https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/07/22/new-google-chrome-warning-microsoft-windows-10-windows-11-3-billion-users/

In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and burned.

On 7/23/2024 4:09 AM, Enrico Papaloma wrote:
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/07/22/new-google-chrome-warning-microsoft-windows-10-windows-11-3-billion-users/
>
> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and burned.
>

Haven't they been putting that off for years, anyway? An article
at The Verge implies that preople will at least see a prompt asking
them to choose. But I don't think any of this matters much. People
either protect their privacy or they don't. Short of making it
criminal to enable 3rd-party surveillance, I don't see anything changing.

"Crooks consortium cancels plan to leave 5 bucks behind when stealing
peoples' wallets." The whole thing is the problem, not just one aspect.

Enrico Papaloma wrote:
> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/07/22/new-google-chrome-warning-microsoft-windows-10-windows-11-3-billion-users/
>
> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and burned.

Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.

--
John C.

"John C." <r9jmg0@yahoo.com> writes:

> Enrico Papaloma wrote:
>> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/07/22/new-google-chrome-warning-microsoft-windows-10-windows-11-3-billion-users/
>>
>> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
>> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and burned.
>
> Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.

Eh? All browsers support third party cookies.

On 2024-07-23, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
> "John C." <r9jmg0@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> Enrico Papaloma wrote:
>>> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/07/22/new-google-chrome-warning-microsoft-windows-10-windows-11-3-billion-users/
>>>
>>> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
>>> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and burned.
>>
>> Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.
>
> Eh? All browsers support third party cookies.

*WHOOSH*...

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 05:58:32 -0700, John C. wrote:

>> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
>> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and burned.
>
> Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.

Does Safari or Firefox or Bromite or Edge do cookie tracking different?

On 2024-07-23 12:42, Isaac Montara wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 05:58:32 -0700, John C. wrote:
>
>>> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
>>> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and
>>> burned.
>>
>> Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.
>
> Does Safari or Firefox or Bromite or Edge do cookie tracking different?

You tell me:

Prevent cross-site tracking in Safari on Mac

Some websites use third-party content providers. You can stop
third-party content providers from tracking you across websites to
advertise products and services.

1. In the Safari app on your Mac, choose Safari > Settings, then click
Privacy.

2. Select “Prevent cross-site tracking.”

Unless you visit and interact with the third-party content provider
as a first-party website, their cookies and website data are deleted.

Social media sites often put Share, Like, or Comment buttons on
other websites. These buttons can be used to track your web
browsing—even if you don’t use them. Safari blocks that tracking. If you
still want to use the buttons, you’ll be asked for your permission to
allow the site to see your activities on the other websites.

For a Privacy Report that shows a list of known trackers who’ve been
blocked from tracking you, see See who was blocked from tracking you.

Note: Every time you visit a website, it gathers data about your
device—such as your system configuration—and uses that data to show you
webpages that work well on your device. Some companies use this data to
try to uniquely identify your device—known as fingerprinting. To prevent
this, whenever you visit a website, Safari presents a simplified version
of your system configuration. Your Mac looks more like everyone else’s
Mac, which dramatically reduces the ability of trackers to uniquely
identify your device.

See also

Clear cookies in Safari on Mac

Browse privately in Safari on Mac

<https://support.apple.com/en-is/guide/safari/sfri40732/17.0/mac/14.0>

On 2024-07-23, Isaac Montara <IsaacMontara@nospam.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 05:58:32 -0700, John C. wrote:
>
>>> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
>>> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and
>>> burned.
>>
>> Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.
>
> Does Safari or Firefox or Bromite or Edge do cookie tracking
> different?

