I know what they're saying. I'm asking what the internet is going to look like when there's no advertising, and I'm pointing out what advertising currently allows for.

> Google has enough market share that they can just make their own standards and everyone else just follows

What does that have to do with privacy or advertising?

> invades your privacy

I'm comfortable with a company seeing "<random id> likes cars" tbh

The problem here comes from Google being the ones who monopolise on the user data, leading them to be the only credible source of truth on the user interests. This is an outstanding move from them, business wise.

I agree that I prefer, privacy wise, to only deal with one company. But, this leaves them in a considerable advantage. It's ultimately, bad for consumers. And, from the beginning, bad for other businesses and market.

But Google doesn't get the user data, right? Chrome is just conveying it to advertisers - Google gets the same experience as everyone else.

It's not like it goes to Google first and then it goes to advertisers. Chrome is what decides which data leaves the browser. Or have I misunderstood?

Correct, with the caveat that if you have Chrome profile sync enabled (without a sync passphrase set) then the advertising data tracked by Chrome likely gets uploaded unencrypted to Google-operated servers. I don't know if their privacy policy permits them to look at this data, or if they would look at it in practice.

Hm. All of my sync data is encrypted. Is that not the default?

Nope. See the following page for some screenshots of the UI to turn on encryption with sync passphrases: https://palant.info/2023/08/29/chrome-sync-privacy-is-still-...

Thanks. I hope they enable that by default at some point.

You set up a false equivalence. Why is the choice between these kinds of features, which lock Google in as the sole controller of online advertising, and no advertising?

I don't think I'm setting that up, but maybe I'm not understanding. Because to me what Google is doing is a clear attempt at maintaining the status quo of an ad-funded internet while removing the ability for fine-grained 3rd party tracking.

So when people say this is a threat to the "free internet" I'm asking what that means - because right now the status quo has a lot of upsides, a few of which I listed. I want to hear what the alternatives are. What is it people are asking for?

What's the implementation of this that you think would be better?

It's a threat to the "free" (as in freedom) internet in that with this as the tracking mechanism, Google via Chrome is directly tracking your interests. It effectively makes "serves you ads and tracks your interests" a core part of what it means for a browser (Chrome) to be a browser.

Many folks feel like this is a capitalism-flavored move on par with "all phones should track the bad behavior of their owners and report it to the government." The point is that it hands over a lot of control.

What if Google decides to expand the topics to include things like "seeking reproductive care" in a state like Texas? Could that be used to try to target folks seeking abortions, potentially with legal action? All of these are hypotheticals, but they're all potential destinations if we continue in this direction.

Hence the EFFs warning.

> Google via Chrome is directly tracking your interests

But Chrome doesn't send Google that data. The data doesn't leave Chrome. What leaves are the features.

> "all phones should track the bad behavior of their owners and report it to the government."

But behavior and identity are not being conveyed in this instance.

> The point is that it hands over a lot of control.

But you can disable it.

> What if Google decides to expand the topics to include things like "seeking reproductive care" in a state like Texas?

That would suck, but:

a) If this is done as intended it's anonymous

b) That would be insane