[HN Gopher] Google's FLoC Is a Terrible Idea
___________________________________________________________________
Google's FLoC Is a Terrible Idea
Author : wyldfire
Score : 281 points
Date : 2021-03-04 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| Noughmad wrote:
| I really don't understand the problem here. It looks like FLoC
| will entirely depend on the browser (which Google controls if
| it's Chrome). So the browser will analyze your browsing history
| (and since it's Google, it will probably connect to everything
| else Google knows about you) to request targeted ads.
|
| But, what about the people who don't use Chrome? I would hope
| that most people who know what EFF is already don't. Firefox will
| surely come with a way to disable it, or you'll configure it to
| always send "my little pony" or something like this.
|
| In the end, this seems to really be about Google (with a browser)
| competing against Facebook and other ad providers (who don't have
| a browser).
| jdlshore wrote:
| The big problem with FLoC, as I see it, is that it makes
| fingerprinting _vastly_ easier. Your FLoC bucket narrows you
| down to one of several thousand users, rather than one of
| several million, and that 's before fingerprinting applies.
|
| Ironically, it seems that FLoC makes user tracking _easier,_
| not harder.
|
| I see no upside in FLoC for me as a user, and plenty of
| potential downside. I'm glad I use Firefox.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Without making any drastic changes to my browser to
| intentionally inhibit fingerprinting, I already have a unique
| fingerprint according to https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/, so
| this honestly doesn't signal a change to me at all. I just
| run uBlock Origin to block trackers/ads.
| musicale wrote:
| Are CCPA (privacy act, not credit protection act) (and
| California's data broker law) and GDPR having any affect on data
| brokers and credit bureaus?
|
| edit: apparently credit bureaus are exempt from CCPA
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| I don't think GDPR has really tested it's legal teeth yet.
| sofixa wrote:
| https://www.enforcementtracker.com/
| esperent wrote:
| The biggest fine so far is EUR50,000,000 against Google.
| Ironic considering the topic of this thread, but not
| surprising.
| oytis wrote:
| "Legitimate interest"
| M2Ys4U wrote:
| The UK's ICO _knows_ that the adtech industry is breaking the
| law.
|
| They've purposely done _nothing_ about it. They 've even
| bragged on their blog and in their annual statement that
| they've done nothing about it :(
| beermonster wrote:
| Citations?
| karmakaze wrote:
| > Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC)
|
| I hate the use of new/uncommon acronyms/initialisms without
| immediate clarification, a form of clickbait. So many paragraphs
| down to see what it's called. Expected more from EFF.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| In the case of reverse-engineered acronyms like this one, I
| think there's a judgment call that you need to make: in some
| cases it is simply not useful to expand the term. They explain
| what FLoC _means_ very early on, but the expansion of the
| acronym conveys very little information since it is technical,
| somewhat nonspecific, and it 's clear that the acronym was
| designed before its meaning.
|
| Consider, for example, that it's uncommon to expand military
| program acronyms because their meaning is often less useful
| than saying "it's just a word."
| inopinatus wrote:
| The EFF is also milking the super creepy feeling from Google
| naming their technology for labeling humans, after the group
| noun for sheep.
| ncann wrote:
| Come here to say the same, I actually had to click on the
| github link to learn what it meant first. Should've explained
| it the first time it's brought up instead.
| dleslie wrote:
| This captures my feelings on the issue:
|
| > That framing is based on a false premise that we have to choose
| between "old tracking" and "new tracking." It's not either-or.
| Instead of re-inventing the tracking wheel, we should imagine a
| better world without the myriad problems of targeted ads.
|
| I don't want to be tracked. I never have wanted to be tracked. I
| shouldn't have to aggressively opt-out of tracking; it should be
| a service one must opt-in to receive. And it's not something we
| can trust industry to correct properly. This is precisely the
| role that privacy-protecting legislation should be undertaking.
|
| Stop spying on us, please.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| <sarcasm>But what about a "free and open web".</sarcasm>
|
| These constant references to "the web" when discussing certain
| companies is annoying. The www does not belong to any
| incorporated middleman. I do not care how much traffic they are
| curently in control of. The www is a medium not a small,
| privileged group of messengers. How is this company even
| contemplating something like this. Answer: Because a majority
| of users choose a browser controlled by an advertising company.
| WTF.
|
| This company will no doubt exert influence/control over the
| "standards" process and next thing we know, every developer
| working on a browser will feel obligated to "implement FLoC".
| Maybe this is an either-or question. Who is the www for: users
| or advertisers. The middleman needs both. Advertisers need the
| middleman and users. But users do not need advertisers. And,
| truly, they do not need the middleman. Users are creating the
| content. The middleman just sits in between, spying on
| everything.
|
| Maybe there needs to be more than one www. Maybe there needs to
| be a non-commercial www for smart people.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Democracy would work if I were in charge.
| frashelaw wrote:
| As long as it remains massively profitable to collect every
| ounce of data from us, tech corporations are going to keep
| doing this.
|
| Even with some existing laws, the profits are enough that they
| are willing to flagrantly violate these laws and simply pay
| meager fines.
|
| It's also unlikely that we will ever get significant
| legislation to protect us from this either, because all these
| tech profits allow big tech to buy our government, because
| policy is heavily swayed by corporations.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| It seems like FLoC could make it easier to opt out centrally
| rather than going through a mess of specific (dis)approvals for
| the specific trackers on every site. Maybe it could even be a
| good place for a dial - "I'll expose a 4-bit cohort, but
| nothing more specific."