Safari does:

https://webkit.org/blog/15697/private-browsing-2-0/

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

On 2024-07-23, Jolly Roger <jollyroger@pobox.com> wrote:
> On 2024-07-23, Isaac Montara <IsaacMontara@nospam.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 05:58:32 -0700, John C. wrote:
>>
>>>> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
>>>> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and
>>>> burned.
>>>
>>> Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.
>>
>> Does Safari or Firefox or Bromite or Edge do cookie tracking
>> different?
>
> Safari does:
>
> https://webkit.org/blog/15697/private-browsing-2-0/

Wrong link, sorry (still educational, though)

https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/

--
E-mail sent to this address may be devoured by my ravenous SPAM filter.
I often ignore posts from Google. Use a real news client instead.

JR

Richmond wrote:
> "John C." <r9jmg0@yahoo.com> writes:
>
>> Enrico Papaloma wrote:
>>> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/07/22/new-google-chrome-warning-microsoft-windows-10-windows-11-3-billion-users/
>>>
>>> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
>>> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and burned.
>>
>> Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.
>
> Eh? All browsers support third party cookies.

This thread is about tracking cookies. And Google uses tracking cookies
in Chrome.

--
John C.

John C. wrote:
> Richmond wrote:
>> "John C." <r9jmg0@yahoo.com> writes:
>>
>>> Enrico Papaloma wrote:
>>>> https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2024/07/22/new-google-chrome-warning-microsoft-windows-10-windows-11-3-billion-users/
>>>>
>>>> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
>>>> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and burned.
>>>
>>> Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.
>>
>> Eh? All browsers support third party cookies.
>
> This thread is about tracking cookies. And Google uses tracking cookies
> in Chrome.

Eh, forget that. I was getting tracking cookies confused with something
else.

--
John C.

On 7/23/2024 3:42 PM, Isaac Montara wrote:
> On Tue, 23 Jul 2024 05:58:32 -0700, John C. wrote:
>
>>> In a shock move, Google has suddenly confirmed that its long-awaited
>>> killing of Chrome's dreaded tracking cookies has just crashed and
>>> burned.
>>
>> Perfect example of why I've never used Google Chrome.
>
> Does Safari or Firefox or Bromite or Edge do cookie tracking different?

Firefox is notably different. The primary problem is that Google and
Apple are both very sleazy companies that run ad markets, so tracking
is a financial issue for them. Spying is Google's main business -- the basis
of their ad services -- and a major secondary business for Apple. (Apple
probably makes more money by pricegouging their customers and
exploiting virtual slave labor in 3rd-world countries, so they're not
as bad. :)

So only Mozilla/Firefox is actually just a browser. The others are
like car dealers who make you buy their gas. And all the variants --
such as the menagerie of Firefox vairants -- woolves and weasels
and whatnot -- are mainly just the same product with slightly
different default settings. Pale Moon was a nice browser, much less
bloated than FF, but it's too far out of date now to be useful.

There's no reason to trust either Apple or Google with your data.
Google, especially, has no product that isn't based on spying. Their whole
business model is to give away very useful, free tools, which are then
used to collect data through Web surveillance, which in turn powers
their monopoly ad services. Even the famous Google search is really
just a giveaway to power surveillance. It wasn't always that way.
Google search started out as an honest product with text-based
contextual ads based on search terms rather than spying. But the
days of respectable Google are probably 20+ years in the past.

Nearly every commercial website, and
many non-commercial, incorporate some way for Google to track
visitors: googletagmanager, google-analytics, maps, font, jquery,
docs, search... So 3rd-party tracking for Google is most of the game,
aside from more direct spyware such as gmail.

Apple is a more closed system, mainly exploiting only their own
walled garden devotees. I'm not sure I've ever seen Apple tracking
code on mainstream websites. Apple only needs to care about people
using Apple products, who in turn will see Apple ad-service ads.
Those people are likely to be using iPhones and feel reassured that
Apple have copied the entirety of their phone data to Apple servers
as backup. So it's a whole different scenario. AppleSeeds are living in
the land of Oz. Privacy, for them, is about being protected from bad
guys. Lord Jobs is their hero and Apple is their mother. (Most of the
people I know using Macs switched because they felt Windows was
too risky and AV software was too much trouble. Not for nothing does
the Mac GUI look like it's designed for 9-year-olds, with icons that look
like they're designed by a 10-year-old girl who dots her i's with little
hearts. Apple makes CONSUMER products, in contrast to Windows
and Linux.)

