Don't Be Evil

[Thad]

Terraria developer cancels Google Stadia port after YouTube account ban

Typical stuff here -- Google bans somebody's account with no coherent explanation, provides worthless tech support that utterly fails to remedy the issue -- but this time they hit somebody who's big enough to call attention to it.

[Thad]

Everybody hates “FLoC,” Google’s tracking plan for Chrome ads

Google wants to kill third-party tracking cookies used for ads in Chrome with the "Chrome Privacy Sandbox." Since Google is also the world's largest ad company, though, it's not killing tracking cookies without putting something else in its place. Google's replacement plan is to have Chrome locally build an ad interest profile for you, via a system called "FLoC" (Federated Learning of Cohorts). Rather than having advertisers collect your browsing history to build an individual profile of you on their servers, Google wants to keep that data local, and have the browser to serve a list of your interests to advertisers whenever they ask via an API, so that you'll still get relevant ads. Google argues that conscripting the browser for ad interest tracking is a win for privacy, since it keeps your exact browsing history local and only serves up anonymized interest lists. Google does not have many other companies in its corner, though.

One of the first to come out against Google's plan was the EFF, which in March wrote a blog post called, "Google's FLoC is a Terrible Idea." The EFF seems to be against user tracking for ads entirely, saying Google's framing of the issue "is based on a false premise that we have to choose between "old tracking" and "new tracking."

[Thad]

Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”

Many of the documents that Google claimed to be protected by attorney-client privilege or work product privilege “were, in fact, communications between non-lawyers, with attorneys included, if at all, only as ‘cc’d’ recipients, and without any statement seeking legal advice,” he said. IRI, he pointed out, “gave campaign messaging, not legal, advice.”

I'm sort of morbidly curious whether Google hired lawyers so incompetent they actually thought "if you CC a lawyer then your e-mail is protected by attorney-client privilege" was a thing, or if this is one of those things where the lawyers advised them that no that is not a thing but Google insisted they make that legal argument anyway.

[Thad]

Google says you can now turn these 400 Macs, PCs into reliable Chromebooks

This could be a big deal, assuming Google doesn't throw it on the pile of abandoned projects. Windows 11 abandoned support for a shitload of not-that-old hardware that's going to remain in use for years. I think ChromeOS would likely be a lot of refurbishers' first choice for something to install on an old computer before reselling or donating it or setting it up as a kiosk or whatever.

I don't love that ChromeOS relies on plugging you into the Doubleclick ecosystem, but there's a lot to recommend it, especially for novice users. Especially if Flex handles updates as gracefully as ChromeOS does on officially-supported hardware.

[Thad]

Google has announced it's going to start deleting accounts that have been inactive for two years. That'd be on Gmail, YouTube, whatever.

Remember how I said "make sure you save local copies of Kazz's videos"? If you've been putting that off -- I know I have -- get on it now, while you still can.

[Mongrel]

Jesus, that's a massive amount of YouTube that's just going to be wiped out of existence.

[Thad]

Yeah, I'm sure at that scale the costs of keeping it up are nontrivial even for Google, but still and all, they can afford it, and the costs of repeatedly taking away things that are important to people are going to be greater in the long run.

[Mongrel]

To go back to your prompt, rather than each and every one of us keeping offline copies of Kazz's videos, would it be possible someone could rehost them and put them in the Kazz thread?

Not that downloading YouTube videos is particularly difficult (and I of all people am always on about never trusting the internet and keeping offline records of everything), but it would be nice if there was a modest archive for everyone who misses Kazz out there no matter when they might think to look for them. We have seen the occasional new member who registers so they can say something in Kazz's memorial thread.

(I'd do it instead of asking, but I don't really have dedicated standalone hosting... as many do I use Google Drive for temporary hardlinked file sharing and such).

[Thad]

Internet Archive would be a good place for them, provided the publishing industry doesn't bankrupt it.

[Thad]

Commence the backpedaling: Google’s new “inactive account” policy won’t delete years of YouTube videos

Still probably a good idea to save Kazz's videos and anything else you want to make sure doesn't go away.

