The absolute most insidious thing about this isn’t the technology at use here. It’s the complete and utter normalization of ads. Google doesn’t even consider a world where ads don’t exist, they’re pushing the narrative that they are a normal aspect of life, and they’re offering to help make that more relevant to everyday users. They’re normalizing ads in front of your eyeballs 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
Christ I hate Google.
Heading towards a very enjoyable and economically sustainable future where the advertising industry is somehow bigger than the goods and services industries that supposedly need its services. But before I get into that, speaking of goods and services, this comment is sponsored by OpeRaid Shadow VPN, the only energy drink/razor blade delivery service for Pro Gamers…
For real though, we must have reached Peak Ad at some point, or at least we’re deep into the realm of diminishing returns. This can’t go on forever, right? I mean there’s a finite number of things that need to be advertised and a finite number of people with a finite amount of time and patience to look at ads. How long until it all collapses?
The market can remain irrational for longer than you and I can remain
solventsane.As long as companies can post chum ads that look like news articles but are completely false or imply nasty false things about a celebrity, there will be ads.
I’m always astounded by how shit internet ads are. Stuff that wouldn’t have passed muster in the Weekly World News.
I drank my verification can but i can’t find the continue button.
Yeah, die a hero or live long enough to become the evil mastermind…
I used to love google, way back when they used that “do not evil”. Times have changed.
I like how the assumption seems to be that the thing users object to about “websites track your browsing history around the web in order to show you targeted ads” is… the “websites” part
holy fuck, that’s such a good description of the shitty marketing tactic google is trying here. they’re shifting focus away from the awful shit they’re doing more of to something that doesn’t matter
“Chrome is finding new ways to increase tracking and keep you even if you want to leave. Chrome also steals your interests and prevents you from managing them. Then, sites you visit can buy your interests from Chrome and force feeds you ads.”
There I fixed it.
When I worked in agencies you could pick the suits that had lost touch with reality by how much they seemed to believe that targeted ads are useful enough to be some kind of public service. Now google use the same rhetoric to justify user tracking
on the engineering side, I keep having to turn down executive feature requests with “this is functionally indistinguishable from malware”
Sites you visit can ask Chrome for your interests to show you ads.
Nifty. Let’s ask what my browser has to offer instead (Firefox + uBlock Origin).
Sites can not show you ads.
Hmm that’s a tough choice hmm.
But think of all the great ads you’re missing out on!
WEI: “Hold my beer.”
I always tell my kids, as a consumer, I am SO grateful to have been better served by more relevant ads.
How else would you have known about products you already bought a few days prior? 🤣
I’m so glad they remind me so I don’t forget and accidentally buy them again!
Yes! The thing I love most about browsing without adblock is seeing endless ads for tech conferences about programming languages I don’t know, on platforms I don’t use, held on continents where I don’t live. I especially love the culty business lingo they use for pitching these conferences at me. No I’m not “obsessed” with anything my job involves and I’m frankly worried for anyone who is.
Now see you’ve got it all wrong. This solves all your problems: Google knows what you do, where you live, and where you go, so they’ll always show you ads for relevant conferences with the most reasonable adjusted prices.
I see ads for all the relevant conferences even without seeing any ads.
When I’m logged in the youtube app I get TV ads for women’s hair products. I am a bald guy.
STOP USING CHROME!
Although Chrome needs to be ditched, few of the features of it are yet to be implemented into other browsers such as copying images to clipboard and dragging & dropping text from one app to another.
Idk why other browsers are not keeping up or idk if these are Chrome exclusive features.
I copy and drag images and text all the time between Firefox and other programs.
I was talking about Chrome Android as the OP post is a screenshot of it
O yes, smartphone applications have been fucked for a while. It’s one of the reasons I don’t like to use my phone as a computer.
I was talking about Chrome
firefox has everything, and if you still want spyware, just use edge at that point.
I was talking about Chrome Android as the OP post is a screenshot of it
oh ok then yes, most mobile browsers still miss some features.
… did you forget this “/s” ?
I was talking about Chrome Android as the OP post is a screenshot of it
I recently switched entirely to Firefox and have yet to find a feature that I miss from Chrome that Firefox doesn’t have.
Do you use Twitch? I’m interested in Firefox but twitch for me is pretty problematic, it seems to have a lot of issues with remaining connected to twitch chat.
Oh also twitch clips and twitch vods are both extremely broken in Firefox and have been that way for years 😓
Another big missing Firefox feature is the ability to just right click a page and translate. I use this all the time in chrome.
Also I really dislike how Firefox has this weird keyboard shortcut that I don’t think can be disabled: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1425650 it’s been a while since Ive looked around for this issue and it seems some people have a workaround so I should try that. But this bug is incredibly frustrating for me whenever I use Firefox.
