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Google Chrome pushes browser history-based ad targeting • The Register (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 year ago by 1984@lemmy.today to c/technology@lemmy.ml

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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.

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[–] 1984@lemmy.today 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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