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No Google Topics in Vivaldi
- stareatgoats 3y agoSo there, another reason I'm liking Vivaldi more and more.
- gardenhedge 3y agoIt wasn't on my radar until this post. Just downloaded it.
- bugfix 3y agoHow long until big websites start implementing feature detection to block browsers without this API?
- ithkuil 3y agoWhat stops a browser implementing the API but feeding made up information through it?
- Groxx 3y agoNothing. Until Web Environment Integrity lands too. (afaik there's no FloC attestation, but I'm not 100% confident about that)
- janc_ 3y agounfortunately, both blocking the API, or faking it, will be abused to track users, unless a significant number of users do it in the same way...
- ithkuil 3y agoBecause a tracker could detect that your topic of interest are fake? How would they know?
- majormajor 3y agoIf they're relatively unique they can just track you across sites and use your browsing history instead.
- sltkr 3y agoSimple. If the Topics API is disabled, then you are a nerd who spends too much time on sites like Hacker News, and they can show you ads accordingly.
- janc_ 3y agoDepends, but either the topics never changing, or them changing too randomly, could all be detected when combined with other tracking, and become part of your identity as such...
- peddling-brink 3y agoI imagine a browser extension could do that.
- denverllc 3y agoLuckily many websites won’t need to, since I’m sure Cloudflare will offer disabling Google topics as a sign you’re a bot. (I say this after getting stuck on a Cloudflare “are you a bot?” loop that I couldn’t get out of and that prevented me from getting to my site.) Of course, the actual bots will just enable topics and fill it with random data, and only the privacy conscious will be negatively affected.
- kylehotchkiss 3y agoThat loop is sometimes a DNS issue (like with the archive.is type of sites when you have cloudflare DNS or private relay enabled)
- RamblingCTO 3y agoarchive.is isn't only broken because of cloudflare, also happens with cloud9
- kzhe 3y agoCan't we also enable random data
- JoshTriplett 3y agoHow many projects do browser detection and block everything that isn't Chrome? A tiny fraction of websites do that. It's absolutely a concern, just as sites relying on WEI is a concern. But it seems unlikely that sites will intentionally choose to exclude a non-trivial portion of their visitors. If you want to make it even less likely, though, this is a great time to switch to Firefox (for its independence, as a browser not based on the Chrome engine at all).
- afavour 3y agoEh. You can already detect ad blockers and the vast majority of sites don’t bother to do so. I’d be surprised if this was much different.
- snailmailman 3y agoMore and more sites are detecting and blocking adblockers. I’ve encountered so many articles on my phone recently that are completely unreadable. I click a link from mastodon or reddit or wherever and all I get is a full page unskipable “disable your Adblock to continue” message. And then I click back, and scroll past. Never getting to read past the headline
- NelsonMinar 3y agoI'm surprised how many sites now have "you seem to be using an ad blocker" popups. Many of them still let you see the content after clicking away a nag, but it's only a step away from fully disabling. (uBlock Origin does a good job hiding these so I mostly don't notice it; but with NextDNS as an ad blocker it's a big problem.)
- LispSporks22 3y agoIf only these web sites could get some kind guarantee from the user’s browser that the browser will show ads and the user’s eye balls will see them… some kind of “web integrity” if you will…
- someNameIG 3y agoI doubt websites would want to block all Safari users, there's too many given iOS.
- 123yawaworht456 3y agopeople who care about this kind of thing will simply cease to use those websites. I have never clicked on facebook/instagram links because of their login walls, I have ceased to click on twitter links since they've implemented theirs, I will do the same even with youtube when it inevitably follows the same path. ultimately, I understand why we don't matter to them, so I don't really mind.
- BenFranklin100 3y agoI’m disappointed by the tech community’s acceptance of privacy invasions, and it’s denial of the long-term corrosive societal effects of the surveillance economy. I’m not surprised however. Quoting Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
- skybrian 3y agoI'm disappointed (though not surprised) by people condemning things without trying them. You can turn this feature on, wait a week, and see what Ad Topics it finds. I've done that and in my case it's entirely harmless: * Arts & entertainment * Computers & electronics * Internet & telecom * News * Online communities It seems better than whatever nonsense third-party cookies are doing? Maybe it's different for someone else, but I'll get concerned when someone actually reports a problem.