I use twitch actively and faced some video playback issues once. Other than that it has been a smooth experience for me in live streams and VODs.
Dang, yeah I keep trying to come back to Firefox and I think I could manage it outside of the things above.
Yes but I just use the PurpleTV Android app
I was talking about Chrome Android as the OP post is a screenshot of it
Google already has your browsing data if you use chrome, whether you agree to this or not. stop using chrome.
I think that this actually at least appears to be a good step from google.
Third parties no longer need to know who you are. As i understand it, chrome can directly deliver only the necessary information just when it is needed. No external saving of data required.
Also: get over it. Most of the internet works, because people learn of products and then buy them. Personalized ads are sent to show people things, which they specifically might be interested in. People want to sell products and solely this allows many websites you probably like to use, to exist in the first place.
No one here is inherently evil or owns you, because they can show you relevant marketing.
- they literally sell browsing data for pennies
- nah, no thanks
Also: get over it. Most of the internet works, because people learn of products and then buy them.
holy fuck I’m so sorry you think this is it, that this broke-ass business model is all that ever existed for the internet, that you’ve never experienced the good bits that used to be relatively plentiful but are now rare
…it’s also kind of fucking stupid to post an opinion like this on the fediverse of all places
it’s also kind of fucking stupid to post an opinion like this on the fediverse of all places
this is the best mic drop savagery I’ve read in a while. There is no coming back from it.
Third parties no longer need to know who you are. As i understand it, chrome can directly deliver only the necessary information just when it is needed. No external saving of data required.
This isn’t better at all. Sure, there are fewer parties that collect the data, but that just means only google can sell access to it, which gives google a near monopoly. This is only good if you think Google deserves more power and influence.
Also: get over it. Most of the internet works, because people learn of products and then buy them.
Nice. “The internet only works if you let them manipulate you with your private info” is quite the take, especially when you’re on a website that works without it. Next you’ll say, “ads might work on you, but i’m just built different”.
Next you’ll say, “ads might work on you, but i’m just built different”.
I am almost certain that that user believes exactly that, and pairs it with “if you don’t like (bad thing company does) just don’t buy from (bad company). Vote with your wallet. Simple.” as a thought terminating cliche that ignores systemic harm, monopoly tendencies, and lobbying power.
The Internet is not for capitalists. It has been co-opted.
Also: get over it.
It’s not like marketing has to be an essential part of the browsing experience, either.
How would the interest break without ads? I can’t see that happening.
solely this allows many websites you probably like to use, to exist in the first place.
I’m used to loss. Bring it on.
but how will we survive without our favorite passionless low-quality content designed to drive ad impressions with no other goal in mind
Oh no, what if some of my favourite
CONTENT CREATORSweren’t able toCREATE CONTENTas a profession for the lack of advertising revenue. We might regress back to the barbaric days of 2009!
In the spirit of rationalism I’m going to invent terminology for something that probably already has better terminology, and spout a bunch of unsubstantiated stuff. Ads would be fine if advertising campaigns were zeroth order only, by which i mean, purely to publicise products with no effort to “sell” you on something. First order they try convince you to buy something, without lying. Second order is where they begin lying by omission, third order is when they begin outright lying. Higher orders are increasingly kafkaesque/dystopian. E.g.:
- any publicity stunt
- Influencing ideas about identity to sell a product, i.e. real men eat meat, dolls are for girls, etc.
- manipulating your personal ethics to launder the ethics of a company, e.g. an oil company urging an individual to go green so that the oil company doesn’t have to
- legal racketeering, i.e. lobbying for regulatory measures that force people to buy something
- any participation in a political campaign
The list goes on. As advertising has continued and the profession has been refined, the overton window of what was considered in good taste has shifted to include these increasingly perverse strategems.
Everything big tech has done with advertising just adds to the list. They’ve broken the window completely. To use a term from our old pal Yud, the “inscrutable matrices” that make up their personalisation algorithms might show you more relevant content alongside ads, but they will also trigger a positive feedback loop radicalising you into one ideology or another. See: facebook q-pilling middle america.
Ah yes, Google the benevolent gatekeeper to my user interest metrics, surely not to sell them to anyone who is willing to pay the smallest pittance upon mere request.
and the state. don’t forget they also sell this data to law enforcement and the defense agencies. even if you believe you have nothing to hide, this should worry you because LE can and will cherry pick the data to manufacture a case against you if the whim suits them - given adequate quantities of data, you can reach almost any conclusion you want if you put on strong blinders and interpret only the convenient subset.
some times wonder if it’s worth building a service where someone pays a pittance as a test fee and then gets presented with whatever you can get together on them via RTB ads
because just showing someone the amount of data carried in an RTB packet is too disconnected from reality (which gets closer to “the bidder probably has your house geolocated just from the ad data on that one add the android app shoved in your face without warning”
(of course, the RTB houses would likely want to kill such a service because it would show just how much shit they tie together)
Example how even with much criticism Google is going to do their ideas anyway.
