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.
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 shouldn’t be monitored either way in my opinion as it’s just a bunch of links, but especially not while still private.
Ultimately I don’t think it quite matters if it technically is bookmarks or “collections”, they seem clearly used in the same manner in this case.
I don’t care if you’re mad about it like I said. I just care about accuracy. The person in the screenshot and this thread’s title are both inaccurate.
I didn’t ever indicate I was mad, I simply stated my opinion. We already know it is inaccurate as you shared this in your original comment.
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.
Keep licking that Google boot.
Some torrent sites have been ordered to be entirely blocked in some countries so they probably have to check for them to comply with local laws.
These blocks are usually the job of the ISP’s in the country, mostly via DNS.
I don’t think a simple “collection” of URLs would ever fall under any of that.
Normally, I would fully agree with you, but well, don’t underestimate the stupidity of law makers: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/sign-our-petition-to-stop-france-from-forcing-browsers-like-mozillas-firefox-to-censor-websites/
France is always special! It’s honestly sad that they constantly try to pull so many stupid things off.
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.
CSAM is never an excuse to violate everyone’s privacy.
I hate seeing people implying that it is. It’s no better then Patriot Act B.s that took away privacy in the name of catching terrorists.
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.
It is a private space when they are not shared publicly
Except that’s not how it works.
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.
Words used to have meaning, you know. Like, for example, the word “private”.
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.
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.
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.
That’s essentially what is going on here.
I guess we test and see whether I get banned.
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?
Crazy that I had to scroll past 9 other comments to reach this one. Maybe I oughta start sorting comments by top.
Wtf is a collections?
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.
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.
I like the maps integration with Android auto so that has to stay
My bookmarks can also be shared with the public though
I’m not aware of a way of making your bookmarks public through chrome.
You can access through google.com/save
That’s not a function of chrome though, I can do that on any browser.
Thats’s what I meant by posting the link, you can access it anywhere.
Okay sure but that’s not a service that google is explicitly providing and hosting on their server. Bookmarks are saved locally.
Aww man, I was hoping google was gonna clean my bookmark up for me.
Google keeps taking L’s and firefox keeps taking W’s. If they keep going maybe firefox will be most used browser again
How to make people care, though
A few days ago, a friend asked me what browser I was using, a question he asked me in a genuine manner of getting my opinion. When I asnwered that I was using Firefox, he - again, what seemed to be genuine - wanted to know why. Knowing that he likes to use adblockers, I then told him about Google’s recent attempts of attacking an open web, specificly mentioning ManifestV3 and WEI API and how they are a potential threat to his use of adblockers.
“Well, I use ublock origin on chrome and it still works, so I’ll keep using that.”
Apparently, I am not convincing enough.
deleted by creator
Unless they sort out their funding (find someone that is not Google for majority of their money), people shouldn’t care.
I don’t understand. You think people shouldn’t care about privacy? You think people shouldn’t care about one or two massive corporations having complete control over the internet?
Explain.
I think his point is that as long as Google is the primary funding source for Mozilla it’s not worth relying on Firefox because there’s always the risk Google will demand Mozilla capitulates and tows the line. Once/If Mozilla secure independent funding then they can be ‘trusted’
Oh, I see. For some reason, I thought they were referring to content creators and others who profit from Google ads or something like that.
And yeah, there’s a lot that Mozilla’s corporate branch needs to sort out, but Firefox and its forks are the only viable alternatives to chromium browsers right now, so people should still care about that.
“Perfection is the enemy of progress” … or something like that
🤔 So why can’t we just make our own browser then?
Making a browser isn’t terribly hard, and there’s dozens of ‘browsers’ (see nyxt, qutebrowser, vimb, brave, vivaldi, etc). Making a browser engine is hard, and expensive, which is why all of the alternatives i’ve used are either chromium or webkit based. The webkit ones seem to crash on anything with complex javascript. The chromium engine ones work great, however that doesn’t stop Google from making changes to the engine which people are up in arms about.
Browser engines are very, very, very, very very hard to make and maintain.