Firefox has problems, but Mozilla's basic reason for existing is to
provide a non-commercial browser. So the problems are on a different
scale. If you use Chrome, Edge, Safari then you're either not paying
attention or you don't care about privacy.

Though FF does require attention.
For example, the safe browsing scam actually calls Google to check on
whether a specific domain is considered risky, so that's one way that
Google might track you through FF while you're being led to believe
that you've just enable better security. Firefox has A LOT of call-home
or call-someone functions that need to be weeded out.

If you use Chromium variants then you're not much better off than
if you're using Chrome. But of course, it's worth avoiding Chrome
proper. A crook outside your window is still better than a crook in
the bedroom.

Chromium is made by Google. It's virtually impossible
to make a clean version. As an example, I have Ungoogled
Chromium for use on badly designed websites, such as Lowes.com,
where FF doesn't seem to work. Every time I start it I have to
re-install NoScript, and it can only be installed by finding and using
an XPI unzipped. The reason for that problem is because Google
controls access to extensions, even in UngChrome. So without
visiting Google and allowing script, I can't get the approved
extension, and for unknown reasons, UngChrome is getting indigestion
with the unpacked extension.

And don't be fooled by Brave, which is another Chromium variant
that claims to protect privacy. Their overall business model is
based on a philosophy assuming that the Internet MUST be a shopping
mall and can't exist in any other form. The Brave plan, then, is
to be an ad middleman. They'll "empower" you by letting you have
more voting power over which ads you like. It's an idea for making
a surveillance Web work better... It's a very dark and cynical worldview
that's driving Brave.

Firefox blocks obvious tracking by default. I think the
default is also to block 3rd-party cookies, but I'm not
sure about that. Firefox also has more accessible settings.
Though, of course, the defaults are what matter for most
people.

Google's Ad Topics was an attempt to allow targeted advertising and
preserve privacy. But because of all the hysterical flapping about it,
it will now die a death, and we'll be left with third party cookies,
which are worse. Yes you can turn them off, but I think most people
don't. And anyway how do you want the web to be financed? If we did away
with tracking altogether you would have to sign up with an email address
at every website, or just not use it.

On 7/24/2024 10:59 AM, Richmond wrote:
> Google's Ad Topics was an attempt to allow targeted advertising and
> preserve privacy. But because of all the hysterical flapping about it,
> it will now die a death, and we'll be left with third party cookies,
> which are worse. Yes you can turn them off, but I think most people
> don't. And anyway how do you want the web to be financed? If we did away
> with tracking altogether you would have to sign up with an email address
> at every website, or just not use it.
>

I'm afraid you've been duped by the commercial propagandists.
What you're saying is the logic of the Brave crowd -- the sleazeball
browser company trying to become an ad middleman by pretending
to support privacy.

The Internet doesn't need to be financed. Sites that make money
pay their own way, like dept stores, doctors, etc. Sites like my own
and a million other small sites are hosted out of pocket. I recently
did two sites -- for a metalworker and a piano seller. Both benefit
from having the site and would never think of putting ads on there.
The sites are ads!

Access is paid to ISPs... Ads are not financing the Internet.
They're just lining the pockets of a parasitic industry.

Targetted ads with privacy is BS. Mozilla is trying to do
something similar. It won't work. There's no such thing as
anonymous data with computers. That's why targetted ads
work in the first place. The software can connect the dots.

What we need is browsers not backed by ad companies
and ads that are contextual rather than targetted... If there
must be ads. Surveillance is simply wrong. Criminal. Against
common decency. If we start by acknowledging that then we
can work out the details. Just, don't screw people... Not such
an outrageous idea.

