Google is now moderating user's bookmarks and removing them. - lemm.ee
lemm.eeOriginal Toot: https://strangeobject.space/@silvermoon82/110969122337810598
[https://strangeobject.space/@silvermoon82/110969122337810598]
You must log in or register to comment.
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
- 0 users online
- 57 users / day
- 383 users / week
- 1.5K users / month
- 5.7K users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 2.44K Posts
- 57.3K Comments
- Modlog
cinched
Not bookmarks. Google collection
Even if you hate Google, don’t go around spreading bullshit, please
laughing in firefoxian.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !spiderverse@lemmy.world
It’s like big tech corporations have been having a tournament called ‘Who’s Most Fucked Up’ Cup for past few years, we’re getting into the finals lately and Google and Microsoft are favourites for the golden medal.
This is misleading. Not sure if by ignorance or malice, but it’s very misleading.
This isn’t happening with your browser bookmarks. This is Google Collections, which is a shareable bookmarking feature, meaning it can be made publicly available. That’s why it’s moderated. It’s basically Google’s version on something like Pinterest.
https://www.androidpolice.com/create-google-collections/
IMO defending Google is the underhanded move.
DAE GOOGLE BAD???
I don’t give a fuck if you like Google or not, but spreading misleading FUD is the real underhanded move.
There are plenty of valid reasons to be critical of Google. This ain’t one.
IMO targeting someone you don’t like with antipathy regardless of their actions is a sociopathic move.
Sharing misleading info means people are less likely to believe you on real issues.
Firefox IS better, Chrome’s meddling IS a problem. We don’t need to make stuff up in favor of that, and clarifying the point isn’t “defending Google”
Every single comment chain on this thread besides this chain are 100% wrong and operating on misleading information. I fucking hate how up in arms people get when they don’t even have the full picture - even the basics, like having read the fucking article.
Even so - it’s not an excuse meddle with it, whatever you call it. Fuck Google.
So if you have a collection with political targets and the folder is just google maps links to their houses with their names as the bookmark name google shouldn’t be allowed to stop you from spreading this?
Sure google is shitty but this feature is designed to share links with other people and sometimes those links can be dangerous so imho it’s absolutely necessary to moderate them at some level.
Depends if it’s illegal or not. In your case it’s probably illegal.
In that case they deleted a link to illegal content in their jurisdiction - so should be fine - shouldn’t it?
You should be mad about the things google does. I don’t think this particular thing is unreasonable though.
Why not?
They have a duty to moderate public-facing systems. This is a link/bookmark sharing system, so obviously bookmarks that are pointing to things that are illegal are going to be dealt with.
They don’t have to, they choose to. You can share bookmarks on Firefox, but Mozilla doesn’t filter nor censor them Orwellian style.
I’m pretty sure there are reasonable expectations by governments that you maintain adequate moderation, especially the EU. If Mozilla were to deploy a public facing system and not moderate it, they would catch hell from the EU and likely be fined out the ass.
Orwellian is when company does thing I don’t like
No, it’s when the company attempts to assume the role of a governing body and delves into the privacy of people’s bedrooms.
No, that’s when they’re fascists
OP claimed it’s his private bookmarks not facing public
the site doesn’t contain any illegal content. It’s just google being overzealous and intrusive
Google Keep Notes has a sharing note feature. You think it would ok for them to sniff what you noting and delete it if they didn’t like it?
one again - there’s nothing illegal on that website, nor is accessing it or sharing it’s address
Let’s try reading the articles before discussing them, next time.
OP is mistaken. Read the email in the screenshot.
If you’re going to store something on someone else’s computer (Google cloud), they have every right to control what is and is not allowed on their systems. Don’t like it? Use encryption, selfhost, etc…
I would love to hear that from Google’s spokesperson.
This person fucks.
Chad comment although I agree with other person that this is not the worst of Google’s crimes.
There was a post on this yesterday.