|
| It also seems like FLoC could make it more politically viable
| to crack down non-consensual tracking. Publishers wouldn't be
| able to say "we have no choice but to deal with this [third
| party tracker] scum" but could continue to gate content by
| subscription or (consensual) FLoC as necessary for their
| business model.
|
| Pushing publishing and advertising towards proactive consent
| about targeting puts them into a dialog with the market about
| what's ok, instead of letting them hide behind a bunch of
| shifting tracker businesses.
| bmarquez wrote:
| No tracking is obviously the best choice.
|
| But if FLoC requires the browser to do the tracking itself,
| would it be possible to fork Chromium, disable tracking, and
| have FLoC return fake or random data instead?
| [deleted]
| contravariant wrote:
| Eh opting out of cookies is pretty easy, and opting out of
| any background fingerprinting is impossible in either
| scenario.
| fckthisguy wrote:
| Opting out of cookies is often not very easy because of:
|
| - hidden and confusingly worded opt-out dialogues -
| different cookie banners on ever site - dark patterns such
| as requiring far more clicks to opt-out than in - opt-out
| dialogues with lots of technical wording - sites that just
| don't provide opt-out options - sites that purposely
| degrade the ux if you opt-out
|
| All these mean that the average "not technical" user (such
| as my parents) cannot reliability opt-out.
|
| We ought to have opt-in be the default.
| dleslie wrote:
| Cookies are only a part of the story. Browser
| fingerprinting and session state sharing goes beyond
| whether or not one consents to a tracking cookie.
| okl wrote:
| > It seems like FLoC could make it easier to opt out
| centrally rather than going through a mess of specific
| (dis)approvals for the specific trackers on every site.
|
| Wasn't this already the idea behind the DNT (Do Not Track)
| header?
| jedberg wrote:
| Yeah, but it relied on the server to honor it. FLoC at
| least comes from the browser.
| dleslie wrote:
| It still coerces consent with a bad default. Sites will
| refuse to operate unless the FLoC is enabled, or will become
| obnoxious to use with it disabled. However, if FLoC were
| disabled by default then sites would be less likely to
| provide an obnoxiously bad service to those with it disabled.
|
| The best default is not to track at all.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| I don't think FLoC provides a default - that's the
| browser's job. We can all guess what Chrome's default will
| be (although I'd also expect that Incognito will disable or
| at least reset FLoC), but regulations like GDPR/CCPA might
| still require affirmative consent.
|
| Re: obnoxiously bad service, frankly I think sites should
| run however they want as long as they are truly transparent
| about it (not just a buried EULA). I prefer open sites, but
| nobody should be forced into service just because I have an
| IP.
| ummonk wrote:
| If I understand correctly, couldn't you just provide a
| static FLoC that isn't personalized? How will the sites
| know whether what they're receiving is actually
| personalized or not?
| judge2020 wrote:
| A lot of sites already break (sometimes in non obvious
| ways) with an ad blocker, so I don't see how this changes
| anything.
| fckthisguy wrote:
| Exactly. The option we choose should be better than what
| we currently have.
| dleslie wrote:
| By dramatically changing the available defaults.
|
| If most browsers aggressively blocked ads then more sites
| would test to see if blocking ads breaks the site.
| Spivak wrote:
| If more people block ads then more effort is also devoted
| to circumventing ad blockers. Ad supported sites
| typically don't care about the experience of viewers who
| aren't revenue generating.
| inopinatus wrote:
| The flock is coerced by the herding dogs.
|
| Google is the farmer, websites are the dogs, are we are the
| livestock.
|
| (Some might say, in a fit of charitability, "oh but it's a
| bird reference", citing prior work. To which I say no;
| don't convince yourself for one moment that Google's army
| of PhDs didn't notice the sheep allusion. They are not that
| dumb. But they are this arrogant.)
| izacus wrote:
| What's tracking in your definition here? Is counting display of
| an ad tracking? Load of an image on page? Is logging nginx
| entry for your page load tracking? Is responding with correct
| image for your browser user-agent tracking?
|
| I'm sometimes confused what is covered under this term and I'd
| kinda like to know where the line here is drawn. What exactly
| are we talking about here?
| dleslie wrote:
| When site A and site B are able to communicate to each other
| that I am a unique individual who has a particular session or
| sessions open.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| My understanding of FLOC is that it would meet that
| standard.
|
| That it would independently identify you to Site A and Site
| B as a person in a particular cohort.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| in addition i haven't heard that google is dramatically
| changing GA tracking?
| dleslie wrote:
| That's enough information to begin to uniquely identify
| me, along with other commonly available factors; like
| GeoIP and so forth.
| [deleted]
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Answering any packet request from your end is enough to
| uniquely identify you. How do you propose TCP/IP would
| work without unique addresses?
| dleslie wrote:
| From my original comment:
|
| > This is precisely the role that privacy-protecting
| legislation should be undertaking.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I fear that your questions reduce the problem to the point
| where no answer is possible. Loading the Y Combinator logo in
| here is almost certainly not tracking, but loading an
| invisible, 1px-by-1px gif in an email almost certainly
| counts. It's missing the forest for the trees.