If you were around 20+ years ago then you know that the
Internet worked quite well. Lots of people contributed in
different ways. Google made billions BEFORE they started
spying. They just got greedy. If you searched for "lawnmower"
you'd see text ads for hardware stores along the right side.
People loved it. Google got rich. Small companies had a venue
for marketing by bidding on "ad words".

Signing up is already required for accounts. Netflix or the
NYTimes, for example. That's fine. But we don't need to turn
the Internet into a spyware app. That's like saying the town
square should be sold to a shoping mall company in order
to save money.

The only category of websites I can think of that's suffering
are media like magazines and newspapers. They're struggling
to get paid. Some, like the NYTimes are finding success with
paid subscriptions. We actually used to have the NYTimes
delivered, but they kept pushing the online and not including
a lot of articles in their very expensive newspaper version. So
we cancelled it. I was paying them for a paper with ads, but
they wanted to be able to spy on me reading.

Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> writes:

> I'm afraid you've been duped by the commercial propagandists.
> What you're saying is the logic of the Brave crowd -- the sleazeball
> browser company trying to become an ad middleman by pretending
> to support privacy.

No, I haven't been duped. What we have right now is tracking. Google Ad
Topics was an improvement on that as you will see if you look into how
it works.

>
> The Internet doesn't need to be financed. Sites that make money
> pay their own way, like dept stores, doctors, etc. Sites like my own
> and a million other small sites are hosted out of pocket. I recently
> did two sites -- for a metalworker and a piano seller. Both benefit
> from having the site and would never think of putting ads on there.
> The sites are ads!

Can you get journalism or music videos without ads? Why is Netflix
either subscription or ads?

>
> Access is paid to ISPs... Ads are not financing the Internet.
> They're just lining the pockets of a parasitic industry.

It depends on the content. If you are selling something you can make
money that way. But if you are giving content away where does the
revenue come from?

>
> Targetted ads with privacy is BS. Mozilla is trying to do
> something similar. It won't work. There's no such thing as
> anonymous data with computers. That's why targetted ads
> work in the first place. The software can connect the dots.

I think you are muddling up two ideas here, you are saying it is
impossible because it isn't happening. But there are ways of hiding like
with TOR or a VPN. And companies don't really need to know exactly who
is there, only general information about groups and interests.

>
> What we need is browsers not backed by ad companies
> and ads that are contextual rather than targetted... If there
> must be ads. Surveillance is simply wrong. Criminal. Against
> common decency. If we start by acknowledging that then we
> can work out the details. Just, don't screw people... Not such
> an outrageous idea.

Ad Topics is not invasive. It just tells a site if a visitor has been to
a site with the same interests in the previous month or so. It's quite
vague.

On 2024-07-24 11:12, Newyana2 wrote:
> On 7/24/2024 10:59 AM, Richmond wrote:
>> Google's Ad Topics was an attempt to allow targeted advertising and
>> preserve privacy. But because of all the hysterical flapping about it,
>> it will now die a death, and we'll be left with third party cookies,
>> which are worse. Yes you can turn them off, but I think most people
>> don't. And anyway how do you want the web to be financed? If we did away
>> with tracking altogether you would have to sign up with an email address
>> at every website, or just not use it.
>>
>
>    I'm afraid you've been duped by the commercial propagandists.
> What you're saying is the logic of the Brave crowd -- the sleazeball
> browser company trying to become an ad middleman by pretending
> to support privacy.
>
>   The Internet doesn't need to be financed. Sites that make money
> pay their own way, like dept stores, doctors, etc. Sites like my own
> and a million other small sites are hosted out of pocket. I recently
> did two sites -- for a metalworker and a piano seller. Both benefit
> from having the site and would never think of putting ads on there.
> The sites are ads!

And how do people FIND those sites?

Search engines.

How do search engines operate with no revenue?

On 7/24/2024 3:10 PM, Richmond wrote:

> Can you get journalism or music videos without ads? Why is Netflix
> either subscription or ads?
>
I've never seen ads at news sites and generally don't listen
to music. If I want a video that I can't download directly then
I don't need it. But in most cases I can download directly. Not
all media is a moneymaking product.