- gaganyaan 3y agoa) coarse grained tracking is still tracking, and you're revealing more bits than you might think, here's a good example with current tracking: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ b) this is just the tip of the camel's nose. Expect the tent to be crowded soon if the topics api gets pushed through c) third party cookies are dying on their own, thankfully. It's not a binary choice, we can reject both the old bad technology and the new bad technology
- klabb3 3y ago> b) this is just the tip of the camel's nose. Expect the tent to be crowded soon if the topics api gets pushed through This. Obviously Google know it’s controversial and rolls it out in the most innocent way possible. This is always the playbook for unpopular changes. The short term goal is clearly to get the infrastructure to be accepted. That’s how I’d do it, after thinking about for 10 seconds.
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- bastard_op 3y agoChrome is the new Internet Explorer, hell even Microsoft threw in behind it, they like spyware-ish telemetry, so why not. What is sad is more and more common websites simply don't work in Firefox anymore (chase.com), so it's literally back to the days of running in IE6 or nothing, but Chrome is now that pestilence.
- dylan604 3y agoI recently was asked to evaluate a 3rd party package for possible use. With Firefox my default browser (I don't even have Chrome installed), I tried running their demo of the software but immediately received an alert like notification that it will not work at all with Firefox. And that's the end of evaluating that package. Next? Spoke directly to the devs, and they are aware of the one specific method which nullifies Firefox's use. They are working to eliminate the use of that one method, so at least they are not complacent with just accepting Chrome or bust.
- andwomggazzz662 3y agoHow much you wanna bet "that one specific method" winds up being one of Chromes adware tools. Unless this is a very low level package, I find it hard to believe it just doesn't work with Firefox in 2023, at least if we are referring to the basic browser APIs for rendering, interpreting, sandboxing, etc. In other words, if they aren't doing something systems level that exposes significant differences in the underlying browser APIs, then what's the cause of the issue? Most application level differences (with the exception of the adware) are very very minor. That didn't used to be the case, but it certainly is today. I.e. you would have to put some effort in/intentionality is usually required to break something in Chrome but not Firefox and vice versa as a standard user program. Its not recommended, but I rarely see front end folks doing the same kind of browser tests that used to be industry standard these days, because it simply isn't an issue and if it is, it's because you are knowingly using a non-standard feature (which is usually adware related). The fact that they figured out the cause so quickly implies it's something like that. Systems level issues would require significant time to investigate and probably the involvement of experts in modern browser implementations. Just my two cents as an ex front end guy.
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- tedunangst 3y agoSeems like a weird choice to build your entire product on such a hostile underlying.
- dawnerd 3y agoAlso another reason to run a network wide ad blocker like AdGuard or pihole. Even if this tracking works it’s way through the ads will be useless if they don’t make it inside your network.
- j0ba 3y agoHave been using Vivaldi for a couple years now, and am mostly happy with it. It performs well with many tabs open, and is insanely configurable. It feels a little bit like the old Mozilla browser before Firefox, cuz it's got the kitchen sink, but the configurability allows you to pare it down. Great to see they take privacy seriously also.
- baxuz 3y agoThere's a simple option to disable this in Chrome: chrome://settings/adPrivacy/interests
- JadeNB 3y ago> There's a simple option to disable this in Chrome: > chrome://settings/adPrivacy/interests And eventually there'll be another setting in another location, and then it'll start accidentally forgetting your settings between versions, and then it'll start prompting you on start-up to make sure you really want a degraded browsing experience …. We know where this leads.
- codetrotter 3y agoDefaults matter. I don’t want to babysit the preference settings of my browser just to have my privacy preserved. I have other things to think of. That is why on my personal computers I do not use Google Chrome and for many years I haven’t.
- mynameisvlad 3y agoSure, for now. Who knows what a future update brings; either enabling it silently, changing the disabling flow, or even removing the option to disable altogether.
- DarkmSparks 3y agovivaldi android is currently my preferred browser. firefox on the linux desktop. These guys simply rock.
- mabbo 3y agoWhat's going to be interesting is the day that websites start to block users not providing data from this Topics API. "We need to make money to operate this service and we can't support users who won't help us do that", or something to that effect. I give it six months.
- malermeister 3y agoAnd that's where the GDPR comes in to save the day.
- Spivak 3y agoI mean it's all client side so just pick some generic topic you would find entertaining to see ads from and have an extension only ever serve that.
- malermeister 3y agoThat's effectively the same as their spyware telling them what you would find entertaining. The point is not needing to tell.
- mynameisvlad 3y agoNot at all. You're disabling the tracking and data aggregation elements in lieu of a static option which may or may not be accurate.
- charcircuit 3y agoReturning no topics is expected from legitimate users. If you aren't an ad network the API will regularly be empty since you will only get topics based off your own site's topic.
