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Chrome now ships with a user-tracking ad platform baked in (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/tech@pawb.social
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Google's browser not only got new chrome, it now also uses keeps track of all websites you visit to generate a topic list for ads that is shared with websites directly. Nobody asked for that.

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[–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

This will never end. People keep justifying continuing to use Chrome/Windows/etc because "this sucks but I can tolerate it". And next week there will be a new anti-user feature. And next week a new one. And another. People incrementally adjust their tolerance, as if all they have to do is compromise "this much" and that will be the last time.

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

    At least in the case of Windows I can understand it, since its stranglehold on the OS market makes it so it's legitimately very, very difficult for people to switch since they'll often rely on Windows-only software that might also work poorly in Wine on Linux, if it works at all. My mom uses many such pieces of software for her job. Chrome though, it feels like there really is no real reason to keep using it other than plainly being stubborn and/or afraid of change. Chrome doesn't even barely have any real killer features other than Google having intentionally made using some of their services slightly worse to use on Firefox, which I would hardly call a "feature" either.

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

    @ngoomie @yote_zip the major reason i have sympathy for is job lock-in -- i've certainly used machines at my work (where you get no dedicated personal machine and can't install new software without begging ITS) that have Chrome Only. if there are tools that only work in Chrome browsers, i'm not surprised, but i haven't heard of them yet... (I could 100% switch to Linux if i could only get Adobe software functional on it, which i sometimes need for work)

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Honestly, even as someone who's big on only ever using Linux and never having to use Windows as my actual operating system ever again, I've spun up VMs running Windows so I can run Photoshop or something, because the Linux alternatives like GIMP really pale in comparison. Like, I actually hate using GIMP for some stuff at all.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    @ngoomie it's a real bummer! i'm optimistic that something like Affinity's editing software will be a bit easier to get up and running via wine or even proton but i've had no luck so far. i don't love VMs or even draconian winetricks setups but it's the only way to use linux as much as i like

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