this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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The thing is, what Google has rolled out is really fucking good already. Sites only get to know general "topics", and only ones you've used recently. It's controlled by your own browser so you can easily opt out entirely or block certain topics you don't want from being associated with you. They also specifically decided not to add topics for sensitive topics from even being available in the Topics API.
It's really fucking good for privacy, unless you're an extremist who believes there shouldn't be anything even vaguely resembling relevant advertising. Which is the exact same group of people criticising Firefox here. And also the exact same group of people inadvertently extending the life of 3rd party cookies that Google is trying so desperately to kill off. But they can't kill it off because the privacy extremists have meant take-up of Topics isn't high enough.
Extremist: Someone who doesn't want to be tracked or reported on.
It's someone not willing to make any modest concessions in order to make the vast array of free content available viable to create. Modest concessions like your browser saying "here's a small subset of topics the person might be interested in". You've got to be pretty extremist to suggest that that's privacy-invading.
Then why did Mozilla deploy this silently, with it enabled silently?
If it's so good for end users, wouldn't they shout it from the rooftops?
Further, Google, et al, created the battlefield by 2000, and now you're sitting here blaming users for being suspicious of people who've repeatedly, over TWO DECADES, made it clear they have, at best, an antagonistic attitude towards web users.
At this point, no, fuck them. I will block everything, at every turn. Just the same as I'll never let the guy who stole half my CD collection back into my house.