Google has rolled out "Privacy Sandbox," a Chrome feature first announced back in 2019 that, among other things, exchanges third-party cookies—the most common form of tracking technology—for what the company is now calling "Topics." Topics is a response to pushback against Google’s proposed...
I like this line of thinking and hope we get more of it. Feels like a lot of people on this community are of the mindset that you have to either go all the way with online privacy or not at all. Going all in isn’t practical for the average individual and can scare people off. It’s just not worth it for a lot of people in their minds. Most people probably like the idea of privacy but aren’t willing to change phones and operating systems, use a completely different set of services, all that. I think we should focus on trying to help someone with what they’ve got rather than telling them they have to completely change the way they operate online. Give a list of settings to tweak, suggest an ad blocker, suggest alternative services but don’t make it sound mandatory, and don’t berate someone for using an iPhone or watching YouTube for example. Acting like that will probably scare people away and make them not want to interact with the community which would be a shame. It would also probably lead to them continuing to do mad online habits because they left before they could get educated. I think it’s about balance. Being slightly less anonymous online might be worth it if it means a considerably smoother experience, for the average person