Nah. If you want to be outraged at Google, at least be correct.
This has to do with Google "collections", not synced bookmarks. Afaik, collections are a thing you only access on mobile through the google app, this doesn't even have anything to do with Chrome.
If you run chrome on mobile, for example, you don't have access to the collections. It's only through the google app.
Almost certain they monitor collections because they can be shared with public.
Beats me, I only use chrome if firefox cannot display the site correctly. And it’s a case to case basis at that, it has to be that I really really need to access that site.
Also i rarely use the Google apps that came with my phone. The most probably used one is Maps.
Edit : so yeah, I forgot. I’m on Android. There’s that, no escaping from them on my part. I can’t be bothered with using and installing my own phone OS.
I’m with you. I’ve disabled some of the more intrusive system apps and Google apps, but there’s no replacement for Maps atm. The best I’ve found is OsmAnd, but it is unusable for me because there’s no way to track movement while observing the convention of north = up.
Basically the Google equivalent of Pocket Reader; saves a whole bunch of links from Google News/Articles for you, Google search, and general web links. It’s not the same as your Chrome bookmarks (though at one point they were considering merging them until everyone hated it).
Ok, I just checked. My collections consist almost entirely of saved maps locations of which restaurants and tourist places I want to visit. Interesting.
I’m getting really sick at the amount of misinformation that gets spread here. There’s plenty of stuff to hate Google without making shit up, and resorting to misleading titles.
They aren’t. They are made from links that appear in Google search results. Google is notifying the person that the link you’ve saved is being removed. Therefore it will be removed from your collection as well.
Eh… the ultimate question, what if it’s a collection of CSAM links?
Some moderation is fine, especially when it can be shared pretty easily. This isn’t private bookmarks, it’s “private” bookmark collections.
Edit: For those downvoting, this is the same concept as a private Reddit/facebook community. Just because it’s “invite only” doesn’t mean it’s free from following the rules of the whole site.
Private has various meanings in various contexts. If I take you to the private booth at a club, does it mean I’m allowed to slap around the waiter? No, of course not because rules still apply in private places hosted by a third party.
If you want privacy in the context you explicitly mean, you shouldn’t be using anyone else’s hardware to begin with. If you expect any third party company to be fine with posting anything on them, you’re gonna have a bad time.
For example, how many lemmy instances are fine with you direct linking to piracy torrents?
I’d not expect the private booth to have the club’s employee sitting there and waiting for me to do something that is against the rules preemptively.
We mostly argue about semantics, but in this instance you are trying to excuse some very questionable behaviour by companies by saying something along the lines of “well you better go and live in a forest then”. And I don’t think that’s a good take.
For example, how many Lemmy instances are fine with you direct linking to piracy torrents?
Irrelevant, as all content on Lemmy is public in a proper sense of this word.
Irrelevant, as all content on Lemmy is public in a proper sense of this word.
/sigh
How many file hosting services let you share pirated data, publicly?
Before you start in on “it’s not the same” it absolutely is. It’s private data, which is being shared through a link publicly. Just like bookmark collections.
And once that file has been identified as piracy, it is very often fingerprinted and blacklisted from not only that instance, but all instances past, present and future.
Also, it’s not the same. A link to a website is not “pirated content”. A link to a website in a “collection” not shared with anybody is not publicly available pirated content.
Why would Google preemptively ban a set of characters that does not constitute a slur and is perfectly legal to exist?
Why would Google preemptively ban a set of characters that does not constitute a slur and is perfectly legal to exist?
Because they can? Unless your argument is that a third party site should be forced to allow anything that isn’t illegal, or a slur, I’m not really following your train of thought here.
My point is that you should not excuse big corporations for clearly overstepping their bounds when it comes to moderation (as in “minority report” style moderation).
For Google, it would probably be even cheaper to only check URLs in collections that were shared with anybody, at a point the owner attempts to share them. Instead, they preemptively hide them from you, because “this set of characters offends us”.
This is something people should be angry about, not find an excuse for.
Yup. As an analogy, we rent apartments but that doesn’t revoke our right to privacy. We’ve decided people deserve privacy even if they’re only renting and not owning. Same should be true when one is renting space online to store things.
When those links are hosted on Google servers, publicly available to anyone handed the link to them?… how is that a private space?
This isn’t reaching into your phone and checking the information you store on it, this is checking links you added and shared with others using their service. They absolutely have the right to check them.
If I go into a public park, put up a tent, then start breaking the parks rules, I’m not “in the clear” just because I’m in a tent and didn’t invite anyone else in.