I've barely seen any ads in 25 years. I don't use an adblocker.
If the ads were on websites, I'd see them. But they're not. Sites
are trying to send me to other domains that I never agreed to visit.

If you want to pay for news reports or buy/rent music videos then
you're free to do so. You can also buy the albums, CDs, etc. None
of that has anything to do with surveillance-based business models.

I actually tried youtube movies with ads once. It was unwatchable.
They inserted the ads according to some time unit plan, ignoring
scene breaks.

> It depends on the content. If you are selling something you can make
> money that way. But if you are giving content away where does the
> revenue come from?

I give things away. There's no revenue. Is that so hard
to understand? Life doesn't have to be a business. You
don't have to make a buck on everything. The early Internet
was just lots of inspired people chipping in.

>> Targetted ads with privacy is BS. Mozilla is trying to do
>> something similar. It won't work. There's no such thing as
>> anonymous data with computers. That's why targetted ads
>> work in the first place. The software can connect the dots.
>
> I think you are muddling up two ideas here, you are saying it is
> impossible because it isn't happening. But there are ways of hiding like
> with TOR or a VPN. And companies don't really need to know exactly who
> is there, only general information about groups and interests.
> > Ad Topics is not invasive. It just tells a site if a visitor has been to
> a site with the same interests in the previous month or so. It's quite
> vague.
>

You're fooling yourself. Contextual ads already worked that way.
But then companies figured out that they could spy. This isn't
going to somehow magically turn into a civilized approach. It's
getting worse, not better. Spying on cellphones. Cooperating
with credit card companies. Spying in stores. The tech keeps
improving and companies keep coming up with more ideas. It's not
just spying for ads anymore. Data wholesaling has become an industry.
For example, app developers on cellphones often make money by
simply selling data. Parasites running scripts on websites can do
the same. Pests like adobedtm, newrelic, demdex (owned by Adobe),
qualtrics, etc are all over. This is a kind of spreading infestation of
spyware, well beyond things like 3rd-party Google cookies.

They're not going to settle for vague connections like whether you've
looked at lawnmowers in the past month, because those ads won't
work as well, so they won't pay as well. And who do you suppose
is managing all that data on what you've looked at in the past month?

There was a recent report:
https://blog.cloudflare.com/application-security-report-2024-update

It details what many people have already noticed: That typical
websites are cooperating with dozens of outside trackers, selling
tracking data wholesale, turning webpages into apps. Many websites
I visit now say only, "This app requires javascript." They're not
websites. They're not HTML and CSS. They're large, obfuscated
javascript software programs, being downloaded and run. As Cloudflare
points out, often the webmasters don't even know where they're
connecting. They're just pasting in code. If you go to NYTimes.com
and end up running malware from AceAndAcme.com, NYTimes may not
even have a business relationship with them.

It's all way out of control and will clearly require legislation
to make surveillance a criminal act. The EU is heading that way. The
US is a corporatocracy, so the future isn't looking so bright.

Personally I use a HOSTS file to block most trackers and rarely enable
javascript. I rarely use a cellphone and don't do business with the
likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, Adobe, Facebook, etc. If you think you
can be a mindless cocnsumer, using their products, and have
anything like reasonable privacy, then you're fooling yourself. Worse,
you're part of the problem because you're helping to make their
dishonest business model work.

What can you do if you REALLY do care about improving privacy?
Don't use Chromium browsers in the first place, for starters. Anyone
who's going to be affected by Google lying about their intentions
is way out in left field. That drama is just a distraction. It's like
the PC tech articles about improving privacy by deleting cookies.
"Your front door is wide open, but let's talk about how you can
add a better lock to your attic window."... "Google lied about providing
a modicum of privacy. Darn it. I guess we'll just have to wait until Google
decides to screw themselves."

