this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 24 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

When using my current browser, any guess as to how often I've said to myself "I need a browser that spies on me more"?

[–] CarnivorousCouch@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

Beep boop, this is your browser speaking. You have stated that you need a browser that spies on you more one (1) times.

[–] J52@lemmy.nz 4 points 3 hours ago

Dumb and dumber will love it, ts,ts,ts. Some nerds...

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 17 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

And people would voluntarily use this browser ....why?

[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 10 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Weirder things have happened. Like people using Brave voluntarily.

[–] klemptor@startrek.website 3 points 2 hours ago

I'm out of the loop, what's wrong with Brave?

[–] RedditIsDeddit@lemmy.world 7 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Hey, look for that browser to fail instantly as no one will use it.

[–] Trihilis@ani.social 7 points 4 hours ago

They don't want people to use it. They want Google to give them a big bag of money so they can integrate it into chrome.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

"Help us improve your User Experience by trying as hard as possible to induce to spend money you don't have on crap you don't need."

[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 42 points 11 hours ago

This is really good information, now I know to avoid their browser like the plague.

[–] Coyote_sly@lemmy.world 8 points 8 hours ago

Can't sell reams and reams of customer data if you don't have any customers.

tapforehead.jpg

[–] Psythik@lemm.ee 2 points 5 hours ago

Damn, and I really liked them too. It's the most accurate LLM I've tried and it even accurately cites sources as well (unlike Copilot, which just makes shit up and then cites an unrelated source).

[–] Celestus@lemm.ee 4 points 7 hours ago

Surely people don’t actually want this, right?

[–] dinckelman@lemmy.world 47 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I would like for the people, who come up with these ideas, to dogfood their own product. Actually force them to try their own medicine. It would be a single digit percentage of acceptance then

[–] madasi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 10 hours ago

You grossly underestimate how much some people truly love the idea of highly personalized ads. People who believe they are the best possible outcome and cannot fathom why anyone would have any problem with them at all. That's who you are asking to dogfood this product, and they would and would find no issues with it.

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 322 points 18 hours ago (6 children)

I hate when people post hyperpartisan reporting because it makes me do homework. In this case, you made me listen to almost an hour of a three hour podcast with three techbros chatting about techbro crap in techbro ways. You owe me years of life.

Anyway, so the conspicuously missing context here is he's asked if they will let go of the subscription model and go after an ad business model instead and he responds "hopefully not" and clarifies that he thinks the AI differentiator from Google search is that it doesn't feed people ads.

He then transitions into saying that you'd need a super hyperspecialized profile for it to make sense and then maybe it could work but they haven't figured out long term memory well enough for that, which is when he talks about why they'd want to have a browser to build that hyperspecialized profile.

This is my least favorite type of misinfo, too, because he's actually kinda saying what they say he's saying, just out of context. But more importantly, because he says some other shit that is more outrageous, too. For example, when explaining why he thinks the subscription business will grow more than the ad business the way he puts it is that "people see it as hiring someone", so they're more willing to spend, and he ponders "how much do people pay for personal assistants and assistant managers and nannies?" and suggests that they'll provide similar services for cheaper to people who can't afford human help.

Which may not be as clickbaity and I get he finds it positive-on-the-aggregate, but is certainly some cyberpunk dystopia stuff that didn't need the out of context quoting to be a thing.

[–] Bob_Robertson_IX@discuss.tchncs.de 50 points 14 hours ago

You owe me years of life.

Best I can do is an upvote and a hearty thank you.

Thank you!

[–] BossDj@lemm.ee 17 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you!

There is an implication, though, that they intend to collect as much data as possible regardless of which model they use? And in the article, he isn't selling any data, I think. Any mention of that?

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 19 points 13 hours ago

To be clear, they ARE building an AI-forward browser and he is very plain about collecting a ton of user info. The way it's presented in context is that they intend to plug it in to their assistant/agent thing and surface relevant stuff to you on searches (which is the potential ad opportunity the article quotes as if it was the sole goal). But yeah, the implication is that they are collecting data regardless, even if the user profile ends up being used to cater AI responses to you specifically, to train models or whatever.

Hearing the guy talk about it I get the impression that he envisions an Apple-like ecosystem where they're constantly ingesting data and you're paying them to have their AI services act as a personal assistant and handle purchases and booking for you directly and so on, on top of anwering queries.

I would rather clip my toenails with a rusty chainsaw, myself, but that seems to be the idea.

