Post by @mattsheffield@mastodon.social

2026-11-03 21:54 UTC

Google is reportedly threatening schools who wish to disable AI on student Chromebook laptops. Many ppl warned this would happen when Chromebooks first came out. We were ignored. This is a leopards eating faces moment. Short term, there are lots of other search engines; it's easy-peasy to change the default across the entire fleet. Pure #Linux is the long term solution. Chromebooks have already been deprecated by Google. Don't get suckered again, schools. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/03/us/google-search-schools-restrict-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NlE.VMKr.Cr-g-C6phyfH

Replies (2)

@AnarchistLakeland@mastodon.social 2026-11-04 01:14

@mattsheffield@mastodon.social As a member of the US school system, I hate Chromebooks so much. If you have never used one, it's one of the worst tech experiences imaginable. Even worse than self checkout. Keystroke logging, browser surveillance, (hapara), you can only run chrome, Google workspace, Gmail, plus the school WiFi blocks access to websites. No UblockOrigin 😭. And I can't bring my own computer 😉 because in order to tell if I used AI to write an essay, they need a Google doc log of everything I wrote.

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@leogaggl@social.coop 2026-11-04 04:06

@mattsheffield@mastodon.social Seems pretty much Standard Operating Procedure for Google these days. My recent mobile experience is similar. Late-stage enshittification at its finest: https://gaggl.com/blogs/2026-10-26-thank-you-brussels/

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