Google is now moderating user's bookmarks and removing them. - eviltoast
  • Chozo@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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/

    • Blizzard@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Even so - it’s not an excuse meddle with it, whatever you call it. Fuck Google.

      • Lexi Sneptaur@pawb.social
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        1 year ago

        You should be mad about the things google does. I don’t think this particular thing is unreasonable though.

          • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • Blizzard@lemmy.zip
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              1 year ago
              • 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

            • LoafyLemon@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              They don’t have to, they choose to. You can share bookmarks on Firefox, but Mozilla doesn’t filter nor censor them Orwellian style.

              • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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                1 year ago

                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.

          • darcmage@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            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…

              • sadreality@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                This person fucks.

                Chad comment although I agree with other person that this is not the worst of Google’s crimes.

      • hh93@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Blizzard@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Depends if it’s illegal or not. In your case it’s probably illegal.

          • hh93@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            In that case they deleted a link to illegal content in their jurisdiction - so should be fine - shouldn’t it?

      • Otter@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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”

        • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          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.

      • Chozo@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • Zorque@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        IMO targeting someone you don’t like with antipathy regardless of their actions is a sociopathic move.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • EvokerKing@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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).

        • candyman337@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          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

          • Otter@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            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

          • Solemn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            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.

            • wols@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • wols@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                I’d say generally speaking it’s more likely that issues stem from extensions than from Firefox itself, so maybe try looking into that.

                • candyman337@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  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

      • dartos@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • youngalfred@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • tactoid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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

          • Signed “A slightly inconvenience developer”
      • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        The compatibility issues arise only because Chrome/Chromium dominates the market, hence Google weld the power to define the web standards.

      • BromSwolligans@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.”

      • BigFig@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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

        • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          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

        • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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          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.

  • AnonTwo@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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…

    • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • Platform27@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Chozo@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      This doesn’t involve your browser bookmarks. Google Collections is a link sharing tool.

    • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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      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?

      • Platform27@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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”.

        • Rootiest@lemm.ee
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          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

  • ram@lemmy.ca
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    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.

    • Facebones@reddthat.com
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      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 😂

  • Blizzard@lemmy.zip
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    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.

  • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Platform27@lemmy.ml
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      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.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Encrypted between… Chrome and Chrome? Two installations of Google’s non-FOSS browser? You never really had control over that data.