|
| The simplest definition of tracking I can come up with is
| "collect data about me that can (and often, is) used to build
| a profile of me and my behavior". The NGinx log could or
| could not be tracking, depending on whether you use it to
| diagnose issues ("we should optimize this picture, it's
| loading too slow for too many people") or to profile _me_ (
| "ID 12345 uses a 56K modem, let's sell him a new one"). But
| no perfect definition exists because everyone has different
| thresholds of what they are okay with.
| [deleted]
| izacus wrote:
| If I understand FloC correctly though, it sends your
| profile/tags/interesting topics from your owned client
| software. So this basically means that if you have a
| browser like Firefox, it could send a preset cohort set to
| server that doesn't build your tracking profile and gives
| you things you're interested in.
|
| To me this seems like a win? It allows you as a person to
| control how your ad profile is built (and if it's sent at
| all) and doesn't send your data to servers anymore?
|
| (Please correct me if I misunderstood the technology.)
| seanhunter wrote:
| What I want is them not to know anything about my profile
| or what I want and them not to send anything about me to
| anyone unless I ask them to. Which I'm not going to.
|
| That would be an actual win. Not showing me ads at all
| would be an additional icing on the cake. I even don't
| want to see ads about things I'm interested in. Just
| nothing.
| sodality2 wrote:
| If this doesn't get taken advantage of by google, this
| would be awesome.
|
| I bet if a random open source project of the same kind
| were released, it would probably be pointed at as a
| reason why Google is evil ('see there are good
| alternatives!'). But because Google is doing it, people
| are (rightly) wary and (definitely not rightly) calling
| it evil without doing research.
| bogwog wrote:
| > But because Google is doing it, people are (rightly)
| wary and (definitely not rightly) calling it evil without
| doing research.
|
| That's what happens when no one trusts you. It's human
| nature, and logical arguments aren't going to change
| that.
|
| If anything, it's a good thing for society if Google
| burns despite trying to do something genuinely good (not
| that FLoC is good), because it shows others that there
| are real consequences to betraying the trust of your
| customers.
|
| We lose one untrustworthy company today, and gain many
| trustworthy companies in the future. That's a net
| positive for society!
| Veserv wrote:
| If they will not send data to their servers anymore, then
| they can easily regain trust by just introducing a
| contractual obligation to pay out a reasonable sum if
| they are found to be doing so that would disincentive
| them from doing so. Say 1 year of revenue or ~$100B?
| Since they have control over their own actions and there
| is no reason to send data to their servers anymore, then
| that would be pure upside with no risk if they are being
| truthful. However, until they make promises where success
| and failure can be evaluated by non-technical individuals
| and there is actual downside when failing to fulfill
| those promises, I see no reason for anyone to believe
| their claims if they will not put their money where their
| mouth is.
| wpietri wrote:
| Personally, what I'm interested in is not seeing ads. I
| think the notion that more relevant ads are somehow
| better for the user is mostly industry propaganda. Ad
| targeting is about finding people more susceptible to
| manipulation into spending money. User satisfaction is at
| best an epiphenomenon of the ad industry, and at worst is
| directly counter to their goals.
| anchpop wrote:
| If you don't want to see ads, why not run an adblocker or
| avoid visiting sites that show ads? There's no good
| option right now, if you have a paywall people will
| complain and almost no one will visit your site, and if
| you have any ads at all people will complain about that
| too. (I remember an HN article about a guy who had a
| banner advertising his own product on his personal blog,
| absolutely no tracking, that got added to uBlock
| adblocking lists.)
|
| If you want you can use duckduckgo with ads disabled in
| settings, visit HN and wikipedia and stackoverflow
| (although they have the #hireme thing), pay $10/month for
| youtube and spotify premium so you don't see ads there,
| etc. And then use ghostery to disable third-party cookies
| and things of that nature. What more do you want the
| industry to do?
| sofixa wrote:
| Do you use Web Monetisation ( as in, pay)? If you don't, and
| don't want to be tracked for ads, how do you propose things
| work?
| shawkinaw wrote:
| You can have ads without tracking. Print, radio, TV all do
| this.
| sofixa wrote:
| You can, but do you remember the times on the Internet when
| that was the case? I vaguely remember cents per thousands
| of ad clicks, which would make most websites financially
| unviable.
| hobs wrote:
| And you can justify all sorts of economic activity based
| on deeply unethical behavior, but should you?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _You can, but do you remember the times on the Internet
| when that was the case? I vaguely remember cents per
| thousands of ad clicks, which would make most websites
| financially unviable._
|
| I do, and the amount of money webmasters made back then
| was much better.
|
| Some of the sites I ran got $10-$15 CPM. Ad campaigns
| targeted to my sites' niches could be up to $25 CPM.
|
| Ever since Google introduced AdWords and its race to the
| bottom, content-heavy web sites are lucky to get 10C/
| CPM.
|
| But since the new kids on the block have never
| experienced a profitable web without tracking, they don't
| know any better and think it didn't exist.
| dleslie wrote:
| That was a lovely time to be on the internet: there was
| greater incentive to create interesting and focused niche
| content.
| esperent wrote:
| Do you mean this?
|
| https://webmonetization.org/
|
| It barely exists so far and is only implemented by a single
| browser that I'd never heard of (Puma). Hardly fair to demand
| if people are using it yet.
|
| > how do you propose things work?
|
| We go back to advertising without tracking.
| sofixa wrote:
| Indeed, their page doesn't make it obvious, but on a
| computer you can use extensions for Chrome and Firefox.
| Puma is the only option on mobile though ( never heard of
| it either).
