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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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It's not overly simplistic. It's simply not a privacy feature if the core functionality is sharing your data. Privacy is if they stopped sharing data. Sharing more data is antithetical to privacy.
The transparency of Topics is at least an improvement. Previously you would be targeted - or rather discriminated - by highly questionable traits.
Hopefully with this move regulators will finally step in to outlaw the previous behaviour. That would be a minimal step in the right direction.
I doubt it. And I see no reason to believe Google is not going to continue that behavior, especially for those using a different browser.
Yes but this is local to your browser and you’ll be able to edit and/or clear it out if you choose.
It’s not perfect, and I’m aware of which community this is, but this is vastly better than 3rd party cookies.
You say that as if clearing out cookies isn't also a thing one can do. All they're doing is opting you into more directly handing them your data. And I didn't see any mention that cookies will be discontinued by them anyway.
In the end, the big problem here is that it's being routed as a privacy feature when it's anything but. It's just a different kind of privacy violation.
It's simply not about privacy so it shouldn't be labeled as such.
Theoretically, Topics doesn't track anything beyond general interest categories (e.g. fishing, shoes, technology, dancing, etc) and would replace current data collection systems for targeted ads. If actually implemented as described, it would result in the ad market collecting and sharing less data on users. Basically, Topics is a step in the direction that you're talking about.
I only see evidence that this replaces FLoC, but not cookies. Even Google's statements about what cookies and data they collect hasn't changed. This is a Chrome specific capability. Topics replaces Federated Learning of Cohorts which didn't use cookies either.
Edit: nevermind. FLoC was a technology that allowed ad data to be collected even when third party cookies are disabled. Essentially it allowed chrome to collect data that Firefox and Safari already blocked when third party cookies are disabled.
So this isn't replacing cookies at all, just FLoC. And it's not replacing something "worse". It's still totally something that Chrome is collecting without cookies or any need to do so.