Google enables advertisers a look into your browsing history…
My ad " you like thick women, Stoicism and band tees? well do we have a goth girl for you, limited item sold, not responsible for broken car windows or torched house, all purchases are final.
Someone needs to make an extension that googles random stuff all the time and floods ones history with so much background noise that the history becomes useless.
I recommend using ‘Adnauseam’ for Firefox.
It hides ads in addition to clicking them. This generates revenue for the site and also obscures your digital footprint.
That would be an ecological disaster (figuratively, but still), since all those requests and processor cycles have a cost
Any more than regular multiplayer games? No?
Are you proposing to replace multiplayer games with random web requests ?
No. How hard can it be to understand it’s a comparison of total load?
How hard can it be to converse nonviolently ?
it would not replace multiplayer games. it would add to the load. strawman moot point.
What I mean is that the relative resources use is insignificant
What’s the watts-per-search of google?
Or, you know, just don’t use Chrome or Google!
This already exists btw
Its like Google loves to give me reasons to stop using their products.
You’re likely an early adopter. They needed you for a good long while but now they definitely don’t and they’re happy to show their true colors.
Interesting tidbit: I’ve been watching “the big bang theory” a lot these past few weeks on my own hosted jellyfin install.
I don’t use google search anywhere, I don’t type tbbt anywhere. Yet, on my Android phone I have this obligatory Google news thing when I swipe left (HATE that) and all of the sudden that thing got chock full of chatgpt written TBBT articles… I don’t really go there (usually end up there by accident swiping left once too many) and I don’t read those articles but it really obviously switched to TBBT articles when I switched to watching TBBT.
This really kinda freaks me out and makes me wonder WTF more google is monitoring. I use a Google Chromecast, I guess google monitors that?
That and your phone’s microphone and other sensors.
You can buy phones from NitroKey (the company that makes secure, open-source security keys) that have the microphone and sensors physically removed.
Not using Google Assistant here
No they don’t. Unless you talking to Google assistant.
Nope, google home assistant thingy still listens and saves things you talk about. My wife and I occasionally have conversations, and the next time she uses her android phone, it shows her ads for whatever it ismwenwere talking about. When this happens, her phone isn’t in the room, though I’m sure that may also listen.
The smart speakers are a privacy nightmare, but on your phone, random apps cannot access your microphone without your knowledge or control, excluding straight up malware. There’s a million anecdotes like yours on social media and none of them have held up to rigorous testing.
The fact is, most people don’t realize how much of their thoughts one way or another are reflected in their digital lives, nor how good google’s algorithms are. And there’s also things like the frequency illusion etc.
Which phone do you have? I’ve been able to disable that “swipe left to access Google” thing on every Google Pixel I’ve ever owned. Just long-press your home screen and go to home settings and disable it.
OnePlus 8T. One day they pushed an update that removed the option to disable it. Obviously they have a contract with Google so that they profit from this, and it sucks .
When I have some time I might reinstall some new OS on it that removes all that crap
Play Services track you.
Use GrapheneOS without Play Spyware services.
Can I still install all software? I need my banks software, for example. If I can’t install that’s then my phone is useless
Unlike other ROMs like CalyxOS, GrapheneOS ships the actual Google Play services and Google Services Framework, but they’re sandboxed so they can’t spy on you. Whether your banking app works, depends on the SafetyNet requirement it has. If it requires full integrity, it unfortunately won’t work on any system that is not whitelisted by Google. If basic SafetyNet integrity is enough for the app, it will work on GrapheneOS. You can google (or duckduckgo) your banks name and “GrapheneOS”, and you may find posts by other people who tried it out.
Edit regarding software in general: When you install Sandboxed Play Services, you also get the Play Store which you can use to install apps. You can also use the Aurora Store, an anonymous front-end for the Play Store. There is also F-Droid, which offers FOSS alternatives to most applications.
Edit 2: I found this post over on PrivSec which has a list of apps and details on whether they work
i suggest block play services in your main profile and let it be enabled for some apps in your work profile. via shelter app.
