I'm grateful for this informative and well put together presentation, however, I am put off by the political undertones that crystallize towards the end.
Did the authors decide that 50% of England's and the USA's voters should be alienated simply because conservatives are a convenient scapegoat, or because they actually believe that only right-wing elements abuse data harvesting?
What is the point of using silhouettes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson (https://contrachrome.com/comic/239/) when the majority of people reading this already know who the authors are implying? Is the intent for readers to say to themselves "ooh, I know who that is! I know a bad right-wing person that the media's been telling me about!" and feel smart about it? Why not just show their faces and just tell everyone up front what you really believe?
Is the goal to trigger right-wing reactionaries to start supporting Google and using Chrome? That could be the effect of this and it's very counterproductive to the arguments being made here. Unless that's what the authors wanted, then they should have left the politics out. Anyone with the technical literacy necessary to digest this can come to their own conclusion without this comic muddying the waters.
The whole thing reeks of technically illiterate conspiracy theory, so pulling in unrelated public figures wasn't surprising. "Google tracks you even if you're using Incognito Mode, so Chrome is bad!" Google (and any other web company) tracks you in any browser if you're using private browsing, so that isn't an argument against using Chrome.
If only the Chrome engineering team had actually been behind this work, they would have run it past the Diversity and Inclusion team which would have bounced it back for changes on account of the very point you bring up. Avoiding alienating audiences that don't think like the author of any given piece of content is one of their first class goals.
Comments
I'm grateful for this informative and well put together presentation, however, I am put off by the political undertones that crystallize towards the end.
Did the authors decide that 50% of England's and the USA's voters should be alienated simply because conservatives are a convenient scapegoat, or because they actually believe that only right-wing elements abuse data harvesting?
What is the point of using silhouettes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson (https://contrachrome.com/comic/239/) when the majority of people reading this already know who the authors are implying? Is the intent for readers to say to themselves "ooh, I know who that is! I know a bad right-wing person that the media's been telling me about!" and feel smart about it? Why not just show their faces and just tell everyone up front what you really believe?
Is the goal to trigger right-wing reactionaries to start supporting Google and using Chrome? That could be the effect of this and it's very counterproductive to the arguments being made here. Unless that's what the authors wanted, then they should have left the politics out. Anyone with the technical literacy necessary to digest this can come to their own conclusion without this comic muddying the waters.
The whole thing reeks of technically illiterate conspiracy theory, so pulling in unrelated public figures wasn't surprising. "Google tracks you even if you're using Incognito Mode, so Chrome is bad!" Google (and any other web company) tracks you in any browser if you're using private browsing, so that isn't an argument against using Chrome.
If only the Chrome engineering team had actually been behind this work, they would have run it past the Diversity and Inclusion team which would have bounced it back for changes on account of the very point you bring up. Avoiding alienating audiences that don't think like the author of any given piece of content is one of their first class goals.