| gwenzek wrote:
| Which extension ? The landing page is terrible for a
| prospective user.
| input_sh wrote:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/coil/
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/coil/locbifcbel
| dmn...
|
| I agree that their web presentation leaves a lot to be
| desired.
| gwenzek wrote:
| Thanks a lot. Coil looked like its own browser, and I
| didn't want yo use another browser. I was using a similar
| service in the past, but unsuscribed because most created
| I wanted to send money weren't receiving it.
|
| Will look into this
| sofixa wrote:
| Yeah, it's not as obvious as it could be, i'm in the
| process of writing an article on the subject and how
| important i think it is combat ads and tracking in the
| long term.
| input_sh wrote:
| Puma is a fork of Firefox that does other cool shit: it
| supports Handshake for DNS, uses DDG by default, and
| there are some mentions of IPFS that I don't know if it's
| implemented or not.
|
| I have yet to play with it though, mostly because I do
| the vast majority of my browsing on a desktop.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > If you don't, and don't want to be tracked for ads, how do
| you propose things work?
|
| There are so many hobbies and interests where the rich, meaty
| information people can benefit from is found on old-school
| blogs and websites that their owners have maintained without
| expecting to make much money at all, besides the occasional
| click-through to an Amazon referral link.
|
| However, those blogs and websites have now become hard to
| find because they have been pushed down in search results due
| to Google's changed algorithms and ad-supported websites
| heavy on SEO - sometimes those ad-supported websites are
| literal copies of earlier advertising-free blogs where a
| developing-world freelancer was paid to rewrite all the
| content just enough to avoid a DMCA takedown. Also, the
| advertising-supported world of mobile social-media apps has
| made people today less likely to step outside of their walled
| gardens and consider small third-party independent websites.
|
| So, to a degree, things would work _better_ in certain cases
| if targeted-advertising-supported websites disappeared; their
| decline would reveal a whole world of useful free content
| that was there the whole time.
| waisbrot wrote:
| Wikipedia is a well-known example of a vast amount of
| content that I can read without any tracking or targeted
| ads. In fact, there's very little advertising at all -- a
| few times a year they show me a banner asking for donations
| to the site.
| folkrav wrote:
| SEO was a thing before tracking and widespread advertising,
| though, and I can't see it disappear even if we somehow
| manage to ban those widespread tracking practices. Remember
| keyword stacking?
|
| Businesses providing paid services on the internet will
| still want to get noticed before those free smaller
| websites and will do whatever they can to appear first in
| relevant search engines results regardless. The reasons to
| get people on their sites would shift from showing them ads
| to selling them a paid product, but reeling people in is
| still going to be the objective.
|
| There are many great arguments against tracking, but IMHO,
| SEO isn't one.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Most content is essentially worthless. I'd happily see most
| of it disappear.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _don 't want to be tracked for ads, how do you propose things
| work?_
|
| The way they've worked for the last 400 years. The ads are
| tailored to the content, not the individual reader.
| chipgap98 wrote:
| I would much rather pay than be tracked. Unfortunately many
| sites don't give me that choice.
| sofixa wrote:
| Indeed, because for many of them the only option is ads,
| because almost nobody uses any alternatives ( the only one
| i know of is Web Monetization). Until it's massively used,
| few site owners will make the effort.
| bozzcl wrote:
| So you're saying it's not worth trying moving in that
| direction, just because people don't use it now?
| sofixa wrote:
| Au contraire, i'm saying start using it now, and if
| enough people do, website owners will see the point in
| supporting it.
| ttt0 wrote:
| I think I would be fine with paying too, but by paying
| you're giving up all of your personal information. Unless
| websites will suddenly start accepting something like
| Monero, I actually prefer to be tracked, as I can at least
| block it.
| spoonjim wrote:
| This will never happen because the people who would pay the
| most to avoid targeted ad tracking are the ones who are the
| most valuable to advertisers (essentially, people able and
| willing to spend money). So when you see Facebook making
| $20 per user or whatever and think "I'd pay $20 to avoid
| being tracked," it's actually Facebook making nothing from
| a ton of users, a little from a bunch of them, and a huge
| amount from their "whales," and the people willing to pay
| to avoid being tracked are most likely in the "whales."
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Simple answer: The sum of all online marketing dollars is
| more than the sum of any amount of money people would pay
| for online content.
|
| That alone means direct payment will never replace ads.
|
| Most people are not reading The Financial Times or
| Bloomberg, they are reading rags like The Sun and Facebook
| gossip. I would love for that content to go away, but
| really, ad supported models work great for that
| demographic.
| izacus wrote:
| Also both FT and Bloomberg are still filled up chalked
| full of trackers despite asking for money.
| coldpie wrote:
| You're right, but there is a solution: make online
| marketing worthless. Install an ad blocker.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| I think you miss my point. Even if online advertising (as
| well as marketing, but that's a different concept) was
| completely worthless, the number of paid dollars would
| not go up, and the "total GDP" of the internet would go
| down.
|
| If that's a desired future we should be honest about it,
| but it's a future without as many independent journalists
| who can't afford a team to sell their content, for
| example.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| What is already happening is that ads get embedded in the
| content.
|
| Paid content, product placement, YouTubers pitching
| Audible book related to video.
| seanhunter wrote:
| If a highway robber stops you and demands "your money or your
| life" and you object, they can't justifiably say "well if you
| don't pay me, how do you propose things work?"