On 7/24/2024 3:23 PM, Alan wrote:

>>    The Internet doesn't need to be financed. Sites that make money
>> pay their own way, like dept stores, doctors, etc. Sites like my own
>> and a million other small sites are hosted out of pocket. I recently
>> did two sites -- for a metalworker and a piano seller. Both benefit
>> from having the site and would never think of putting ads on there.
>> The sites are ads!
>
> And how do people FIND those sites?
>
> Search engines.
>
> How do search engines operate with no revenue?

As I detailed above, Google started out with contextual ads --
text ads running along the right side and related to what
people searched for. Google was a billion dollar business long
before targetted ads and spying.

You seem to be playing devil's advocate, making the case
that nothing can work without spyware. Do you really believe
that? If so then you're free to let these companies spy on you.
I don't consider it my moral duty to help the likes of Zuck or
Eric Schmidt buy their next airline or island.

On 2024-07-24 12:57, Newyana2 wrote:
> On 7/24/2024 3:23 PM, Alan wrote:
>
>>>    The Internet doesn't need to be financed. Sites that make money
>>> pay their own way, like dept stores, doctors, etc. Sites like my own
>>> and a million other small sites are hosted out of pocket. I recently
>>> did two sites -- for a metalworker and a piano seller. Both benefit
>>> from having the site and would never think of putting ads on there.
>>> The sites are ads!
>>
>> And how do people FIND those sites?
>>
>> Search engines.
>>
>> How do search engines operate with no revenue?
>
>   As I detailed above, Google started out with contextual ads --
> text ads running along the right side and related to what
> people searched for. Google was a billion dollar business long
> before targetted ads and spying.
>
>   You seem to be playing devil's advocate, making the case
> that nothing can work without spyware. Do you really believe
> that? If so then you're free to let these companies spy on you.
> I don't consider it my moral duty to help the likes of Zuck or
> Eric Schmidt buy their next airline or island.

I said nothing of the kind.

But the idea that "the internet can be free!" is just so much bullshit.

Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam> writes:

> I've never seen ads at news sites and generally don't listen
> to music. If I want a video that I can't download directly then
> I don't need it. But in most cases I can download directly. Not
> all media is a moneymaking product.
>
> I've barely seen any ads in 25 years. I don't use an adblocker.
> If the ads were on websites, I'd see them. But they're not. Sites
> are trying to send me to other domains that I never agreed to visit.
>
> If you want to pay for news reports or buy/rent music videos then
> you're free to do so. You can also buy the albums, CDs, etc. None
> of that has anything to do with surveillance-based business models.
>
> I actually tried youtube movies with ads once. It was unwatchable.
> They inserted the ads according to some time unit plan, ignoring
> scene breaks.

You say you don't use an ad blocker, but then later you say you use the
hosts file to block ads. So this muddles two ideas, whether sites need
ads to finance themselves, and whether you need to ever see those ads or
use those sites. The fact that you avoid ads does not mean that no site
needs ads to finance itself. Arguing that all sites could be charities
doesn't really work either, there would be far fewer of them, and they
would be more limited.
>
> I give things away. There's no revenue. Is that so hard
> to understand? Life doesn't have to be a business. You
> don't have to make a buck on everything. The early Internet
> was just lots of inspired people chipping in.

Of course it is not hard to understand. Why do you want to make out that
I find something you thought of hard to understand? You can give things
away if you like. You can't make a case that the whole internet can be a
charity just because some of it can be. A charity internet would be much
smaller than this one.

> You're fooling yourself. Contextual ads already worked that way.
> But then companies figured out that they could spy. This isn't
> going to somehow magically turn into a civilized approach. It's
> getting worse, not better. Spying on cellphones. Cooperating
> with credit card companies. Spying in stores. The tech keeps
> improving and companies keep coming up with more ideas. It's not
> just spying for ads anymore. Data wholesaling has become an industry.
> For example, app developers on cellphones often make money by
> simply selling data. Parasites running scripts on websites can do
> the same. Pests like adobedtm, newrelic, demdex (owned by Adobe),
> qualtrics, etc are all over. This is a kind of spreading infestation of
> spyware, well beyond things like 3rd-party Google cookies.
>

You must be on the side of the corporations, because they too didn't
want Ad Topics, they much prefer the system we already have as it
allows much more spying.