Or disable/remove them. Don’t even need root for that. There’s always microg if an app really needs them.
thats an awesome idea! much thanks for the info!
personal insight preinstall (for ppl reading this):
- it is always better to use fdroid apps whenever possible.
i had tried mcroG once upon a time(many years ago). it didnt work for me.
possible reasons:- project may have been less mature than it is today.
- other. (see below)
installation:
https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Installation “Install GmsCore.apk” , “Install GsfProxy.apk”
“Please review the Prerequisites and Helpful Information before starting installation.”https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Prerequisites
“Your System needs to support signature spoofing, see Signature Spoofing” , “[You need a ROM that supports signature spoofing.]”conclusion:
-need to follow the specific installation instructions.- according to the docs… u need a custom rom(distro ie lineageOS on a supported device.)
https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/
Well that’s what to expect from a web browser created by an advertising company.
That’s what people don’t understand. Google’s actual customers are advertisers, just like with broadcast television. The deal you make with Google is that they’ll give you all sorts of “free” services and software, and in return, you’ll see ads.
And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that model. You get what you want, Google gets what they want, and advertisers pay for it all in the hopes that you’ll like whatever they’re selling and buy it.
You can always stop using free services and pay for them directly instead, cutting the advertisers out. Or use free services from non-profits and open-source software.
But the problem is that it’s also in Google’s best interests to make that as difficult as possible. To make avoiding their data-consumption damn near impossible. Collecting, comparing, collating, and indexing data is literally what they’re the best in the world at. And they have their methods of getting it everywhere.
A broadcaster can’t stop you from turning off the TV or muting it during ads. If they could, they certainly would. (Thanks, laissez-faire capitalism!) But they’re not serving the ads AND providing the TV itself.
Google is both the broadcaster and the TV manufacturer in this analogy. They’re saying, “Here’s a free TV. Isn’t it nice? And it’ll help us give you extremely targeted and personalized ads. Hope you don’t mind that we’ve made it hard to mute, and the TV never actually turns all the way off. And sure, it’s got a camera and microphone, but what did you expect? It’s free!”
Firefox
Got this today, I have to use chrome for a couple things every month, and they conveniently turned on all their tracking and ads and bullshit. Had to turn all that crap off again. Not that they’d glean any useful information from my paltry chrome usage, but it still pisses me off.
Try Ungoogled Chromium!
Better yet, firefox
Doesn’t help if they absolutely need to access something that “requires” Chromium. Which from their comment seems to be the case.
Unless you want to mess with user agent switcher but even that doesn’t always work if it’s relying on Chromium’s nonstandard APIs, or if they fingerprint your browser and use that to block non-Chromium clients (which some websites actually do for some asinine reason).
Yeah I know, I’m just pushing.
Even better, LibreWolf
Firefox
In Chrome, start at the three dots in the upper-right corner and go to Settings > Privacy and Security > Ad privacy. (Or just type chrome://settings/adPrivacy into your address field.) The ad privacy page lets you turn off Chrome’s targeted ads.
As per The Verge
Fucking hell I am sick of having to switch browsers every few years.
every day I’m glad I switched to firefox
I may be cursed but I have never experienced any slowdown with Firefox. I never noticed the appeal of Chrome, but have I only used it twice in my life…
I use a macbook for work. Chrome is ridiculously buggy and sucking every bit of memory. Firefox is almost as bad. Chrome is really bad when using more than 1 tab. Firefox has rendering issues with jira and git. Chrome compelling locks up when using meet, Firefox is slightly better.
In my opinion all browsers have sucked since 2015. Slow, unresponsive, rendering issues, resource hogs. Overall the browser experience has led me to use the internet less and less. It is not the privacy, it is the basic functionality is not working consistently.
Damn, how old is that MacBook? I think you should ask for a hardware upgrade, because both Chromium based browsers and Firefox don’t use too much resources and run smoothly on the newer models. I can’t say that Chrome isn’t buggy, as I barely use it, but I have never encountered a Firefox bug on any of my devices.
Doesn’t every browser on Apple hardware use Safari for rendering?
On iOS and iPadOS they do but not on MacOS to my knowledge
macOS is a desktop OS. It has a terminal, it lets you download that sketchy .app file from a random website, and it allows browsers to use their own engines. So, not too different from Windows or Linux.
