Topics essentially works like this: rather than using cookies to track people around the web and figure out their interests from the sites they visit and the apps they use, websites can ask Chrome directly, via its Topics JavaScript API, what sort of things the user is interested in, and then display ads based on that. Chrome picks these topics of interest from studying the user’s browser history.
Isn’t this completely immoral? They are literally stealing the users private browsing history and uses it to boost their own profits.
Very apt username.
Anything would be an improvement over using stock Chrome at this poing… wow
the google is evil
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This is incorrect. A user who uses chrome but uses another search engine and blocks cookies and tracking scripts is not providing Google with information about what they are doing online.
With the topics api, Google reads your actual browsing history which is incredibly private information that they have no right to look at whatsoever.
I don’t know what world you are living in when you think Google wants to desperately stop third common cookies and other means of tracking - Google is an ad company!
The internet not wanting to pay for Google services sounds like a Google problem, not a problem for the users. Google doesn’t have some universal right to exist and be preditory to it’s users.
If they can’t sell their services, they should get off the internet instead of surviving by invading their users privacy and offering “free” services. Fuck Google.
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To be fair, they immediately give the option to disable it.
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So what has to happen for the general population to move away from chrome/chromium?
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Edge is a chromium browser, too. It has been for some time now.
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Nothing. It’s only the tin-foil hatters that care about privacy because the normal people have nothing to hide.
Post your last 100 transactions?
Nah. Am good. You people can’t read sarcasm or what …
Sarcasm in person generally comes with a distinctive tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language that are lacking in text-only communication. If people know you well enough in a text chat, they can often make assumptions about your seriousness based on what they know of your beliefs, but we are on an anonymous message board here. The people here have no experience with whether or not you are naive or a jokester or seriously confused. There’s a reason it became standard to mark sarcasm on reddit with /s, it is the simplest replacement for the missing tone and body language context that would go along with a statement if we were communicating face to face.
Sarcasm can also just be common sense but apparently humor isn’t that common here.
Lol. Whatever floats your boat buddy.
They’re not stealing browser history. The site requests a list of topics and Chrome parses them based on the local history and returns a list of topics.
It’s more secure and private than third party cookies.
The technique they use does not really change to the issue.
It’s also not necessarily more secure than third party cookies like you claim? You can refuse those cookies and not all website use them, while all website ends up in browsing history.
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Am all for this move if it makes Google drop third-party cookies tomorrow.
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They have been planning to drop 3rd party cookies since 2021 with a deadline for EOY 2023 being pushed to EOY 2024.
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