This year so far I’ve deleted Reddit, twitter and now google.
go for fucking broke and get rid of windows before it goes SaaS. it’s less painful than it sounds because daily driving linux will break your brain’s ability to feel pain
In the caverns of systemd, where the audio pulses and you are surrounded by the mad scribings of a thousand journals; you will lose yourself, and find something else. You will come back both more, and less.
i tried using windows for a week when i was without my own laptop and had to borrow the loved one’s spare gaming rig. even just living in firefox, i hate windows with the fire of a thousand suns. and this was a relatively well behaved win10.
much like vampirism, daily driving Linux makes exposure to windows feel like turning to ash in the rays of an uncaring but aggressively annoying sun (the sun is also siphoning your data)
My wife uses windows and sometimes I dual boot it to play games with her.
She laughs at how rapidly I transform into a raging boomer but I forgive her for she does not know.
Linux has problems but windows is just fucked up. The moment you want to do anything outside the lines it becomes an utter horror show. no univeral interface (I’m stupid, you can tell by my posts, so I just learn CLI and do everything that way), no nice consistent model like “everything is a file”, no scripting language everything respects. It’s insane and baffling.
I know Microsoft has brilliant people working for them so windows is inexplicable
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the least infuriating way I’ve found to use windows is in a gaming VM with a dedicated GPU where if windows decides it needs to update, reboot, or crash my actual work in Linux won’t be impacted
increasingly, running games and apps in straight Proton is a better option in general though. both options give me slightly better performance than raw windows, cause the gaming VM has very good compatibility due to it mimicking reference hardware, and Proton implements the windows API on top of a higher performance kernel with none of the shit parts of windows slowing it down
and all it costs you is your sanity
I just really want to be able to play racing sims in Proton without them breaking. That seems to be one of the last frontiers for me to give up Windows entirely.
if you’d like I can dig up the tutorials I used to set up the gaming VM I use — it’s very durable (under NixOS) with maybe one breakage in the ~3 years I’ve been using it, it uses a dedicated graphics card so performance is excellent, and there’s a number of ways to attach input devices and audio so that latency isn’t an issue
don’t worry about losing yourself though - everything defaults to ext4 and the ubuntu devs have pinkypromised that it’s no longer totally awful dogshit that you regretfully notice only after some time and you’ve loaded significant data onto the system
what’s wrong with ext4? I’m stupid and use it for everything. Should I not?
it’s fine and I use it for extremely performance-focused (see: linux gaming) and embedded systems, but LVM+ext4 is generally a better idea and I use ZFS for systems where extreme reliability and storage flexibility are important (so just my NAS machine really)
it irks me that linux-zfs still has no good native encryption outcome. I had to do zfs on multiple mdraid mirrors, but ugh. that you directly lose out on the zfs insight into block device health there… big sad
thanks. I am setting up a NAS atm so will use your opinion as a cue for further reading
my response is halfway partly a shitpost (but only very partly)
if you’re a general user, it’s probably fine. if you’re someone who cares about specific properties of things, it’s probably less than ideal and something else would suit you better - but you’d probably already know that
some details: ext2 and ext3 had a lot of journal-damage/restoration issues, along with fairly severe density issues over much longer term use. the design characteristics also didn’t lend itself well to higher performance (and this started showing a lot as the SSD age came around). ext4 has improved somewhat on the first and third parts, and soooorta has dealt with the second if you squint
I haven’t used windoze since the 1990s
A thought I had a while back with google (and any other tech company I guess) with the same emotion that Rorschach has just before Dr. Manhattan disintegrates him: if they’ve already won, aka achieved virtual dominance over how we experience the web, then fine. Fucking break me with your personalised ads. Show me deep cut references from my personal life as emotional leverage. Orchestrate my nightmares with jingles. Show me the logical end of advertising. Just fucking end the human experience entirely since you’ve monetised all our dignity away anyway. Anything less than that is just an insult to my ability to hope.
Anyway yeah I hate this. Big ick
Google Chrome runs like constipation on android
I wouldn’t mind filling out a survey for this type of stuff. Then I only tell them and they only know what I want them to. But they want the whole hand not the finger.
Plus I wouldn’t see the ads anyways. Only reason why I even forward that option, it’s that I know I can (still) sidestep the important part.
Your benevolent techbro innovators are offering to solve a problem that they caused! AGAIN!