You are correct for iOS and iPadOS though. They must use the WebKit rendering engine. All browsers on those are just Safari reskins.
So it’s just an iOS thing, got it.
Still weird, I truly yearn for the Linux Phone
It works really well on mobile, that’s just about all the appeal I can find. Some sites are a bit glitchy on Firefox, but it’s really rare. I keep it around for those occasions. On PC it’s just Firefox and Edge (cuz work).
Firefox felt pretty bloated for me back in 2005-2010 or so, they have greatly improved it though and I haven’t noticed a difference in performance on either Chrome or Firefox.
My company still demands I use Chrome/Edge at work.
At work I honestly don’t care because I’m to 99% only using company internal websites which don’t have any ads on them anyway.
internal websites which don’t have any ads on them
I’m sure Chrome could serve you some anyway.
Use a user agent spoofer like chameleon
So use Edge. I don’t think Microsoft is doing this bullshit.
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Every day a new article comes out that slowly convinces me to switch. Chrome’s profile switcher was light years ahead of Firefox last I checked, but I’m going to have to check again and see if that’s still the case and if so, what I can do to cope.
Not sure of your use case but Firefox container tabs seem worlds better if you ask me.
I don’t know of any other browser that has the temporary container notion that FF has.
I’ll have to check, a cursory look at the documentation definitely makes them seem viable. Those definitely weren’t a thing last I checked lol. As for the use case, I have a profile for job 1, 2, personal, and personal 2 (2 being a separate Google account for it’s collaborative stuff).
For the most part it should do the trick. I dislike the branding for Mozilla VPN, but I see in the screenshots I can set custom proxy settings which will be nice.
As one of my profiles has a unique set of bookmarks and unique extensions, I’d probably be able to use the containers to substitute what I’m using 3 profiles for right now, and keep a separate profile for the job with unique extensions.
Thanks! Will definitely start migrating stuff over and seeing how it is. If I can still self host the sync backend I’ll do that as well.
DOIT
And that’s why I will continue to use Chrome only for work. Yuck.
At least at my workplace they let us choose to use Firefox or Edge. It’s an official ICT policy that Chrome is explicitly banned from the network as it poses a data breach security risk. They pay Microsoft so there’s a legal venue to pounce them if anything goes wrong, but with Alphabet is like dealing with an alien monolith, they take your money, your data, your sanity and don’t even bother to return your mails when you need support.
Alas, we do everything on Google because we’re using Classroom, Drive, and their office suite. Since I’m already having to the use Google for everything, I just use Chrome for everything work-related.
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Glad I switched to firefox when it became apparent google wants to take away control to shove more ads in our faces.
Yet the simps still won’t use Firefox
I feel like people in general give google too big of a pass all the time. I feel like I read apple hate every second while people somehow distinguish android from google.
Ikr? Google openly became the cartoonishly evil overlord, so much so it basically entered pop culture as such (Meta, Apple, MS, Amazon, etc also all the same).
And installing either Firefox or Chrome is exactly the same for the user, usage too. But no, let the poor megacorp have some more data so they can sell us some more direct ads and even more indirect ads that aren’t even labeled as such (yet Alphabet profits from that) … and become even more powerful influencing everyones lives, legislation, etc
I hated being the go-to guy for tech support in my family, but at least I get to jam open sauce things everywhere. They are never happy with any changes, but after a few days nobody remembers Microsoft & co, so everyone is really happy with things like Linux, Firefox (mobile too!), LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Signal, FairEmail & other open android apps, etc
Every bit helps. Nicely done friend!
But they have a great excuse tho! Something about vertical tabs! Fuck privacy when vertical tabs are at stake!!
Vertical tabs are an ABOMINATION!
Damn advertisers are finally gonna realize how fucking lonely I am is keeping me from being a better consumer and has me resenting capitalism and they’ll work to change my sad life, right? Privatize the profits, socialize the losses, isolate the losers. Got it.
finally gonna realize how fucking lonely I am
I don’t know, have you tried checking out the hot singles in your area? /s
pay $49.99 a month and you’re guaranteed to speak to at least 1 bot as soon as your subscription expires.