See: Opera and Microsoft Edge, which formerly ran on bespoke engines until they converted to Chromium because no one would support their browser.
It doesn’t matter, we literally have no choice. We either accomplish something very hard in our lives or suffer. And life is very very unkind to the indolent and downtrodden.
Not at all. They should find an alternative that cannot be just unplugged on demand.
Mozilla cannot be unplugged on demand. That would cause Google to become a monopoly, and they would be held to extreme harsh laws by the EU. Like in the case of IE6 back in the day.
Google does not want that, so they donate to Mozilla to keep Firefox as a competitor. And Firefox has to do jack shit in return other than exist.
The only way Firefox could be unplugged is if a new non-chromium browser becomes one of the big browsers.
This is all technically correct. Although I think it’s a little naive to say that a corporation “cannot” do something today. There are lots of things they technically cannot do yet it happens on daily basis.
I hate that I have to keep chrome on my machine because some sites I visit don’t work well, or at all, on Firefox.
I’ve heard a lot of people mention this recently and I must live a charmed life because I’ve never had this happen. There was I think maybe, once where I was having a problem with a site and it said that I needed to use a browser like chrome so I begrudgingly did and it still didn’t work so I don’t count that as an example and other than that, I’ve just never seen it. In fact I’m pretty sure it’s not since about 2001 that I’ve seen any website give me shit with only working on certain browsers and that was sites designed to work on IE6 or something.
Just had it happen yesterday with the the students loan simulator. It wouldn’t work on Firefox and kept getting hung and freezing. Opened it in chrome and it worked perfectly first time.
It’s not common, but enough that I keep chrome installed for now.
When someone sends me links to instagram on my phone, firefox mobile can’t play the thing, I’m forced to open the link in chrome to watch the video. There are lots and lots of websites and webapps that don’t work or barely open on firefox. I’m forced to regularly open every week a few links on chrome/chromium on my computer as well. Although the amount as reduced a lot, some years ago it was worse.
I’ve used several sites that just won’t scroll in Firefox. Coursera is awful for this and a lot of job sites seem to use the same library because they have the exact same issue
The most annoying thing is the website that insist on displaying a banner everytime you visit to tell you that it won’t work on Firefox. And then it works perfectly fine
Brave or ungoogled chromium are other options
both are still just chromium and as such still subject to google’s bullshittery like amp, manifest v3 and web integrity
Use brave
That’s just chrome with a hat on and does nothing to help reduce the encroachment of Google as the internet’s sole provider
But it is more private than chrome and makes heavy modifications for privacy/freedom’s sake it is definitely better than actual chrome if you have to use something chromium based
it’s literally made by an adtech company. you’re falling for marketing hype
seeing as no one has delivered proof so far i would argue that thats not the case.
i mean one can literally check for themself (even i, if i could be bothered)
It’s still chromium based, which I’m trying to get away from as much as possible.
and here i am stuck using chrome, firefox doesn’t install properly. i’ve tried a bunch of times. i have a chromebook.
Do you need ChromeOS? If not i suggest installing linux.
Ngl seems sus that firefox won’t install in ChromeOS
This was suspicious back when IE became incorporated to File Explorer circa Windows 98.
Now it’s just business.
i tried installing linux but i don’t have enough memory for it. my storage is small (32 gigs).
How much memory do you have?
Less than 10 gigs free. Ram is 4gigs.
4 gigs should be enough for a distro. depending on how far you are willing to go you can even end up with 1 GB or less ram usage at idle. and storage shloudnt be a problem either. i had some distros that take up like 4 gig (storage, not memory)
the linux that i downloaded was over 10 gigs storage. how were you able to find something for 4 gigs?
Sounds like an anti trust lawsuit waiting to happen tbh
It’s in the name lol
firefox doesn’t do this
Neither does NextCloud. Self hosted bookmarks have been great.
I see NextCloud being talked about everywhere. I checked their website but still can’t figure out a use case for personnal use.
What do you use it for?
It’s basically Google drive or Dropbox but hosted yourself on your own server. It’s an effort to set up and maintain but means it’s entirely in your control.
