I just mentioned that because google drive links are one of the very few things I’m opening in chrome - and they’re the only site where I need a 3rd party cookie exemption for.
Interesting that they’ll make it a user choice. Who would answer yes?
On 22 July 2024, Google announced that it is changing its approach to Privacy Sandbox. Instead of removing third-party cookies from Chrome, it will be introducing a user-choice prompt, which will allow users to choose whether to retain third party cookies.
I’d imagine that making it a user choice gets around some of the regulatory hurdles in some way. I can see them making a popup in the future to not use third-party cookies anymore (or partition per site them like Firefox does) but then they can say that it’s not Google making these changes, it’s the user making that choice. If you’re right that there’s few that would answer yes, then it gets them the same effective result for most users without being seen to force a change on their competitors in the ad industry.
What’s the UK CMA going to do, argue that users shouldn’t be given choices about how they are tracked or how their own browser operates?
Google worked on Privacy Sandbox/Topics API/FLoC for at least five years, and it couldn’t get something that advertisers, regulators, and users could all agree on, so it’s just falling back to the thing that worked (but has next to zero privacy protections). Sigh.
Also a reminder that accepting an alternative tracking method is likely to just end up with 2 different ways to track you rather than one slightly less invasive one.
Google never had any intention whatsoever of prioritising your privacy over their advertising revenue. This technology was 100% designed to shut other operators out of the tracking and advertising market and 0% to reduce their ability to track you and advertise to you. Never in a million years were they going to spend a lot of time, effort and money destroying the source of their money. Hobble competitors, yes. Hobble themselves? Never. Not even a little bit.
This is your daily reminder that Firefox and its derivatives exist and should be used wherever possible if you care about Google not having a monopoly over the internet. There’s even a Firefox-based version of Discord called Datcord.
I just uninstalled Firefox yesterday after it came out that they are collecting user data by default. If I’m going to be tracked either way, I might as well use the browser that’s actually supported on sites I use so I don’t have to keep ignoring the “Firefox is not supported and some features may not work” warnings 5x a day.
Absolutely. If you think you can switch when chrome will be completely hostile it will be too late.
The reason they are trying those things in chrome is because the market share of Firefox is currently low. They are counting that you won’t have the option to run Firefox anymore, because sites will stop supporting it. Don’t let that happen.
Also, Firefox is in a tough situation where they have to purposefully shoot themselves in the foot, because their builtin tracking protection means Firefox usually doesn’t show up in a lot of browser usage stats.
If you use a third-party analytics service such as Google Analytics, as almost all serious parties do (with their nice dashboards and reports), then you’ll notice Firefox is severely underrepresented because the request never reaches Google
I didn’t think about it, though if that makes it harder to track it (can’t they just check the user agent?) could that actually be good, as the sites will never know exactly how many users they will lose, so might be more hesitant to pull the trigger?
Too late. Lumen5 crashes on Firefox. Google Cloud Console barely loads. I was a Firefox user for YEARS but finally had to uninstall this week. The amount of “Firefox is not supported” warnings and weird issues I was running into every day was getting a tad ridiculous.
I doubt Firefox will deprecate third-party cookies is Chrome won’t. And now Firefox has included literally ad tracking component into the browser and enabled it for all users by default.
facepalm it’s not an “ad tracking component”, it’s a test of a new API that, if adopted, will let sites opt in to a much less invasive anonymized system for evaluating the effectiveness of their ads, instead of the current crazy amount of personal data they scrape. The data is anonymized in a double blind scheme, and it’s already way less data than every ad is grabbing.
Firefox’s stance on privacy, like Apple’s, is to some extent branding. Arguably it always was. You should still use Firefox (or any other third party browser) if it works for you. Ecosystem diversity matters.
We also share aggregated, non-personal data and related usage information, which does not contain any personal information which can identify you or any other individual user, with third parties, including content providers, website operators, advertisers and publishers.
But why? I get that it’s bad that Mozilla has to except money from Google and such to fund their development, but Firefox and Thunderbird are damn nice pieces of software that are way better than anything else on the market.
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They probably couldn’t get google drive to work without 3rd party cookies.
Nope, sorry. That technical hurdle is easily solved. In reality, this is about advertising and snooping.
deleted by creator
I just mentioned that because google drive links are one of the very few things I’m opening in chrome - and they’re the only site where I need a 3rd party cookie exemption for.
deleted by creator
Do you have a source for that excus… uehm… claim?
deleted by creator
Thank you.
Interesting that they’ll make it a user choice. Who would answer yes?
I’d imagine that making it a user choice gets around some of the regulatory hurdles in some way. I can see them making a popup in the future to not use third-party cookies anymore (or partition per site them like Firefox does) but then they can say that it’s not Google making these changes, it’s the user making that choice. If you’re right that there’s few that would answer yes, then it gets them the same effective result for most users without being seen to force a change on their competitors in the ad industry.
What’s the UK CMA going to do, argue that users shouldn’t be given choices about how they are tracked or how their own browser operates?
Google worked on Privacy Sandbox/Topics API/FLoC for at least five years, and it couldn’t get something that advertisers, regulators, and users could all agree on, so it’s just falling back to the thing that worked (but has next to zero privacy protections). Sigh.
Yeah, this is a loss for user privacy.
