1y ago

Google is now moderating user's bookmarks and removing them.

Original Toot: https://strangeobject.space/@silvermoon82/110969122337810598

251 comments

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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- 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.
- Wtf is a collections?
  
  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.
  
  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).
- Crazy that I had to scroll past 9 other comments to reach this one. Maybe I oughta start sorting comments by top.
- Upvote this post to stop spreading misinformation please
  
  I think you need to boost, not upvote. But I could be wrong.
- My bookmarks can also be shared with the public though
  
  I'm not aware of a way of making your bookmarks public through chrome.
- Aww man, I was hoping google was gonna clean my bookmark up for me.
- Anything on my computer can be shared with the public as well.
- You can access through google.com/save
  
  That's not a function of chrome though, I can do that on any browser.

Get. Away. From. Google.
- It's really that simple for much of their products. I really don't understand why people still insist on using chrome, in particular. Google is a horrible company that would literally sell you into slavery if it was legal and they thought it'd boost their ad business somehow.
  
  Part of the problem is that Google has an entire ecosystem that is ridiculously useful and is designed to hook people and keep them around. And once they're hooked it's really hard to move away from, even if it's in their best interest.

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.
  
  Unless they sort out their funding (find someone that is not Google for majority of their money), people shouldn't care.
- 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.
  
  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
  
  Use brave
- 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
  
  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?
  
  Is nextcloud the same as syncthing?
- 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.

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

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.

I'm sorry, WHAT?
- How long until Android starts blocking access to websites.
  I really do not trust these large tech companies.
  
  No no no you misunderstand
  They're helping you avoid evil bad superungood pages that don't have the right security levels.
  Maybe their SSH cert is for the wrong site!
  Maybe their SSH cert is just too old.
  Or maybe, heavens forbid, they dont even have an SSL cert?! Heavens to Betsy what shenanigans.
  Sometimes web pages spread malware. Sometimes they even spread copyright protected materials without the the rights to do so! Maybe we should start helping you avoid copyright infringement!
  
  Maybe once google gets fuchsia done, and then they no longer need Android.

- Some of those people really said 💀

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)

Not on firefox they're not

what's a bookmark? i have 400 tabs
- How is your computer still alive?
  
  Most modern browsers will hang a tab rather than keep it alive if it hasn't been used in a while.
  
  fox is correct and also those tabs i havent opened in months or years don't get loaded on session resume either. maybe someday i'll finish watching that david harvey lecture

the only two things that shock me about this is
That it took until now for it to happen
that people are shocked by it.

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.
  
  There used to be things there
  
  That’s not now the internet works. There was something there. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/katcr.co
  
  First day on the world wide web, eh?

guess i'm not using opera anymore, time for firefox.

As people have said, this is fake, but why would you keep any important data with Google anyway?
- People keep saying this is fake,, but I just received this email today on another site lol that's annoying
  
  It's fake in that this is about shared collections, not just your regular bookmarks as implied.
  You also can't share pirate material on YouTube, can you?

Good thing I've been using Raindrop.io to manage my bookmarks for years because I used to switch browsers so often. I've settled on Firefox for the most part, but am looking forward to Arc on Windows.
- Is there a self-hosted version or alternative? This looks solid, but I've been trying to self host as much as possible
  
  Here you go, comrade:
  https://awesome-selfhosted.net/tags/bookmarks-and-link-sharing.html
  I chose Linkding because it's simple to set up, I'm looking forward to Omnivore when it's a bit more easy to self-host.
  
  vi ~/.config/qutebrowser/quickmarks
- I’ve started using arc on Mac and I can’t go back. Hopeful that it gets released on windows soon.
  
  Can you tell me the appeal of Arc? I have it, and I've used it, but I just can't seem to "get it".

Google doing google things. Nothing to see here

In 2023 I have no time for people like this, unless they are over 80 and my mother.

I'll switch immediately.
- Switch now
  
  immediately
  ĭ-mē′dē-ĭt-lē
  adverb
  Without delay.

Yeah, that's over the line.
- Nope, they just moved the line a bit further, like they always do

As if I needed any more reasons to avoid their craptacular browser like the plague that it is.

Google scares me

These MOFO's have really REALLY jumped the shark.
- Jumped the shark? They've chopped it up and turned it into sushi.

chrome can E2E encrypt your bookmarks, I didn't realize it wasn't used by default
- E2E encryption is only (potentially) effective if the threat is a MITM. If your threat model shows any possibility for your threats to be on either end, it is effectively useless.
  Now I'm not saying that you should model Chrome as a threat, but I'm certainly saying that you also can't be certain you don't need to. The whole thing is closed source, the publisher is a Machiavellian megacorporation; and if I were Google, and had to spy on users for profit, that's certainly where I'd start. You know, as anonymized metrics, to "help improving Chrome".
  Edit: oh and, I haven't checked what they mean by that, but potentially, the E2EE is meant in the context of the transit only, meaning the data at rest is not encrypted, on your computer, or on the Google servers.
  
  under "keep your info private", this is different than encrypted in transit. I mean I guess they could be lying 🤷‍♂️
  https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/165139

This is kind of amusing actually. Imagine a program that gives you a ton of bookmarks to legally questionable websites, like how that other website (used to?) automatically spam incriminating Google searches into your search history. Then watch the auto-bookmark-moderator suck it all up like a roomba.

This is why you read the licence agreement, people!

Eat a bag of dicks google

But the link in the screenshot is to a google domain??
- It’s the link under that one
- I would wager it’s where a copy of your bookmarks are stored with Google. Not the link the user had bookmarked personally.

it's their private property !

And here I am perfectly happy with using Edge.
- Might want to consider switching to a gecko based browser just to stop this shit from spreading
  
  It's not like this is Chromium's fault.
- conaider firefox

251 comments