[–] whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 72 points 17 hours ago

Thanks for you sacrifice and service (it does sound like, but it is NOT sarcastic)

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 39 points 17 hours ago

We need more people like you, thank you

[–] Kyouki@lemmy.world 15 points 16 hours ago
[–] 4am@lemm.ee 45 points 15 hours ago

Where is the hacktivism when you need it? These companies need to be gutted from the inside out.

Begin, the AI wars have.

[–] hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 41 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I think I read somewhere they want to buy Chrome from Google if they are forced to sell. So not many changes, just switching owners who ultimately do the same thing.

i’m not a Chrome user, so screw both google and perplexity.

[–] MdRuckus@lemmy.world 25 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

OpenAI also wants to buy Chrome.

[–] Dick_Justice@lemmy.world 2 points 10 hours ago

And Yahoo, lol

[–] vext01@lemmy.sdf.org 110 points 18 hours ago (6 children)

Why would I use such a browser?

[–] stebo02@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 7 hours ago

because it has AI omg this will make our lives so much easier for real

[–] Lembot_0002@lemm.ee 46 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Because some influencer say you should. Works this way for too many people.

[–] mat@linux.community 48 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

The amount of folks I see use Opera GX "gaming browser" because some influencer said so...

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 33 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

What the fuck is a gaming browser. Browsers show web pages.

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 33 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

It downloads RAM for you, sells your browsing data to major gaming companies, helps you stay on top of your Twitch subs by disabling the ability to block web notifications.

You know, a gaming browser.

[–] SufferingSteve@feddit.nu 17 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Dude, you forgot that it had built in led control. We all should know by know that gaming = leds

[–] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Fun fact: it turns out that all those LEDs rely (in Windows at least) on a super-insecure driver written by a hobbyist who last updated it in the mid-2000s and has since disavowed it.

[–] Chronographs@lemmy.zip 1 points 10 hours ago

Steve didn’t really do his due diligence on that video, a lot of RGB software hasn’t used it for awhile, including one he said do. It certainly used to be a big problem and there’s definitely still holdouts

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[–] real_squids@sopuli.xyz 4 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

From what I've seen it has a lil sidebar that lets you limit the resources available to it. Also a load of shortcuts to giveaways and storefronts. It's also hideous, as all gamer stuff should be.

Honestly it gives me more "lowspec" vibes, than "gaming", and there are far better ways to browse on low spec machines.

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 11 points 15 hours ago

I'm still shocked at how many seemingly tech-literate people use and defend Brave because of influencers.

[–] vext01@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

An influencer's review only makes me wary of a product and makes me question their motives.

But I guess others don't see it that way, or they wouldn't be doing it.

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[–] latenightnoir@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 18 hours ago

"Because it really gets you, y'know?"

[–] raltoid@lemmy.world 9 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

They've partnered with Motorla and probably Samsung to have it pre-installed. And a lot of people stick to the default one.

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[–] postnataldrip@lemmy.world 58 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

Srinivas believes that Perplexity’s browser users will be fine with such tracking because the ads should be more relevant to them.

Believes it, or is just spinning it that way?

You could show me an ad for exactly what I want in that moment and I'd immediately not want it any more.

Enough already.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 10 points 16 hours ago

You could show me an ad for exactly what I want in that moment and I’d immediately not want it any more.

Depends, if it is an ad for an orbital laser that targets marketing executives it might work on me.

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[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 19 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

These fuckers are just so delusional and out of touch with reality. Personalized ads my ass. We've been promised those for decades but pretty much all the ads I see on YouTube are from major retail chains with precisely zero relevance to me. They will show the ads of whoever pays for them. Your personal preferences are only relevant when it comes to targeting you with political propaganda.

[–] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 10 points 16 hours ago

I don't fucking want personalized ads no matter how relevant they are to me. I only have so much money to buy stupid materialistic bullshit and once that's gone all an ad can do is make me want something I can't have. Ads are just trying to make you discontent.

They just want you to spend more money in a failed attempt to be happier adding complexity to my life when I'd rather just be content with simplicity. And they work really fucking well on my wife. I automatically distrust anything someone is paying money to show me.

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[–] Wild_Mastic@lemmy.world 20 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

Oh, time to stop using any perplexity products

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 29 points 18 hours ago

Perplexity is a free AI-powered answer engine that provides accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question.

That's not gonna be hard, fortunately.

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[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 10 points 17 hours ago

Chrome does that already anyway.

[–] PrivacyDingus@lemmy.world 13 points 18 hours ago

It's a three-pronged attack: Subliminal, liminal, and super-liminal

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