Thread · 6 tweets · 27 Jul 2019

I agree with @baekdal that publishers shouldn't worry about Incognito. People who use it to circumvent paywalls weren't going to subscribe anyway. Claiming that Incognito is about privacy is stretching it, though. It's not. It's Privacy Theatre.

Google is only closing the Incognito loophole (and having its evangelists make noise about it as if it were a big win) because they're desperate to make it look like Chrome cares about privacy.

If you want privacy don't use Incognito. Use a browser that isn't designed around Google's business model. Think I'm exaggerating? You can count the ways: google.com/chrome/privacy…

is right that people care, though, and that publishers need to do more. They are scared: I've heard some smaller publishers worry that Google would stop working with them if they supported the CCPA. But that's all the more reason to act.

The GDPR reasoning in the article is a little too simple. What the WaPo is doing was found bad by the UK data authority but OK by Austria's. There is no consensus. I think pay-for-privacy is a bad look, though. (Also, for the thousandth time, GDPR isn't about consent.)

So let's not worry about Incognito but let's not give Google any credit for faking it and trying to convince people that the browser they deliberately engineered for surveillance helps with privacy. After all, the primary reason people feel they need Incognito is... Google.