This is the correct answer, this shit is „your carbon footprint“ all over again

Of course it is complex. A few points:

If you ban a party in Germany, it’s automatically bans all „clones“ of that party, and all of its members in high functions can’t participate in these clones. Failure to comply would lead to an immediate ban of the clone. While I agree that eventually, a new far right with other people will probably form, it would take years for them to reorganize and they would have to be extremely careful. I believe that a ban would probably yield at least 10 years of far-right free politics.

Appeasement of the far right has failed every time in history, they will cannibalize every attempt to include them in any sort of „rational“ discourse. Banning parties is a lever that exists precisely because of Germany‘s history. IMHO it sends a strong message to all the non-far-right people (of which there are approx. 60-70%) that bullshit will not be tolerated.

In contrast, doing nothing signals that what the AfD is doing is fine and will move the discourse farther and farther right.

Stopping funding and preventing them from entering the Parliament is precisely what a ban would do, so I am not sure why the difference is between that and what you are suggesting.

AfD politics violate the constitution in numerous ways, and the German institute for human rights says the party could be banned:

https://www.euronews.com/2023/06/14/should-germany-ban-afd-what-impact-could-this-have

Politically, it’s of course a risky maneuver, but the correct one if you ask me.

Google does not sell data to advertisers, that is incorrect.

You are correct that Google cross-correlates some data for integrating features, but as I said, you can just go and delete your data, and it will continue to work just fine.

Maybe it’s also useful to remind oneself that you do get lots of services from Google for free - and considering they are free (!), imho, Google is taking about the most ethical approach it economically can. (Ie., they will use your data to tune full integration of their products and serve ads for you, BUT you can always opt out and delete it)

I fail to see how meta and twitter are so much different in the range of products they offer. Meta e.g. operates the larges private messaging app on the planet and they DID sell (or accidentally leak, however you want to put it, see Cambridge analytica) their data.

As a counterpoint, IMHO Google has the best track record regarding privacy of all the big tech firms. Googles data was never sold, leaked, or abused by employees as far as I can tell.

This is in stark contrast to companies like meta and twitter.

Maybe Google isn’t as good communicating that fact, but what is your reason for the distrust in this particular case?

The explainer explicitly mentions that the proposal allows browser to ignore WEI and the web is intended to work without. It even points out that there will be a continuous group of chrome users of ~5% that have the feature disabled.

If website owners rely on this feature, they are hurting chrome users just as much as other browsers.

I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. If you are outraged by something, I think it’s unrealistic to expect other people to explain to you why there is nothing to be outraged about. Otherwise you might as well just walk through life outraged by anything.

Rather, it is your responsibility to take a deep breath and ask yourself, what is it really you are concerned about? And if you deem that serious enough, convince others.

Well, looking at these comments, one thing is clear: the discussion is not going to happen here. I don’t think there was even one comment of substance, which is unfortunate, since the explainer in OP reads sincere to me.

Maybe instead of jumping on the „google bad“ bandwagon, it would be helpful if people point out the specific issues that they are seeing with this.

As it stands, we might just take literally any commit to chromium and paste the same comments below it.

Edit: since posting this, the comments have considerably improved, I love some of the discussion. Thanks!

The fact that it was challenged at all is a huge step in the right direction. Couple of years ago, the FTC wouldn’t even bat an eye with these mergers. The new chair, Lina Khan seems to be determined to reduce the power of monopolies.

Which is a good thing, if this isn’t obvious.

The problem lies with the complete out of touch judges now.