charge on that kind of change, but we certainly need to get away from cookies somehow.
It is only arguably better for Google Chrome because it is one of the worst browsers for tracking at the moment. Even Edge is probably better ironically. Personally I think it is a false decision and false logic. You can just get rid of the the tracking features like other browsers, no new feature needed. Google only has this option because frankly too many people have chosen go give google that power for whatever reason.
Frankly what the web needs is a micropayment system and this micropayment system should not go through Google or the Ad people. You do not see Google proposing this. Yes they had a beta program, but it was through them and you had to allow tracking to use it. So not a real solution.