|
| The responsibility isn't on the user to either consent to
| tracking or to come up with an alternative business model
| that allows people to monetize things. The responsibility for
| monetizing things falls on the people who want to do the
| monetizing. They have to figure out a business model that
| works and that users consent to.
| sofixa wrote:
| And ads work, and the vast majority of people consent to
| them. The problem is, they're not that good of a model
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > I don't want to be tracked. I never have wanted to be
| tracked.
|
| Maybe just use Tor.
|
| > Stop spying on us, please.
|
| It was probably a mistake to equivocate the kind of data
| gathering that ad-tech companies do with the kind that
| oppressive governments do.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Meanwhile, in the "Company Gives Oppressive Government Access
| to User Data" thread:
|
| > Well _of course_ $company gives $oppressive_regime access
| to data they collect on their users. They have to comply with
| local laws!
| prophesi wrote:
| But it's totally cool if we develop and sell the same tech to
| oppressive governments.
| dleslie wrote:
| Even services that I _pay for_ block the use of VPNs and Tor;
| most of the common web services have begun using DroneBL or
| similar.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Maybe just use Tor._
|
| Why should I have to jump through hoops and disguise myself?
| Why can't Google et.al. just respect the basic human right to
| privacy?
| grishka wrote:
| Any new feature that is added to the _user agent_ should serve
| or empower said user -- not any other parties, including the
| browser maker and the advertisers. That simple.
| anoncake wrote:
| And that's why an ad company should not be allowed to also
| make browsers.
| fartcannon wrote:
| We can all stop using Chrome.
|
| That'd help.
| grishka wrote:
| This kind of strategy has never ever worked because the
| majority of the world's population just accepts whatever
| is thrown at them without questioning.
| anoncake wrote:
| Sure. So would divine intervention. Regulation is more
| realistic.
| contravariant wrote:
| Some well designed regulation would be nice. But just on
| the off chance we should probably also try frying tofu
| and sending it to the mozilla foundation, because we
| might need some divine intervention after all.
| freebuju wrote:
| Can you go a day without the Internet? How about two days?
|
| Sadly without this tracking, the engines of the ad economy come
| to a stop. We have royally ducked up the ecosystem to the point
| where there's no fixing it. Ever. Even laws such as GDRP won't
| cut it, Facebook & co. are happy to flout the rules since
| paying the fines is worth the cost of breaking the rules.
|
| In the case of Google ad money vs Content marketing economy, it
| really is a case where the chicken came before the egg.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > Can you go a day without the Internet? How about two days?
|
| Yes.
|
| > Sadly without this tracking, the engines of the ad economy
| come to a stop.
|
| One more reason to eliminate tracking.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Yes. All I really need are Wikipedia, HN, and Python.org and
| few other programming sites. I don't mind shelling out a few
| dollars to support them either.
| kibwen wrote:
| This seems to imply that without ad revenue, the internet
| would not exist. But plenty of sites existed and still exist
| without the support of ad revenue. The price to host a static
| site is lower than it's ever been (and for sites that provide
| free hosting, the cost of providing that service is lower
| than it's ever been). If something like YouTube couldn't
| exist without ads, then so be it: let them move to a
| subscription model. There is nothing that says that we must
| be forced to tolerate ads in exchange for the internet, let
| alone ads that intentionally obliterate the human right to
| privacy.
| freebuju wrote:
| Large parts of what you know today as the Internet are ad-
| funded as opposed to user/donation funded. Without this ad
| revenue being available to the web, not so many websites
| and applications would have been born.
|
| Youtube did not even think of charging premium so many
| years after launching as a free service.
|
| Do you think they would have been that successfully were it
| not for the user base aka free eye-balls?
|
| > There is nothing that says that we must be forced to
| tolerate ads in exchange for the internet
|
| While true but this is the way the game and the field has
| been setup. Same thing that explains why you see ads on
| even on paid devices. Why be content with 5$, when you know
| you can shake 6$ from a customer?
|
| I am for privacy. Believe me. But this battle is not
| winnable when you make up 5% of the sober group and the
| rest are happy and drunk in love with Clubhouse or whatever
| new social media drug that is the rage.
| dleslie wrote:
| Vimeo was working the paid angle around the time that
| Youtube launched, and it wasn't under water. Youtube was
| successful because they _purposefully_ (and so,
| criminally) refused to take down copyrighted content
| because they were aiming to grow fast enough and large
| enough to be purchased by Google.
|
| It's not just Youtube/Vimeo; for instance, Flickr was a
| premium paid service around the time that Facebook
| launched, and it wasn't under water, either.
|
| These "freemium" services were able to act as _hideously
| unprofitable_ loss leaders for the large advertisement
| firms, and so take down the non-advertisement-funded
| competition.
|
| It was predatorial monopolistic practices that gave us
| the current web.
| freebuju wrote:
| Okay. Allow me to rephrase it. Knowing what you know about
| these products, can you live without Google, Youtube, Gmail
| for a day? This is what I refer to above when I say 'the
| Internet'. I reckon most people can't go a week.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > can you live without Google, Youtube, Gmail for a day?
|
| Without bug problems. Migrating away from Gmail would
| allow me to de it indefinitely.
| freebuju wrote:
| I'm also locked in Gmail, among a couple other useful not
| so easily replaceable products from Google.
| a1369209993 wrote:
| > can you live without Google, Youtube, Gmail for a day?
