Pulling your weenie?
By Capital Thinking • Issue #876 • View online
“Privacy is at the heart of everything we do.”
GOOGLE CAVES TO SURVEILLANCE VAMPIRES
Okay, maybe not at the heart. Maybe at the weenie or something.
In a huge setback for online privacy, this week Google caved to the surveillance mafia and delayed Chrome’s much ballyhooed ban on third party tracking cookies for a couple of years.
Just when you start hoping there may be an ounce of integrity in the adtech dreckosystem, reality rears its ugly head.
Acknowledging in March that online surveillance is poisonous, Google proudly announced that starting next year they would ban third party cookies from the Chrome browser and
“we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.”
Total, utter, complete, undiluted, shameless horseshit.
Now Google says they were only kidding and they’ll end third party cookies sometime between the end of 2023 and armageddon.
Not all brands reacted well to Google’s duplicity. According to Ad Age, a VP at Mondeléz (the parent company of Oreos, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, and Ritz Crackers) said, “I’m pissed. I don’t know if every brand is pissed, but I’m pissed…Consumers are losing trust in the industry, so why are we continuing with this?”
Meanwhile adtech creeps like Criteo said, “We appreciate Google’s decision to create more time for the industry to prepare…”
For months the adtech industry and assorted marketing and advertising asshats have done nothing but whine, wail, and wet their beds at the thought that they could no longer use Google’s Chrome browser to abuse the personal privacy of individuals for their own purposes.
The disgraceful industry trade groups – the ANA and the 4As – said that banning third party cookies would “choke off the economic oxygen from advertising that startups and emerging companies need to survive.”
Yeah, right. How did business ever exist before the invention of tracking cookies?The tech industry has become a disgusting shit show. When Zuckerberg famously said “move fast and break things” what he was really saying was, “do whatever the fuck you want ‘til someone stops you.”
That has been the culture of tech ever since. It’s how Uber flooded the streets with illegal cabs, and how Airbnb flooded cities with illegal hotel rooms.
And it’s how the adtech industry operates. They do whatever the hell they want and no one has the balls to stop them.
Piracy is at the heart of everything they do.
Do yourself a favor a clink the link. Definitely worth the read. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.