This once more reminds me of the guy in Sweden who got assaulted by police, in his bed, because an American institution searched through his Yahoo mail and found pictures and videos of him and his 30 year old boyfriend and incorrectly flagged it as CSAM, and then forwarded it to Swedish authorities.
There was no justice after that. No repercussions for either the Swedish police or the American government, and no damages paid to the guy.
Could this sort of surveillance stop abuse of minors? Yeah absolutely, but at what cost?
Yeah, absolutely. That’s literally what I said. In fact CSAM should come bundled on every single electronic device. Then it won’t be a problem anymore.
Of course not. My comment was in response to the discussion about companies going through private emails and the like (which I recognise the original post isn’t about, but that’s what this conversation turned into) and how I take issue with that. You might argue that we have no right to privacy when we use products like gmail and whatnot, which would be a fair argument if they didn’t already dominate the market.
The fact that you think “privacy” existed even then is telling. The only thing that changed in that regard with the so-called Patriot BS is whether the gov’t could do it without the guile that otherwise had been SoP for decades. 🤦🏼♂️
I call them human parrots, they like to repeat words or phrases that they do not understand or lack full understanding to get the approval of their caretakers and receive treats.
It’s really that simple for much of their products. I really don’t understand why people still insist on using chrome, in particular. Google is a horrible company that would literally sell you into slavery if it was legal and they thought it’d boost their ad business somehow.
Part of the problem is that Google has an entire ecosystem that is ridiculously useful and is designed to hook people and keep them around. And once they’re hooked it’s really hard to move away from, even if it’s in their best interest.
Google has lots of problems but “a walled garden” it absolutely is not.
There’s an open source version of Android with hundreds of forks.
There’s an open source version of Chrome with dozens of forks.
You can install literally any APK you want on Android without any workaround shitfuckery, rooting or jailbreaking.
All Google apps are available on iOS and MacOS.
People use Google products because, from a pure user standpoint, they’re a compelling option.
You can sign up for a Google Workspace account and have virtually everything you need to run a business at a compelling price. And it all works quite well.
None of that means they aren’t using their domination nefariously but it sure as shit is not a walled garden.
This reads like a Google ad. I know you’re not a Google marketing shill. They don’t need it. Their users will justify their own choice to the point their literally lose the scope of the thread.
Depends on your goals I think. Microsoft isn’t very likely to ever abandon their office suite, since it’s an integral part of their business. Google could do that tomorrow.
If you want to get away from big evil corporations, then no they’re obviously not an alternative.
I think there are Google Docs clones you could self-host.
OnlyOffice, which is included in NextCloud and allows for co-editing, works fine in my experience. Microsoft Office Online is slightly more sophisticated, but it also feels more bloated in my experience.
There's also a markdown editor allowing for co-authoring in Nextcloud. It lacks proper track changes, but for drafting up a document together it's great. Then you can just convert to word or latex when it's time to revise.
For most of my co-authoring needs I use Overleaf, which is a fantastic online Latex editor.
Yes! The ones I listed are just my preferred solutions for simultaneous co-authoring. Whenever I just need regular office software LibreOffice is my go to. :)
Unfortunately, parts of that ecosystem start deteriorating as they slowly abandon the product, until it reaches a point of being borderline useless. Then, they just deactivate it with little to no warning. Sometimes they just shut things down even if they’re popular (such as Google Poly).
For example, their line of home security cameras are getting worse in quality and usefulness. I feel like it’s only a matter of time until the Nest service shuts down.
I don’t think Google will shut down nest anytime soon. They gather very useful telemetry about their “customers” and use that data to train models, and ah-hoc send your front door video to law enforcement whenever they want it.
Perhaps, but there is absolutely no development or bug fixing happening on their software. There hasn’t been a software update in years, and the hardware has been a crapshoot for just as long.
I went from chrome to Firefox and while there is a slight learning curve (like private browsing is ctrl + shift + P instead of Chrome’s ctrl + shift + n?) But I’ve been having a great time with it.
From the collections yes, I can’t see that item there. They are just bookmarks from mobile device though, it’s been so many years I didn’t even know that was there lol.
E2E encryption is only (potentially) effective if the threat is a MITM. If your threat model shows any possibility for your threats to be on either end, it is effectively useless.
Now I’m not saying that you should model Chrome as a threat, but I’m certainly saying that you also can’t be certain you don’t need to. The whole thing is closed source, the publisher is a Machiavellian megacorporation; and if I were Google, and had to spy on users for profit, that’s certainly where I’d start. You know, as anonymized metrics, to “help improving Chrome”.
Edit: oh and, I haven’t checked what they mean by that, but potentially, the E2EE is meant in the context of the transit only, meaning the data at rest is not encrypted, on your computer, or on the Google servers.
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