It’s a file sync platform. Say you have files you want to access from your desktop, you install next cloud and place the files there. They sync up with the next cloud server, presumably your NAS.
Now let’s say you want to access those files from another machine. It could be a laptop, an Android phone, your friends, whatever. You just need to install the client and login, and there your files are, ready to sync to the new device.
Great use case would be syncing your computers user folders, such as my documents, desktop, etc. If you have to wipe your computer and start over, at least those items are preserved and easy to restore.
Otherwise sharing files with other machines in general is the main use.
how is it different from using something like syncthing?
It is much, much easier to setup than syncthing, uses a decent GUI interface that works well with Linux, Mac, Win, iOS & Android. Lots of additional features beyond file sync/sharing.
Much more in depth UI similar to Google drive kind of UI. Has a bunch of plugins to do other things too. Bookmarks being one of them. I personally use both they have similar syncing functions but work differently. Syncthing is nice for data just being on multiple devices where nextcloud is nice to have a UI and web site to go to anywhere. Nextcloud get the spousal approval much easier too.
I’ve been looking for a FOSS replacement for One drive, it seems like this is it. It seems great, I will definitely install it on my homelab then.
Thanks for the detailed description.
I use it as a backup location for pictures and videos I make with my phone and for bookmark storage. But you can use it to fully replace cloud services like OneDrive, GCloud or iCloud.
Is nextcloud the same as syncthing?
Syncthing just… syncs things. Say you have a folder that you want to automatically get synced between devices, syncthing is exactly for this.
If you want something like Google Drive, you can run Nextcloud, which is like a self hosted Google Drive, but more powerful. You upload files, which get saved to the server, not just synced between devices. Then you can also sync them, sync calendars, news (RSS feeds), edit documents in it (assuming you install the correct extension), and a lot more things.
That sounds pretty much just like SyncThing. Is the only difference that Nextcloud requires a server, rather than being decentralized?
Yep, it’s centralized. However, it offers more functionality than just syncing stuff. If you only want to sync files, syncthing is the simpler, more lightweight solution :)
Nextcloud includes OpenOffice integration, like Google Docs, and loads of plugins, such as kanban project management, notes like Keep, galleries, etc. Very much unlike Syncthing, both are useful for slightly different things.
Ah gotcha; so with NextCloud I could have multiple people editing an OpenOffice file simultaneously, like Google docs? That’s interesting, though not a use case that generally applies to me.
Correct. I think it’s unnecessarily complex to setup and maintain if you only need to store files.
Neither does Chrome
Either does Chrome probably. This is probably fake
For now. All it takes is a single change in leadership.
Nah, the CEO reports to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, so just swapping the CEO will not impact their overall goals.
Besides, Firefox end-to-end-encrypts synced data. They’d have to rip out a ton of solid engineering to know what you bookmark.
Are you fucking shitting me rn? I am sick of how lame this dystopian future is. Where are my neon lights and grungy underground bars? All we get in this timeline are takedown notices, corporate overreach, disappearing content and DMCA strikes.
TBF in your grungy cyberverse the corporatocracy would simply try to kill you or turn you into a vegetable instead of sending you a DMCA violation notice by email.
At least this dystopia would not be so… BORING…
Well they do exist you just have to look for them
Until you find out that everything is so expensive there too you’d need a corpo job’s salary just to pay for cover.
And Xs. Xs everywhere.
This is misinformation. This has to do with Google collections and how it’s a shared platform, so of course google is going to monitor this.
Your private bookmarks are fine. Relax.
Still, you shouldn’t use Chrome or any Google products if you can help it.
What should I use instead?
Firefox
Alright gonna give it a shot! Thanks.
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.
Okay I appreciate that! Just started using it.
The biggest learning curve for me was the placement of the find bar.
It’s the only way.
People who still use Google Chrome in 2023 should not be surprised. Firefox gang stays winning
Op you’re so easily fooled
Fake, as that site is brand new and has nothing on it.
Google has plenty of skeletons in their closet. OP didn’t have to make up new ones.
Internet will internet though I guess
Fake, as that site is brand new and has nothing on it.
what site is brand new?
