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by fidotron 530 days ago
It is because Google want a situation where they have a monopoly over being able to track web users, and Chrome is a major part of that.

Because that is so blatantly anti competitive the adtech industry manipulates it into a sort of war of opaque identifiers (“user resettable device identifiers”) , attached to things like Roku, smart TV and phones, which then can be passed along with bid requests for ads and later used to effectively target people even on other devices in the same household, conveniently only by some players in the adtech world who then charge more.

Breaking the Chrome monoculture will not solve this problem by itself, but it is a necessary step in getting there.
1 comments
Hizonner 530 days ago
You're not going to even improve the problem without completely shutting down the entire "personalized" advertising industry. Which I'm totally on board for, mind you.
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fidotron 530 days ago
That is true, and part of that would have to be enabling people to make money from web type content without shoving ads in it (or it being an ad for something else).

My personal, controversial, conception of the future is to return to the notion of the Internet as a network of other networks, and then enable devs and content creators to sell apps and experiences which operate privately within those networks.

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Hizonner 530 days ago
> That is true, and part of that would have to be enabling people to make money from web type content without shoving ads in it (or it being an ad for something else).

While I think that would be good, I did say personalized advertising, not all advertising. If every visitor to site.com sees the same rotation of ads, there's no need to track anybody. Still obnoxious and a vector for malware, of course. But not really the same problem.

> My personal, controversial, conception of the future is to return to the notion of the Internet as a network of other networks, and then enable devs and content creators to sell apps and experiences which operate privately within those networks.

It never really was that, you know. And I think putting everybody in walled gardens would be even worse than ad spyware.

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