They are moderating something, the issue with the article was it’s not user’s bookmarks. It’s some app-specific feature called collections.
edit: it’s the same post…it’s a bit weird linking a direct link to a lemee.ee post when they get federated here anyway…
That’s something I hate about the fediverse is that we have so many layers of links that you never get the original article, you get seven recursive links to other federated sites and maybe if you’re lucky on the last link you find the original article.
removed by mod
Honestly, I’m not surprised. Not just because of their lack of privacy (them knowing your bookmarks), but also legally. Some countries are trying to crack down on piracy, and other illegal material, asking companies (like Google) to do this.
Bottom line, don’t use Chrome, and Google Sync.
This doesn’t involve your browser bookmarks. Google Collections is a link sharing tool.
It doesn’t feel legal. A bookmark is textual data you’ve stored on your computer for later reference, and while it is on their application, somehow this feels wrong. It’s definitely wrong ethically, but is there something in the user agreement that says they have full reign of whatever the browser can touch?
There’s a comment above explaining that this isn’t quite the same as bookmarks
deleted by creator
Actually this is only on Google Collections which is a bookmark sharing service, not just the browser bookmark sync.
Your synced bookmarks should be unaffected as Google says everything in browser sync is encrypted locally before being synced, so Google shouldn’t be able to scan those (or really care about them at all)
They are doing it to protect themselves from legal liability specifically because of the public-facing nature of Google Collections bookmarks.
They don’t care about your synced bookmarks or browser history because it’s not public-facing and they aren’t legally liable for the contents
Pretty much everything you do on Chrome gets sent to Google. It is one of, if not the worst browsers, for privacy. Their Privacy Policy is pretty clear on this. It’s all for a better “user experience”.
I wonder how they did it. The sync data is supposed to be protected by E2EE where the key is derived from the user password or an separate sync password, at least before I abandon Chrome and go FF few years ago.
It’s not Chrome and it’s not through sync.
It’s Google Collections. Read the post.
Yes. I read that. Thank you.
And thanks the person clarifying it.
Last I looked, Chrome’s sync is not E2EE. Next to nothing (user space) is E2EE, in Google’s ecosystem. By default it’s only Encryption in Transit. I think you can enable a Passphrase (encryption on device), but that’s optional.
Idk then. I had a separate sync password which will not sync anything after logged on in Chrome until I gave that password.
deleted by creator
Encrypted between… Chrome and Chrome? Two installations of Google’s non-FOSS browser? You never really had control over that data.
At least what they claim to be back then.
What the actual hell? I hate this so much. Google won’t touch right-wing extremist content, yet they’ll just poof your bookmarks? Bullshit.
Well right wing extremists support their right to consume and subjugate the entire web into their jurisdiction, so… No real surprise they back the fascists and their openly violent goals and rhetoric.
For fun though put some content on there about using violence to defend against their violence and see how quick you get moderated into oblivion 😂
All the more reason to switch to Firefox
Wouldn’t change the rules of Google Collections?
This isn’t a Chrome thing…
Yep I use Firefox for everything, but I keep chrome installed as a backup when needed.
The most common reason for opening chrome is for Google related things. Certain google docs features like the add-ons store only worked in Chrome, but the add-ons themselves work anywhere. Or signing into Google Drive desktop app failed when the auth window opened in Firefox or Edge, but it worked in Chrome.
I just thought that was Chrome breaking things in other browsers intentionally, since no other services had that kind of issue.
Yeah Ive not heard of Pocket getting meddled with yet
I would but Firefox is behind on many things including UI, speed, and other things. One of the main reasons is compatibility. A lot of things in html, css, and js don’t yet work in Firefox but do on chromium based browsers. This is even clearly outlined by Mozilla in mdn web docs. The only thing with worse compatibility is safari (who could’ve seen that one coming). Also it seems like this is a Google thing so it probably only affects chrome and not chromium. I’m waiting for arc to be on Windows but if you want chrome without most of Google’s spyware shit just use chromium. You don’t need a chromium based browser if you can just use chromium itself.
Edit: you guys need to chill with the responses. There is so many that sync won’t let me respond despite me writing paragraphs that address everything you guys are concerned about like saying everything works (all of webkit doesn’t).
Yeah but if anything doesn’t work correctly it’s specifically because of the Chromium monopoly on the direction of web development. It’s almost a reason unto itself to move to Firefox. It’s like saying “what’s the point in shopping at a mom and pop store when Amazon basically won the future of capitalism anyway?” As an argument it’s just “let’s give up and let Google win.”