I think they meant the Kickass Torrents (KAT) link. It was taken down in 2016, but it looks like it’s back by the original people that were running it.
I just received that email today on a ligh novel reading site. It’s real.
Check Internet Archive. It was a torrent site.
Now we know we’ve reached parity with Twitter, we have people sharing misinformation!
I am so incredibly sick of this intrusive digital dystopia.
A natural result of unchecked capitalism
Jesus just stop using Google. I registered my own domains (in plural yes) and nowadays I’m using them with iCloud, but I could easily change my entire emails from provider with a simple dns change.
For browser I advise using Firefox, but if you don’t like its performance Brave it’s also a good choice. (Though both have some shit going on behind curtains still far better than Google).
For password management just use either Bitwarden, Proton Pass or 1Password. It’s easy not to use Google to store your data, there’s a lot of competitors for what they do.
Don’t use Brave, it is a mess and sketchy as hell. They have been selling copyrighted material and even injected their own affiliate link when users browsed to Binance.
I do agree with the other parts! It is not that difficult to move away from Google!
They have been selling copyrighted material
Source? I don’t use it just curious.
It came to me in a dream. A cat told me. Your mom.
How do you live your life? https://www.technadu.com/brave-browser-takes-back-controversial-affiliate-code-injection/104177/#:~:text=More specifically%2C Brave was automatically injecting affiliate code,to being an opt-in choice for the user.This is the top Post on DuckDuckgo. You could also have googled it.
I didn’t ask YOU for anything, and I’m not opening your shitty link.
You asked for a source, on a forum.
If you ask for a source, you get a source.Why not? It was actually a good read. Here’s another: https://www.spacebar.news/p/stop-using-brave-browser
I took a look at that article. You don’t use a browser because it:
- Runs ads to support the company
- Disagree with the co-found point of views, worse, that they made a 1000$ donation to something he believed in?
A company like Brave is composed of a lot of people with different views. Being able to live in society and accepting each others views it’s what makes democracy … democracy.
Don’t see any valid point to not use Brave in the article provided.
No, it’s perfectly good and healthy to utterly and completely deplatform and disenfranchise homophobes.
different views
The opinion that LGBT+ people shouldn’t have rights is not a valid opinion, and it’s dismissive to simply categorize it as a “different view.” Democracy means we have the choice to reject anyone who espouses such an anti-human worldview, and it is categorically and objectively good to do so.
Good to know you don’t give a fuck about LGBT+ people enough not to use a shitty chromium browser, though. Blocked.
Being toxic af while I didn’t even ask him for any source at all.
Yeah, fair. That was uncalled for. “Just search it yourself” never sits right with me, either.
Brave is built on chromium…
Modified with loads of privacy features. Just putting the suggestion out there since some people have trouble with Firefox in some sites.
Still gives google a lot of power to decide how the web will function in the future. That some websites don’t work in Firefox is a symptom of exactly that problem
I never understood why these browsers never choose Firefox as a base to their new browsers… Technically you should be able no?
It’s something about how the Gecko engine is built IIRC. I don’t get all the details but TLDR Chromium is a lot easier to abstract into other programs as a plugin and engine and Gecko is harder.
“Some sites give people trouble with Firefox” is more like it. Spoof the user-agent header, and those sites that “work better with Chrome” suddenly work just fine.
the trouble isn’t with Firefox, it’s with those sites and the developers of that site that can’t be botheted to do it properly and cross-browser - it’s still a thing and a sane requirement.
I mean with Safari I can understand since Apple can’t be bothered to make a decent engine with all the web standards. But Firefox has all of that so they’re just plain retarded.
how did you register them genuinely asking.
i would also recommend keepass
I use my own domains for email. So basically I can just use whatever mail service that supports custom domains. iCloud Plus, Proton Mail and Tutanota all support it. If I’m done with iCloud I can just switch away from it by changing DNS settings…
Yeah I also use KeePass.
It’s as simple as buying them (mind you that it’s a yearly payment) on a domain platform such as Namecheap or Porkbun.
