[yobuko]

I see a lot of comments on HN and other sites which could be summarized as whatabout-ism or defending the changes on the premise that "I know someone|people that will welcome this change."

The problem is that I can't help shaking the feeling that those comments are either written by people who do not consider privacy to be a right, or fail to understand GDPR, or are Google paid shills / fanatics.

Ultimately the changes represent dark patterns and I fear the worst is yet to come for the darling browser of the web. Someone somewhere at Google made the decision to turn Google Chrome in to AOL v2.

I take solace in the fact that AOL's walled garden approach ultimately failed.