|
| The only one of those I even interact with on purpose is
| Youtube, only via youtube-dl, and only because _other_
| people refuse to use reasonable means of distributing
| video content (eg bittorrent).
| robin_reala wrote:
| Absolutely? I know I'm atypical for an internet user, but
| apart from YouTube I rarely use Google products, and
| YouTube is a nice-to-have, not a necessity.
| vvillena wrote:
| Ads also existed before user tracking. Google and Facebook
| both seem to conveniently forget this fact.
| frashelaw wrote:
| As long as it remains massively profitable to collect every ounce
| of data from us, tech corporations are going to keep doing this.
|
| Even with some existing laws, the profits are enough that they
| are willing to flagrantly violate these laws and simply pay
| meager fines.
|
| It's also unlikely that we will ever get significant legislation
| to protect us from this either, because all these tech profits
| allow big tech to buy our government, because policy is heavily
| swayed by corporations.
| querez wrote:
| > That framing is based on a false premise that we have to choose
| between "old tracking" and "new tracking." It's not either-or.
| Instead of re-inventing the tracking wheel, we should imagine a
| better world without the myriad problems of targeted ads.
|
| This seems backwards to me: the alternative to "targeted ads" are
| "untargeted ads", aka Spam. Who would rather have spam than
| targeted ads. Sure, spam might be easier to ignore, but it's also
| not effective from the company's perspective: showing the ad only
| to people who might be willing to spend money seems like a good
| thing to me. It's certainly economical. Which is why I feel like
| targeted ads are not something we can get rid of.
| pornel wrote:
| This "it's either no privacy or you get spam" is another false
| premise. Google has built their empire on ads based on search
| keywords and topics of websites you visit. Personalized cross-
| site tracking is a relatively new and small addition.
| Hard_Space wrote:
| > Who would rather have spam than targeted ads
|
| I would, because the targeting creeps me out entirely.
| Instagram were so good at it that I deleted the app. In the old
| days, you stuck luxury advertising in rich neighborhoods and
| used demographics for broadcast and other media. That'll do.
| querez wrote:
| Why should that do when you can do better? Why stop there?
| That would be like saying "post everything programming
| related on r/programming, that'll do. Let's ignore that there
| are more focused venues for my content".
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm not keen on getting tracked, either.
| But I can totally see that from a company's perspective, if
| you can make sure that only people who are interested in your
| product actually see the ad, that's better. You don't annoy
| people who aren't interested (not everyone in a rich
| neighborhood cares about a BMW ad, some already have a Tesla)
| and you increase effectiveness.
| MayeulC wrote:
| I place targeted advertising in the "creepy spam" category.
| It's still spam.
|
| If I was to receive an unwanted phone call from a travel agency
| while I am browsing plane tickets on the net, that would be
| creepy and annoying to me: I prefer to make thoughtful
| decisions by myself, thank you.
|
| I realize not everyone thinks the same way. But in my opinion,
| advertisement has a severe net negative impact on our society,
| and would like to get rid of it altogether.
|
| I already pay for targeted advertisement that comes in the news
| articles I read, no need to force-feed me.
|
| I've seen that fun video (in French [1]) where a person asks
| various advertisers their opinion on the role of advertising in
| the society, then asks them about an "electric knife" ad that
| was then running. The cognitive dissonance that follows is
| hilarious.
|
| [1] (1990, no subs): https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x869qr
| beervirus wrote:
| All modern adtech is a terrible idea.
|
| Let's go back to banner ads that are "targeted" based on what
| type of website you're looking at, rather than based on vacuuming
| up as much private info as possible about users.
| jacinabox wrote:
| It seems to me that as long as advertisers have ingenuity they
| will find new privacy harming ways of tracking us -- it seems
| like Goggle is moving earth to use their ingenuity instead to
| make a tracking device that isn't 'too identifying,' and could
| reasonably form the basis of a 'truce' between users and
| advertisers -- maybe we should let them?
| Shared404 wrote:
| This is also the conclusion I came to.
|
| Ban advertising targeted by tracking, and you remove the
| incentive to track in the first place.
| phnofive wrote:
| I agree, but mainly because I don't know how much more valuable
| targeted ads based on past actions are than current
| site/intent.
|
| Say, for example, an payday lender buys a banner on
| example.com/r/povertyfinance - could that not be construed as
| predatory in the same way as building a poverty FLoC based on
| browsing history?
| sodality2 wrote:
| Yeah, revenue for that is pennies to the dollar compared to
| tracking. I am _not_ defending it but it is not a simple switch
| to stop being evil and everything is fine. Hundreds of
| thousands of services would shut down that relied on ads to
| function. Which, again, they are relying on a predatory
| business model, but still.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Hundreds of thousands of services would shut down that
| relied on ads to function. Which, again, they are relying on
| a predatory business model, but still._
|
| You appear to understand the situation, so I'm not sure why
| you bring this up as a problem. If a business is utterly
| incapable of operating without resorting to an unethical
| business model, then the solution is to shut down the
| business rather than abandon ethics.
| sodality2 wrote:
| Well, some people don't understand the scope of it. I for
| the most part think it would be a good move, but it
| certainly would throw off the web for a good while.
|
| >You appear to understand the situation, so I'm not sure
| why you bring this up as a problem.
|
| It _is_ a problem, just not one that I think is more
| important than the benefits it comes with.