You’re being down voted and yet there’s daily posts on Firefox about x or y website not working lmao. Specifically things like YouTube and twitch. And lemmings, don’t virtue signal at me and pretend you don’t use those websites and instead use a fedi alternative
I’ve used Firefox on YouTube and Twitch for thousands of hours over the last years… never an issue. Doesn’t matter if it’s normal videos, memberships, live streams, chats, Prime rewards, reward drops, uploading videos to my own channel, …
Actually there was a small issue with live chats on YouTube having a memory leak, but that has been fixed for over a year now.
Uh, my main browser is Firefox on windows. I’m what cases does YouTube or twitch not work? I don’t use twitch anymore, but as of 4 years ago it was working fine. YouTube works fine as of last night for me
That sounds like someone who has never even used Firefox in the last 10+ years. What the hell dude.
Show me a popular website that doesn’t work in Firefox.
portal.office.com
Yeah the broad strokes work but lots of little features are broken in the admin center and in sharepoint
Firefox is faster than chrome now.
Unless you have several tabs open then it begins to bog down
Edit: I was speaking from real world experience with both, I’m a power user so my issues are probably an edge case but I have more issues with Firefox hanging than I did chrome. Despite that I won’t be switching back to chrome as I don’t like their recent push towards drm and disabling ad blocked
I’m a power user as well, and Firefox handles my hundreds of tabs perfectly fine. On Android it honestly handles them better than Chrome, though there are a few UI features missing there, like tab reordering.
Btw tab reordering is only missing for private tabs on the latest ff on Android.
Unfortunately there is still no acceleration when reordering so the ux is not great when you have many tabs.
Maybe it’s an issue with my PC or an extension then, bummer
I’d say generally speaking it’s more likely that issues stem from extensions than from Firefox itself, so maybe try looking into that.
After doing some testing, there were a few things that could have caused it, I had a lot of saved sessions from one extension, I cleared those out and lowered the amount of sessions it can store, I had a session app that would cloudsync my sessions, and I noticed when it was syncing another tab manager extension I was using shit the bed so I disabled the cloudsynver one, and I good ol reddit enhancement suite and moderator toolbox were still enabled, and for some reason it seems one of those two were bogging down other things quite a bit.
As of now it’s running muuuuch more smoothly
Mine runs fine with many many tabs, I basically don’t think about it.
Sometimes people will test browser speed by opening a different browser for the first time while the other is still running. Opening chrome while Firefox is running can make chrome look slow, and so will the opposite.
If you actually test properly, you won’t notice a difference. Officially, Firefox is faster
The compatibility issues arise only because Chrome/Chromium dominates the market, hence Google weld the power to define the web standards.
deleted by creator
@kadu i have said this a million times. In lots of cases, open-source linux based software doesnt cut it for a lot of work use cases :(
Where did I mention Linux? Oh yeah Chromium that Chrome is based on is open source too. Doesn’t that work for you?
@umami_wasbi the bot reblogged you and nobody had even mentioned you and its a lil funny
deleted by creator
This argument does exist, yes, but you as a user have an obligation to be more than a mindless consumer. You can make informed choices also. Many people (maybe not a majority, granted) do
deleted by creator
This honestly sounds kinda pathetic, I hope you’re arguing just to argue.
If this is your attitude then you deserve all the bad things google does to you.
What “things in html, css, and js” does Firefox not support that prevents you from using it?
WebGPU has been the biggest one for me, but most sites don’t even use it.
Firefox has been slow to roll out some new CSS features. As an example I have been waiting a long time for the has() pseudo-class. TBF it’s behind a flag but the other browsers have had it for a while now. They were also the last browser to roll out container queries.
Although this doesn’t prevent me from using Firefox it does make me unable to use all the newest shiny CSS features when developing websites.
I love Firefox but the slow pace they release features is a bummer. I wish they had more resources to out towards new css featuress
The only thing I’ve found that Firefox didn’t work right with is certain SharePoint features, which unfortunately is a show stopper for me.
well beyond don’t be evil