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Google engineers want to make ad-blocking (near) impossible (stackdiary.com)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 59 points 3 years ago (24 children)

Google controls way too much. People need to stop using their products. Many people complaining right now are still using Google stuff. If everyone concerned stop using Google stuff, that would cause them to reconsider very quickly.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    I still find it ironic that I use their products (Pixel) specifically to not use their products (GrapheneOS). Though in the past it was OnePlus with LinageOS.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    It is ironic, but the Pixel is good piece of hardware. So you discard the crap (Google software) and keep what is good (the hardware). That is the way forward. Discard chrome, keep Chromium or Brave for example.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I'm genuinely curious. Is it feasible that they maintain their own chromium forks, or will the work become too much if Google keeps inserting more and more crap into it?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 years ago

    There are already several projects based on Chromium that are very well established such as Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera. The project will continue just fine without Google if need be. If they all resist the changes together, Google will have a problem. I'm not expecting anything from Microsoft, but the others might.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Trouble is that means using an iPhone. I just came from there. Apple suck in their own unique ways and are no better really.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    iPhone is far from the only alternative out there. There are plenty of de-Googled solutions for Android like LineageOs. If you are more technically inclined, Graphene is superior to iphone in security also. These solutions can make use of the playstore or proxy it through Aurora depending on your personal preferences.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    At least one of them requires buying a Google phone to install it on :)

    In fact probably all decent compatible phones still involve licensing fees to Google in the purchase price, all of the "alternative" OSes still rely on Google to develop the code base that they copy and strip down, etc. The only other one I can think of is Ubuntu phone, which would be so incomplete you might as well carry a dumbphone at that point.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    Yes, the Pixel is a very good piece of hardware once you remove the crap software. If not the Pixel, there are plenty of other phone manufacturers around the world. Purism is another interesting option. Android is an open source project and Google cannot shut it down. There will always be ways. The majority are actually pretty smart and capable, just afraid of change. They wake up at some point though.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (6 children)

    Yup. Start by not using Google's search engine. Use DuckDuckGo, instead.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago (4 children)

    Duckduck is definitely a good start, but keep in mind it just anonymizes Google search for you. Brave, Quant, Mojeek and more have indexed their own databases. We need entirely different setups to get around Google's massive censorship and opinion shaping algos that Duckduck cannot bypass. Searx is also interesting as it allows you to choose from a large list of different search engines.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    How is the experience of using those search engines with their own indexes? At quick glance, brave seems adequate, but would like to know what others think.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    I think they are pretty good, and return some stuff that is censored out of Google and Bing. And if I don't find what I'm looking for, its very easy to use Bing which is pretty similar to Google. Microsoft is no better than Google, but we can let them serve us when it suits us, rather than the other way around.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Google controls way too much. People need to stop using their products.

    At his point it's like saying stop using the internet. Also most don't even have the freedom to totally ditch google, since time and effort and knowledge of alternatives are still a scarce resources. Also work and school might be tied to their products. I fear they are too big to fail. This btw why any sort of Open source, crypto, fediverse shit is only the second best option in my option when taking on the tech giants. My preferred option would be total nationalization of big tech platforms and handling them as public utilities. Drop them under some new UN institution and we would golden.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago

    If a website stops working because it won't let you block ads, then THEY'RE the one with the problem, not us. I won't stop blocking advertising just because some company decides that my home is their place of business and says it's "not allowed."

    The Internet is designed to route around damage (like the kind of damage caused by companies that try to make parts of it unusable). Folks will create new, open-source browsers, or flock to alternative websites that respect their privacy (and property).

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    At his point it’s like saying stop using the internet. No it's not, there are plenty of very good alternatives. I know because I haven't used anything Google in years and I fully engage with society. People just have to put in some effort and stop being spoiled babies and whining all the time when everything is not given to them ready to use and free.

    My preferred option would be total nationalization of big tech platforms and handling them as public utilities. Sounds good, but you forget that governments in the West are simply employees of the big corps and banks. It would be the same shit, probably worse because now they wouldn't have to pretend.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    but you forget that governments in the West are simply employees of the big corps and banks.

    True, or it's more like private public blob, with the private part dominating, but better to have nominal democratic and legistlative control than total corporate impunity to make and change the rules as the go and only being limited with nominal legislation by corporate puppet government. Also I mean something trans national, like the UN. obviously just giving all social media to their respective governments would just lead to same problems and wold still just leave the social media sphere into a plaything of US gov, that it is already, (and that why it will never happen because it would require US gov cooperating). But the minimal gain from all this would be that it would be only the government spying on you, not both government and the corporations.

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