|
| >If a business is utterly incapable of operating without
| resorting to an unethical business model, then the solution
| is to shut down the business rather than abandon ethics.
|
| I agree, but weigh the impact of other industries that rely
| on that business as well. It would be a very unpopular
| move, and given the lobbying in the US, it's unlikely to
| pass here. And if it passes in the EU that might have other
| negative impacts in partitioning the web even more. It's a
| balancing act, and the solution is not as clear cut as "ban
| tracking in advertising". Knowing lawmakers, do you think
| this would differentiate between a paid service keeping a
| user logged in and, say, google ads? I bet the paid service
| would have an option in the subscription menu to upgrade,
| is that tracking in advertising? Probably not to 99% of
| sane people, but can lawmakers (or anyone for that matter)
| express what they want out of such a law in a concise
| enough manner to not be misconstrued in a major way?
| rileymat2 wrote:
| Is the revenue for that pennies on the dollar because
| tracking exists, or is that what it is worth?
|
| I have no expertise in this, but I don't see why anyone would
| pay for banner ads for more than pennies on the dollar if
| tracking is an option.
|
| Wouldn't removing tracking change the economics?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| On practice, everybody was announcing at Google when it
| used the site's content to decide what to show, and kept
| announcing at them once they changed into targeting the
| user instead. The change went mostly unnoticed.
|
| On the other hand, it can be that people detected the
| change on their results metrics, and decided to increase
| their spending because of the change. I really don't know
| how to differentiate this scenario from a normal increase
| on internet advertising that should naturally happen at the
| earlier days of a fast growing web. I don't think even
| Google (that has all the numbers) can tell them apart
| either.
| Shared404 wrote:
| This is a good point.
|
| Also, this specific situation seems like a good candidate
| for regulation, which removes the need for businesses to be
| ethical of their own accord.
| msg wrote:
| I'm intrigued by the idea that users will be able to solve this
| problem on the client side. Perhaps not on the underlying data
| directly, but running an adversarial browser agent clicking its
| way purposefully through the internet, in a tab you never look
| at.
| bentona wrote:
| Interesting take from another market leader:
| https://www.thetradedesk.com/us/knowledge-center/googles-mov...
| kall wrote:
| If this actually goes anywhere, I'm kind of excited about it from
| the perspective of a product developer.
|
| Being able to do content recommendation for fresh visitors
| without any tracking effort of your own would be pretty cool. It
| will probably come with a dialog, so users will likely opt out
| often for ads or on page load, but not if they just clicked "show
| me movie recommendations" in your app.
| unabridged wrote:
| 99.9% of the interactions with the internet should be read-only
| and could be delivered via something like IPFS. Make browsers
| read-only by default and closely monitor when information is sent
| out.
| max-ibel wrote:
| I find it ironic that Google's 'sign in with Google' and oAuth
| methods only work if you allow third party cookies.
|
| At least, I have not figured out how to use it without enabling
| 3rd party cookies.
| brofallon wrote:
| I'm wondering how hard it would be to reverse-engineer the FLoC
| algorithm that assigns ids based on browsing history.. could one
| just have a bunch of headless browsers randomly visit sites, and
| compute the FLoC ids periodically to see what types of sites end
| up producing which ids? This seems important since being assigned
| a group ID that includes a bunch of people might not be so bad,
| but (as the article suggests) if its well known which web sites
| are included in the group, that's a more disturbing story
| DreadY2K wrote:
| If you run an advertising company, you could probably just pay
| people a small amount of money to get their browsing history
| and their FLoC id, and enough people would take you up on that
| offer that you'd get that data (and maybe also demographics),
| without having to do any work to reverse-engineer.
| ttt0 wrote:
| Will I be able to opt out from this?
| darren_ wrote:
| Yes: https://github.com/WICG/floc
|
| > "Whether the browser sends a real FLoC or a random one is
| user controllable."
|
| FLoC stuff is client side. You can send nil FLoC IDs. You can
| randomize them on every request. You can swap them with your
| friends. Whatever.
|
| Vanilla Chrome might not let you (my money would be on an off-
| switch but not anything fun) but that's hardly going to be a
| blocker.
|
| (googler but works on something completely unrelated)
| izacus wrote:
| I'd assume that you can use a browser that doesn't send this
| data?
| kibwen wrote:
| Until Google sites start deliberately breaking if you don't
| send this data (or your browser is known to implement any
| other feature intended to circumvent it), thereby destroying
| the market share of any browser that dares to do so.
| oytis wrote:
| You can send bogus data in this case.
| kibwen wrote:
| I mention this. If Firefox were to come out and say
| "we're going to start spoofing this data", Google servers
| would start rejecting Firefox users within the week. No
| major browser would dare do it, not even Safari and Edge,
| because plenty of people are forced to use Google
| services for work. At best, you would have a small number
| of people using minor browsers and passing around patches
| for major browsers to spoof the data discreetly.
| izacus wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Google would never dare block Safari and
| start a direct war against Apple - they're even powerless
| to resist current privacy changes on Safari. Apple has
| monopoly on browsers on the most popular modern mobile
| platform and I don't think Google can fight that.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Edge is chromium so you're SOL anyways haha. I don't see
| why uBlock Origin or another addon couldn't do this for
| you though.
| tpxl wrote:
| Firefox blocks (blocked?) [0] google analytics in
| incognito mode in firefox and google still pays them
| buckets of money. It's not the same as doing it in normal
| mode, but it is in that direction.