Great, turn off Javascript if you like, visit a subset of the internet
and put up with bits that don't work. What are your friends and relatives
doing? Do they switch off third party cookies when you tell them? Do you
tell them every time they re-install the browser? The corporations put
up with ad blockers and noscripters because there are relatively few of
them, huge numbers of people don't bother. I am listening to music on
Youtube without ads because I have an ad blocker, it doesn't prove
anything, no one is going to come up with a charity youtube with the
amount of music youtube has available.

Incidentally, did you spoof your user agent? or are you really using
Windows? It would be ironic if you are, and I am using linux.

On 7/24/2024 3:58 PM, Alan wrote:

> I said nothing of the kind.
>
> But the idea that "the internet can be free!" is just so much bullshit.

It's always nice to have interesting, in-depth
discussions with levelheaded AppleSeeds who make
clear and cogent points. :)

On 2024-07-24 14:48, Newyana2 wrote:
> On 7/24/2024 3:58 PM, Alan wrote:
>
>> I said nothing of the kind.
>>
>> But the idea that "the internet can be free!" is just so much bullshit.
>
>    It's always nice to have interesting, in-depth
> discussions with levelheaded AppleSeeds who make
> clear and cogent points. :)
>

It is utterly cogent.

"The Internet doesn't need to be financed."

You seem to think because SOME sites pay their own way, that pays for
everything.

On Wed, 24 Jul 2024 14:12:11 -0400, Newyana2 <newyana@invalid.nospam>
wrote:

> The Internet doesn't need to be financed. Sites that make money
>pay their own way, like dept stores, doctors, etc. Sites like my own
>and a million other small sites are hosted out of pocket. I recently
>did two sites -- for a metalworker and a piano seller. Both benefit
>from having the site and would never think of putting ads on there.
>The sites are ads!
>
> Access is paid to ISPs... Ads are not financing the Internet.
>They're just lining the pockets of a parasitic industry.

Social media sites do need to be financed. They are not sites that are
themselves advertising a service, like a retailer or a doctor or
whatever. In a social media site, the site is itself the service --
the service of helping people to connect to other people online.

A lot of people started social media sites because they thought of
original ways of linking people in ways that people find useful.

Think of some of the early social media sites. An example is
Geocities, which offered free web hosting in a series of themed
communities. As it's popularity grew, so did the cost of maintaining
it, servers, internet access fees. One way of financing it was ads,
and banner ads could be targeted at the themed communities. Then it
was taken over by Yahoo! where the main idea was as a source of
revenue. They did not understand what made it attractive to users, so
they messed with the model and killed it.

--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

On 7/25/2024 2:18 AM, Steve Hayes wrote:

> Social media sites do need to be financed. They are not sites that are
> themselves advertising a service, like a retailer or a doctor or
> whatever. In a social media site, the site is itself the service --
> the service of helping people to connect to other people online.
>
> A lot of people started social media sites because they thought of
> original ways of linking people in ways that people find useful.
>
> Think of some of the early social media sites. An example is
> Geocities, which offered free web hosting in a series of themed
> communities. As it's popularity grew, so did the cost of maintaining
> it, servers, internet access fees. One way of financing it was ads,
> and banner ads could be targeted at the themed communities. Then it
> was taken over by Yahoo! where the main idea was as a source of
> revenue. They did not understand what made it attractive to users, so
> they messed with the model and killed it.
>

Social media is an interesting category. As far as I know,
the Meta companies seem to be doing fine financially. But Reddit is
in the red and have recently gone public while selling out to Google
and OpenAI/Microsoft, selling both companies direct access to
postings. Reddit now requires logging in with script from Google.

