remetheus

EDIT: google has delayed the thing. maybe still switch though. also, this post went viral.

Switch to Firefox. Specifically Firefox. Any browser other than Firefox and Safari is just spicy Chrome.

this is very true.

chrome has become the monster it was created to destroy.

only the furry browser can save you now.

I switched to Firefox and it’s cool, the iOS app is shit though but I’m hoping Apple gets fucked over hard by every world government in the next few years thanks to EU pushing the envelope and developers don’t have so many stupid restrictions for their apps, Firefox on iOS doesn’t even have zoom page in or out it’s silly to me but I’m still using it to keep my tabs across devices lol

Edit: I however did not switch for ad blocking reasons, if I blocked ads I wouldn’t be able to make silly long posts about silly ads

the real reason to switch is cookies.

firefox has improved the privacy features.

chrome has all but removed them. chrome invented a whole new class of cookies that will make it even easier for the big search platforms (cough, google who now?) to track you across websites. also, why would you want to use the browser created by the biggest ad purveyor in history? that's a recipe for disaster, always.

Chrome's most significant cookie is Google.

More specifically: when you log in to a Google service on Chrome, you are logged to the browser. Not just the webpage, but the browser itself is logged in to your Google profile. Then if you visit a webpage using Google advertising services (which is approximately all of them, present company excluded), your Google account can be used in place of cookies as the "identity signal."

This identity signal is what lets advertisers build a profile that spans browsers or devices, and what lets them target you with Google ads on one website based on your behavior or preferences on other devices.

I want to be clear here: this is not a conspiracy theory or muckraking, this is an advertised feature of Google Ads. I am not making inferences or assumptions about what could be done. I am summarizing what Google has published on their own support articles. If you want to read for yourself, the name of this feature is "Google Signals."

Google Signals is also why Chrome is mildly supportive of phasing out regular cookies as well as tamping down on fingerprinting technologies. Google Signals is proprietary. They're perfectly willing to use their browser dominance to cut out techniques that other advertising networks use, because they have replacements which are not available to the competition.

(Vivaldi claims to remove this component of Chromium. I haven't looked at Brave.)