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/__jakub_g/status/1365400306767581185
| ttt0 wrote:
| Too bad that almost all of them are Chromium based now.
|
| I wonder if websites are going to block you out if you don't
| have this enabled. Like they do with adblockers.
| esperent wrote:
| I guess we'll find out in a few weeks when testing starts. My
| guess is that it'll be hidden deep in about:config somewhere.
| 0xy wrote:
| Given Google's other tracking practices (X-Client-Data and
| leaky modern APIs like AudioContext), very unlikely.
|
| X-Client-Data cannot be disabled (it's hard-coded) and ships
| telemetry to DoubleClick without disclosure.
|
| Google Chrome is the DoubleClick browser. Why else would
| DoubleClick be hardcoded into the source as a place to send
| telemetry?
| tarkin2 wrote:
| I failed to see how flocks (cohorts) change the dangers of
| tracking or targeting.
|
| Cambridge Analytica didn't want to target a person. They wanted
| to track people. Flocks of people.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I think the average person that cares about tracking worries
| about the privacy implications if someone can look at their
| individual actions/conversations, but not so much about being
| marketed to as part of a group.
|
| The actions of Cambridge Analytica-type groups are an important
| issue, but I don't think FLoC is trying to solve that.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Saying please do not seems like a weak strategy for containing
| this. Financial pressure to target advertising is huge. There
| will have to be ways of defeating or at least detecting this.
| jszymborski wrote:
| The cookie dialogue was dumb, but a FLoC dialogue that only
| triggered on browsers that implemented it would be an actual
| deterrent that made a difference for privacy.
| data_spy wrote:
| If it's terrible, look at the other suggested solutions. Some are
| ultra terrible and will slow down the web
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| I think they're going to need to state their case in a way that
| allows Google to still make money and be competitive in the
| market place. It's not a simple matter of doing it and not doing
| it. It's a matter of doing it, and making more money or not doing
| it and making less. Google seems willing to move in the direction
| of privacy, but it's not going to do so in a way that sabotages
| the bottom line. It's unrealistic to expect any entity to
| voluntarily sacrifice its own values for the values of another.
| tehlike wrote:
| Google has started ramping up their subscription products -
| googleone in particular.
| faichai wrote:
| This is the transition that needs to happen. People just need
| to get used to the idea of paying for software. Software
| providers can then focus on making their products better
| rather than finding streams to tangentially monetise their
| offerings by invading user's privacy.
| sofixa wrote:
| Nobody will pay for every small blog, recipe/repair
| tutorial/gardening tips website/YouTube channel. How much
| value do they bring to you ? How much would you pay for
| them? How would you know they're worth it without using
| them first, and why would they allow you to use them for
| free, when most users would be one-shot?
|
| Please support Web Monetization.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| I remember back when people put stuff on the internet for
| free because it was fun and they enjoyed sharing. I
| suppose the need for compensation has truly destroyed
| every good thing.
| arpa wrote:
| Exactly. Old web was the bees knees.
| izacus wrote:
| There was also significantly less stuff because hosting
| and hardware cost money.
| kibwen wrote:
| Even with significantly less stuff there was more stuff
| than you could ever consume. In addition, the cost and
| barriers to hosting static content have fallen quite a
| bit since then, and the percentage of the human
| population that has access to the internet (and can thus
| participate in creation) has risen dramatically. An ad-
| free internet would not be starved for content.
| faichai wrote:
| With OnlyFans, Patreon and Twitters super follow we're
| slowly finding ways to make the consumer/creator
| interaction more direct. It's only a matter of time
| before something close to microtransactions pops out of
| these.
|
| It's interesting that influencer promotion is already
| out-of-band from general internet advertising. They are
| paid directly to promote products to people who have
| proactively followed/engaged with the influencer already.
| fitblipper wrote:
| If their intent is to convince Google, then I agree. If the
| intent is to convince the public and policy makers, I don't
| think they need to re-frame it. I am okay letting a company
| (even a complete industry) fail if society has decided that the
| industry or business practices are parasitic.
|
| Privacy is a freedom which has many parasites (state and
| private entity driven) attacking it and I welcome changes to
| perception, regulation, and law which places safeguards around
| it.
| izacus wrote:
| And do you consider a complete ban of 100B+ advertising
| industry and complete ban of tracking (happily used by
| governments) a likely outcome?
|
| Even the mighty Apple still tracks analytics data and
| separates that into a separate switch from the ones limiting
| non-Apple tracking.
| fitblipper wrote:
| Not how opinions and politics stand now, but that is part
| of the reason why articles like this are important. There
| is quite a distance to travel between writing an article
| criticizing tracking + the technology that enables it and
| arriving at legislation.
| izacus wrote:
| I might be traitor to the cause, but I feel like giving
| the industry an "out" might be easier to achieve and
| significantly faster to implement - e.g. instead of
| complete ban on targeted advertising, standardize on a
| clientside API that can send a list of topics/themes that
| are interesting to the person. In a way that's not owned
| by a single corporation.
|
| This way I feel there will be less legislative and
| lobbying pushback while still achieving major privacy
| wins.
| SahAssar wrote:
| This is not about banning ads or analytics.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > I think they're going to need to state their case in a way
| that allows Google to still make money and be competitive in
| the market place.
|
| I'm sorry but Google has no any competition. If you don't want
| to limit oneself to, say, Facebook users, you pretty much have
| to buy Google's ad services.
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