Then using them requires some setup depending on what you use. I use mine with Protonmail + SimpleLogin and they have a good guide on how to set it up.
I also recommend this.
Buy your own domain, set auto renew and if possible put money in the account. Make sure to set up a recovery account that does not use this domain, as losing access to the domain means you lose your recovery account.
Use an independent email provider with your domain, so you can leave any time but also they’ll have real customer support. I don’t recommend hosting your own, it will be hard to build up a non-spam reputation.
Don’t use a password manager bundled with your os or browser, that just locks you in. It’s convenient, but be wary of our enshitifying world.
Make sure you have an off-site backup and an on-site backup as well, if you have a house fire you don’t want to lose all your data. iCloud/Dropbox aren’t a full backup solution, but they’re pretty good.
If your bank supports it, put your 2factor emergency methods in a safe deposit box. If you go passwordless, get an extra yubikey and put it in your safe deposit box.
getfirefox.com and disable google search in your preferences. F*ck google.
People are saying this is fake, maybe that image in particular is, but I just got that email and that’s annoying me so here’s a pic
Dose it means Google actually deleted 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.
Is this just chrome? Or does this affect all chromium browsers? And yes, I already use FF, but I also use Brave for when FF doesn’t work.
It’s about synced bookmarks. Do any browsers besides Chrome sync through Google?
It’s not about normal synced bookmarks in your browser, see other comment.
Which technically speaking makes sense as those are Google-stored data referencing illegal data. You can’t store actual ripped movies in Google drive either. Just no browser has decided to pull the trigger on this policy before since it’s so much work to collect this data unless you’re an actual web browser company as well. (So I guess this might be coming to Edge in the future)
Google literally crawls the web and serves piracy pages as search results, complete with keywords and all. How hard is it to just… Leave personal bookmark data alone? Encrypt it for the user and let it be? What the hell does Google have to be moderating personal saved links for?
You literally can store ripped movies on Google Drive, (but you cant share them on it)
Not on firefox they’re not
Is this an old screenshot? The email looks like a screenshot of a screenshot, of a screenshot, etc.
fake, visit the site, there is nothing there.
That’s not now the internet works. There was something there. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/katcr.co
There is nothing on katcr.co and today is the second time someone posted that url, bot
Ok, so you are actually new to the internet. I’ll explain, human to human, human.
A domain name like reddit.com or katcr.co is a registration someone gets for a period of time, at least 1 year but sometimes more than a year. One year, a user can purchase katcr.co and put up their personal website, because their name is Kat Crosby, and they are a company - katcr.co fits so they buy it and put up a site for a year or two. Life happens and they abandon the site. The domain becomes available again. Someone purchases katcr.co and makes a cookie business for a few years, abandoning the site. Someone else buys it later when it’s available and makes a bittorrent site out of it, runs it for a few years. the domain gets siezed and they can no longer use that domain. The katcr.co domain becomes available again. no one buys it.
Someone said they used to go to katcr.co years ago, someone else chimes in and says “that site doesn’t exist, you’re a liar”, and then someone with more understanding of the internet sends an archive.org link.
Why archive.org? It’s the only site that does this thing.
What is the thing it does? It will, and has over the years visited websites and saved snapshots of it. Archiving it, if you will. You can then go to web.archive.org and enter the domain name of any site and it will send you to the link you’ve been given a few times. This link is to a page that shows all the times archive.org has captured a snapshot of that link. It allows you to view that page (usually just text, usually missing a lot of content like images and external files) as it was at that time.
In this case, the existence of the link immediately disproves your argument.
In other words, you’re entirely wrong. Both about katcr.co being fake because it’s currently not online, and also about me being a bot.
There is nothing there, but there was. Just check Wayback Machine, for example here from 2018. Whether bot post or not, it’s entirely plausible that the screenshot is real. Bookmarks don’t magically disappear when the site they point to turns to a placeholder page.
Edit: Wayback Machine seems to have some stability problems right now, you might have to try again if you get a connection error.
How’s the internetting going, champ? Did you figure out how the wayback machine works?
There used to be things there
First day on the world wide web, eh?
