Kinda morbidly fascinating to see Google devolve into a horrible bucket of shit

  • unalivejoy@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Remember that incognito only protects your privacy from people you share your computer with. Your ISP, Google, that shady website, and all the third party cookies know you visited that shady site.

    • LegionEris [she/her]@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, whole different browser for actual privacy. Incognito mode is so weird shit doesn’t get suggested forever because you looked it up once.

      • merc
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        1 year ago

        Once upon a time you wanted to know Dolly Parton’s age. We’ve now decided you’re a country music fan!

        • LegionEris [she/her]@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          I’m actually a huge fan of country music. But because I listen to mostly lesbian country, the algorithms don’t shuffle me country music content. They only show me gay music. If they’re lesbians, the robots are gonna tell me about them. If they make brand new old time songs, I gotta find them by social media association with other artists I enjoy.

        • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          For some reason targeted amazon ads think I’m in the building trades and keep pushing weird tools and supplies at me. My skills stop at replacing electrical outlets.

      • Dandroid@dandroid.app
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        1 year ago

        Incognito mode is so weird shit doesn’t get suggested forever because you looked it up once.

        This is what I use it for primarily. When I watch a show, I like to see what other shows actors are in. Apparently Google thinks that means I want news about Kanye, the Kardashians, Beyonce, etc. So now whenever I look up an actor’s name, I use incognito.

          • Dandroid@dandroid.app
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            1 year ago

            Tbh, I hate imdb’s UI. I will avoid it if possible. It’s so tiny on my phone, and the text is even smaller, everything is way off to the side with tons of wasted space, and I don’t like how if I click on something they were in and then go back, it loses my place.

            • LegionEris [she/her]@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              I use the app. The mobile browser version used to be pretty good, but then they bailed on functional and design parity between versions, which always seems to doom one version. I use it often enough that it’s more than worth the space on my phone. If we’re in a movies phase, I’ll use it daily.

    • merc
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      1 year ago

      Partially true. If you don’t close your incognito window, the third party cookies stick around, but they’re not associated with your other profile(s). But, as soon as you do close your incognito window, they’re gone.

      Your ISP gets the traffic, there’s no way around that. But, if you’re using SSL (and virtually all websites now use SSL) the ISP doesn’t see the contents of the pages, just the hostnames.

      Google gets some of the traffic too, but they pinky swear not to associate it with your other account. I’m pretty sure there would be an employee revolt inside Google if they just ignored the incognito window and associated your incognito data with your main account. It wouldn’t be a technical challenge to collect your incognito data and know what account it belongs with, but if they ever did that and it leaked it would be a huge scandal. Google is so profitable that they have no need to risk that.

      Also, Incognito only partially protects you against people with whom you share the computer. Any files you download will still be there. Also, if you leave the incognito window open, it’s there for whoever else uses your computer.

        • merc
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          1 year ago

          There’s a difference between “tracked internet activity” and “associated that internet activity with the non-incognito profile”.

          Of course they “tracked internet activity”. The Internet breaks if you disable cookies, so incognito mode has cookies. Cookies track Internet activity.

      • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        We all know it is for looking up porn and checking on my favorite al-qaeda site. I do wonder if my google account really is disconnected from the incog window or if I need to logout first and restart the browser.

        Also, if you leave the incognito window open, it’s there for whoever else uses your computer.

        Well, yah. This is true for anything. Close your damn windows when you are done.