Also a reminder that accepting an alternative tracking method is likely to just end up with 2 different ways to track you rather than one slightly less invasive one.
Google never had any intention whatsoever of prioritising your privacy over their advertising revenue. This technology was 100% designed to shut other operators out of the tracking and advertising market and 0% to reduce their ability to track you and advertise to you. Never in a million years were they going to spend a lot of time, effort and money destroying the source of their money. Hobble competitors, yes. Hobble themselves? Never. Not even a little bit.
I think that’s a matter of perspective. IMO it didn’t work, it was broken, that’s why we’re even talking about it.
This is your daily reminder that Firefox and its derivatives exist and should be used wherever possible if you care about Google not having a monopoly over the internet. There’s even a Firefox-based version of Discord called Datcord.
Firefox is the only reasonable alternative to the Chrome monopoly right now, yes, but they too are going bad, we need more alternatives
Ladybird isn’t ready yet but one to keep an eye on.
deleted by creator
What do you think chrome and safari are written in?
deleted by creator
Pivot to suggesting to rewrite it in Rust in 3…2…1…
I just uninstalled Firefox yesterday after it came out that they are collecting user data by default. If I’m going to be tracked either way, I might as well use the browser that’s actually supported on sites I use so I don’t have to keep ignoring the “Firefox is not supported and some features may not work” warnings 5x a day.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40974112
I guess some people enjoy ads
Absolutely. If you think you can switch when chrome will be completely hostile it will be too late.
The reason they are trying those things in chrome is because the market share of Firefox is currently low. They are counting that you won’t have the option to run Firefox anymore, because sites will stop supporting it. Don’t let that happen.
deleted by creator
Also, Firefox is in a tough situation where they have to purposefully shoot themselves in the foot, because their builtin tracking protection means Firefox usually doesn’t show up in a lot of browser usage stats.
That blocks user agent string? Answer: no it absolutely doesn’t
Explain how this comment isn’t completely wrong
If you use a third-party analytics service such as Google Analytics, as almost all serious parties do (with their nice dashboards and reports), then you’ll notice Firefox is severely underrepresented because the request never reaches Google
I think that may be true if you set the privacy protection to strict, which is not default.
I wonder if it’s underrepresented more so because people who use Firefox are more likely to install privacy centric extensions
I didn’t think about it, though if that makes it harder to track it (can’t they just check the user agent?) could that actually be good, as the sites will never know exactly how many users they will lose, so might be more hesitant to pull the trigger?
That would be true for competent web developers. Unfortunately, those are a vanishingly small subset.
No, they’ll just see the management summary that Firefox occupies less than 0.5% of their users’ marketshare and prioritize their budget accordingly.
Too late. Lumen5 crashes on Firefox. Google Cloud Console barely loads. I was a Firefox user for YEARS but finally had to uninstall this week. The amount of “Firefox is not supported” warnings and weird issues I was running into every day was getting a tad ridiculous.
Thanks I didn’t know about Datcord
Note: “I don’t use Discord/Datcord anymore because of their terrible TOS which Datcord can’t protect you from.”
I doubt Firefox will deprecate third-party cookies is Chrome won’t. And now Firefox has included literally ad tracking component into the browser and enabled it for all users by default.
facepalm it’s not an “ad tracking component”, it’s a test of a new API that, if adopted, will let sites opt in to a much less invasive anonymized system for evaluating the effectiveness of their ads, instead of the current crazy amount of personal data they scrape. The data is anonymized in a double blind scheme, and it’s already way less data than every ad is grabbing.
Firefox has been blocking third-party cookies since 2019: https://venturebeat.com/business/firefox-enhanced-tracking-protection-blocks-third-party-cookies-by-default/
Apple has been blocking third-party cookies since 2020: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/24/21192830/apple-safari-intelligent-tracking-privacy-full-third-party-cookie-blocking
It’s only Chrome and its derivatives that don’t do this.
Firefox’s stance on privacy, like Apple’s, is to some extent branding. Arguably it always was. You should still use Firefox (or any other third party browser) if it works for you. Ecosystem diversity matters.
Firefox’s stance on privacy, like Apple’s, is to some extent brandingSome of the recently introduced Privacy related features -
(Further options to harden Firefox via user.js or via about:config)
… and they’re tracking your searches, collecting massive amounts of telemetry, and using pocket that collects and sells your data.
Care to share the proof that Mozilla sells user data to anyone?
https://getpocket.com/privacy#sharing
From the pocket privacy policy
All of which can be disabled.
Firefox is funded by Google and Meta, but its still better than being directly made by Google. There isn’t a single good browser right now.
Nope, not going to use anything from Mozilla. They don’t even deserve the minuscule market share they have right now. I want them to disappear.
Then use a fork.
Nope, still.giving market share to gecko, thus to Mozilla.
As long as you’re not giving market share to chromium…
I am.
shit like this makes me annoyed I joined an instance without down voting
Yeah, dowvnvotes would surely make you better.
it wouldnt make me anything
So you want Google to have a true monopoly over the browser market?
I just want Mozilla to die. Anything else is irrelevant.
But why? I get that it’s bad that Mozilla has to except money from Google and such to fund their development, but Firefox and Thunderbird are damn nice pieces of software that are way better than anything else on the market.
If you say so…
What happened that made you so mad at Mozilla?
I remember IE6, it was great!