- jraph 3y agoHow convenient. Vivaldi relies on Google building Chrome using some of the money they make thanks to their dark patterns. They can just take Chrome when it's built and disable the dark patterns. But by further spreading Blink, they are part of the issue. Disabling Topics is nice for their users. In the short term at least. And they should, of course. They have nothing to gain from leaving this misfeature enabled. But Vivaldi: we don't need you to help Google in their browser dominance. This browser dominance is exactly why Google can pull such a feature out from their ass in the first place.
- deelly 3y agoUgh. By your logic Firefox also should be ostracized, because Mozilla also using some of the money that Google makes thanks to their dark patterns.
- jraph 3y agoFirefox at least does not participate in Chrome's dominance. I consider Firefox the better option for no. But indeed, the funding from Google is a big issue for me. I hope they eventually manage to get rid of it. It's not sustainable, and also one can't be 100% free to say fuck the Google's business model while relying on Firefox. I also suspect this funding may be preventing Firefox from being as good as possible with respect to privacy, to avoid upsetting Google. I would not be surprised there is something related in the contract between Google and Mozilla. More generally, all the 3 current mainstream browser engines depend on GAFAM funding and I don't like it. I'm looking at emerging alternatives with great interest. I see new developments on Servo and Ladybird with a good eye.
- opera-throw 3y agoI worked at Opera for a long time before it went Chinese, most of the time with Jon as CEO. Best as I can tell: Jon von Tetzchner always had one primary goal - to become an industry titan, primarily like Bill Gates. He founded Vivaldi after he was was thrown out by Opera's board in 2010. I don't have any insight into why that happened, but I do know that at that time he was a terrible leader who simply wasn't able to prioritize and scope at all. Exactly anything that was "good" had the highest priority. For the sake of his employees at Vivaldi, I really do hope that he has gone through some personal developments since then. He did have a bunch of positive traits too! Can't tell in detail without exposing myself though.
- Quai 3y agoCompared to Lars, Jon was hands on, and connected with the staff and products. I think I can count on one hand the times I saw Lars eating in the canteen. The company changed a lot after that, and not necessarily for the better. What made Opera great was the people working there. The amount of knowledge and raw talent that lived in the tight hallways of Waldemar Thranes gate 98 was impressive. Looking at Vivaldi's "Our Team" page, it looks they have almost recreated the same team from back when I joined. I miss that period!
- deelly 3y ago> Best as I can tell: Jon von Tetzchner always had one primary goal - to become an industry titan, primarily like Bill Gates. Could you please explain, in your opinion, why its bad that Jon von Tetzchner have a goal to become an industry titan?
- RamblingCTO 3y agoYou can't answer that yourself? He obviously puts the product above his need for greatness, so the product will suffer and most probably bad decisions affecting users will be made.
- deelly 3y agoYes, I can't answer it yourself, that's why I`m asking. Is it hard to understand from my question?
- awei 3y agoI feel like the main issue is the lack of diversity in browsers more than Chrome pushing forward the interests of its parent company. If we had more than a few browsers, the situation would be less precarious. I would go even further and say that the situation would be better if any developer could just build his own browser in a few weekends. Perhaps internet’s resilience and privacy resides in so many browsers that you cannot possibly control them all. If so, the main issue to solve would not be Chrome but the complexity and herculean task of writing software capable of running the complete web specification.
- Animats 3y agoThis feature should be referred to as "Google Big Brother", or something similar, and pushed as a meme. Suggestions?
- randyrand 3y agoI just switched to Vivaldi yesterday! So far so good. The extension support is great.
- willywanker 3y agoTime for another round of 'I told you so' for expecting any different from a browser made by a company that runs on selling user data to advertisers for fun and profit. I've shunned Chrome and its various Blink based bastard spawn (including Firefox for the last 12 years, they may as well have dumped Gecko for Blink at this point) like the plague right from 2008 for precisely this reason.
- jraph 3y ago> various Blink based bastard spawn (including Firefox for the last 12 years What? Firefox can't be included in "Blink-based", it's based on Gecko. > they may as well have dumped Gecko for Blink at this point What?
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- fieldbob 3y agoI like Vivaldi because they play a lot with their own unique creative ideas and they are not affraid to do it. while other big companies becomes very conservative about the way they change
- butz 3y agoWhat is stopping user from modifying API response and sending a list of nonsense topics or randomizing them as often as possible?
- Scion9066 3y agoNothing, they just get randomized ads based on those topics in response.