Like news media companies, social media have very real costs and
struggles. But I think we need to clarify the issues. The question
was really about the role of the Internet for humanity. Should
we allow flim-flam salesmen to turn it into a Miracle Mile shopping
mall, infested with virtual drug dealers like Zuck, addicting our kids,
in exchange for free stuff? Is there any point at which surveillance
becomes unethical? Is there any truth to the assertion
that the Internet will collapse and disappear without surveillance-
fueled ads? Should barely socialized young men, obsessed with
power and greed, be allowed to manipulate children, making them
addicted to the likes of Facebook? Where are our priorities?

To claim that the Internet must be a business is, first of all,
a claim with no evidence. To claim that such businesses can't
run without cheating and lying is even more farfetched. More
importantly, it's looking at the issue backward.

It's our moral duty as citizens and humans to work
toward an ethical, humane society. The Internet is foremost a
new PUBLIC communication medium. It's not a company whose
stock value must be maintained.

Spying on people to manipulate them is not ethical. So there's
an obvious answer: If your company can't run without being
a criminal enterprise then it will have to fail. Maybe people
would end up paying more fees. Maybe companies like Google
would have to settle for reduced profits, while still being billion
dollar companies. Maybe the Googlites would have to go back
to not being evil. But we have to get our priorities straight in
order to proceed.

The Internet started out as an exciting town square. People
put up websites out of curiosity, vanity, generosity, or whatever.
Then gradually big companies started trying to own it.
(Steve Ballmer in a 2005 Business Week interview: "We will win
the Web! We will get there! We will win the Web!") We've ended up
with a seedy, scammy venue. Scammers and carnival barkers hold
out free trinkets, in hopes of grabbing your wallet while you
grab the trinket. The public, as a result, have become accustomed
to freebies. Their approach is to grab as many freebies as possible
without getting their pocket picked. Website logins are infested with
invitations: "Log in with Apple!" "Log in with Google!" "Log in with
Facebook!"

These scammy companies have mostly been run by barely socialized,
hyper-ambitious geeks. (As the comedian Bill Burr put it, the
world is in danger because geeks don't know how to talk to
women. :)

The pro-business, conservative stance of plutocracy says that
king-of-the-hill is the only viable form of human society. But that's
not society. It's simply animal instinct. It's mere greed that claims
the sky will fall if we limit corporate surveillance and cheating.

So I think we need to start at the beginning and work from there.
Figure out what a civilized, fair Internet medium looks like, then
let businesses proceed within that framework. It's always the lying
threat of greedy companies to say, "Oh, no! If you regulate us then
we might have to withdraw our product and you'll suffer."

I find the whole tech phenomenon fascinating on a larger level. The
younger generations who don't know any better have been sold a
bill of goods. They live on social media, call Ubers, wave their phones
to pay, stay at AirBnBs, tell Alexa to order pajamas, and feel very
clever in doing all that. There's a popular idea that this is a kind of
tech-fueled "sharing" utopia. People are wowed by the pizzazz and
imagine they've invented a more mature civilization through sharing.

Most of this is
actually a big step backward. Tech companies treat empoyees like
slaves. Uber is not "social sharing". It's just a big company skirting
labor laws. AirBnB is not house sharing. It's just a big company
running an unregulated rental scam. Alexa is just spyware. Cashless
payments are just superfluous spyware middlemen managing to get
a fee for giving your money to a merchant. We've been so enamored
of the Jetsons fantasy that we can't see that nothing fundamental
changes. Tech is practical tools, not a transcendence of the human
condition. Maybe giving up the fantasy will mean a Nasdaq crash. It
couldn't happen too soon in my view.

On 7/25/2024 7:06 AM, Newyana2 wrote:

> It's our moral duty as citizens and humans to work
> toward an ethical, humane society.

That sure sounds pretty when you read it.

--
Stand With Israel!