[Thad]

Google's had the bright idea to introduce DRM for web browsing to prevent people from using adblockers.

I guess the good news is that it's a Google project, which means it'll be dead in 18 months.

The Issues section has some laughs.

(via Thomas Fuchs)

[Mongrel]

The Issues section has some laughs.

Yeah, there's some good ones in there. xD

[Thad]

Google gets its way, bakes a user-tracking ad platform directly into Chrome

I'm gonna suggest that if you can stop using Chrome, stop using Chrome. If Firefox isn't your jam, there are many other browsers that are pretty much just Chrome but without this shit! I keep hearing good things about Vivaldi. I'm tempted to say even Edge might be an improvement over Chrome at this point (and the notifications in your taskbar agree!). And there's always Chromium, the open-source version of Chrome, but I don't think it supports video DRM, so you might not be able to watch Netflix or the like on it.

If you have to use Chrome -- say, for instance, you're a web developer and you can't just not test things in the most popular browser -- turn that shit off.

Chrome has some controls for this built into the browser now. Just go to the Chrome Settings, then "Privacy and Security," then "Ad privacy" (alternatively, paste "chrome://settings/adPrivacy" into the address bar). From there, you can click through to each of the three individual pages and turn off the top checkbox, and in a mere six clicks, you can presumably turn off the ad platform. If you leave it on for a while, you can check out the "Ad topics" page, where Google will show you what ads Chrome things you would like to see. This list gets sent to advertisers when you visit a page.

[Mongrel]

I've used Edge once or twice since I got the new computer and I dunno, it seems so unbelievably cancerous to me. Front page all ads, more ads wherever you go, UI nothing but noise, ugly as fuck. It was like getting screamed at at a standing-room-only outdoor concert for a band you can't hear... because of all the screaming.

I'm sure you can tinker with it and alter a lot of settings to clean some or all of that up, but if you're up for that sort of work and aren't stuck with Edge because of it being the office-approved browser or something, at that point you're honestly just better off starting with a less blatantly hostile browser.

[Thad]

I didn't say it was good.

[nosimpleway]

So what's the go-to adblock extension in Firefox because that's the biggest shock from changing from one to the other

[Mongrel]

So what's the go-to adblock extension in Firefox because that's the biggest shock from changing from one to the other

uBlock Origin (addons.mozilla.org link here)

I also use NoScript for additional safety, but you may not find you need it, or that its default whitelist-only system makes ordinary browsing too annoying to be worth using.

[sei]

Seconding both of Mongrel's recs above. One of my friends also prefers uMatrix to NoScript, though I don't think it's under active development any more.

[Thad]

Speaking of enshittification: How Google Alters Search Queries to Get at Your Wallet

Google likely alters queries billions of times a day in trillions of different variations. Here’s how it works. Say you search for “children’s clothing.” Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.

I'm going to advise a little skepticism until we get some independent corroboration; the way the writer sets it up is

During one employee’s testimony, a key exhibit momentarily flashed on a projector. In the mostly closed trial, spectators like myself have only a few seconds to scribble down the contents of exhibits shown during public questioning.

which seems like it introduces a whole lot of opportunity for misunderstanding. But it's certainly plausible. Google replaces good searches with bad ones all the fucking time; it's not exactly a stretch to think they'd do it to maximize their own profits.

[KingRoyal]

I don't think that what the Wired article is correct about what's happening, mostly because if you do a sample search for "children's clothing" (as an example), you get multiple brands and outlets. That doesn't mean that somewhere in the distributed search there isn't a modification to "NIKOLAI-brand kidswear" or whatever, but it's more likely that Google is doing these transforms as the sponsored part of the query. Similar to how companies pay grocery stores for optimum product placement on shelves

It still massively sucks and goes along with Google giving more screen retail to advertising and auto-generated SEO spam. And AI generated muck, now

And is just another sign that there is no workable business model for the internet, there's only advertising