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Privacy Sandbox – Open standards to enhance privacy on the web
- noncoml 7y agoSet the fox to guard the henhouse?
- CamelCaseName 7y agoI breathed a real sigh of relief when I realized this initiative is about privacy, rather than privatizing the web.
- UI_at_80x24 7y agoSame, my first thought was: WalledGarden - phase 2 - initialize
- zzzcpan 7y ago> I breathed a real sigh of relief when I realized this initiative is about privacy, rather than privatizing the web. Well, an initiative for other browsers, publishers, and their advertising partners to protect adtech is definitely not about privacy.
- nerdjon 7y agoLet me guess, everything about "Privacy Sandbox" is meaningless when the company that proposes it also holds a major stronghold on the web thanks to Google Analytics, Google SSO, etc. Google themselves will likely barely be impacted (and why should we expect otherwise, google is not going to shoot themselves in the foot) Makes me think of this quote from the webkit policy https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/ https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/ : > When faced with a tradeoff, we will typically prioritize user benefits over preserving current website practices. We believe that that is the role of a web browser, also known as the user agent. Google clearly does not believe that.
- dastx 7y agoGoogle doesn't use webkit any more if that's what you're referring to. But absolutely Google doesn't believe that. Even if the Chromium team truly believed in privacy (and their track record suggests otherwise), there still is a huge conflict of interest and daddy Google is not gonna let them interfere with their revenue.
- nerdjon 7y agoThat I know, but it is important the differences of a company funded by ads and the ones that are not. Especially given this right at the top: > Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago> some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards That's rich coming from the makers of Chrome...
- ehsankia 7y agoExcept without advertising half of the internet collapses. And to anyone suggesting that a paid model will just surface, I don't really want to live in a world where only the rich have access to tools as useful as Maps, Translate or Youtube.
- FlowNote 7y agoOnly the bad half collapses.
- floatingatoll 7y agoHalf of the Internet collapsing due to lack of ad revenue isn’t necessarily an apocalypse, even though it sounds like one. For example, it’d end domain squatting. (EDIT: Guess not!)
- nubela 7y agoI find this rich, coming from Google.
- caiob 7y ago> Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences. Notice how arrogant Google sounds on this sentence here. This is like saying: "Hey, you guys can create whatever adblocking technology you want, without Google's blessing, that shit will never take off. We own the web."
- nostalgk 7y agoAny update on the whole adblock thing that was popular here a little bit ago, with them deprecating the ability to drop web requests? Seems kinda paramount to this initiative.
- ehsankia 7y agoAs expected, it was pretty overblown. Realistically though we won't really know for another year or two. The specs keep on changing, and even if it's finalized, it won't be enforced for a long while.
- ziddoap 7y ago>Technology that publishers and advertisers use to make advertising even more relevant to people is now being used far beyond its original design intent - to a point where some data practices don’t match up to user expectations for privacy. The whole thing reads like Google is just discovering the abuse that they themselves have perpetuated and bred into a real monster. But, a noble goal nonetheless.
- IloveHN84 7y agoI hope they start ditching user tracking from Android and Chrome and enforce more security: that would be a real privacy improvement
- frenchman99 7y ago> Recently, some other browsers have attempted to address this problem, but without an agreed upon set of standards, attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences. Haha, nice, blame it on the ones that actually try. > First, large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting. Fingerprinting was used in addition to cookies. Banning 3rd party cookies is just a first step. > Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web. Here's the problem. Google only wants a solution if it works with it's current business model, which is ads. Trusting Google to protect our privacy is like trusting a burglar to protect your home whilst you're away. Want to not be tracked ? Install Firefox or Safari, turn on ad blockers, use a different browser for Facebook (or use Facebook Container on Firefox), and refuse any "Consent approvals" when you visit a website. Also, advocate for laws like the GDPR (it has made privacy a bigger concerns for companies in the EU).
- kotrunga 7y agoWhy was this downvoted? Save the fact that you just shouldn't use Facebook at all, I think this is great comment. It actually references text from the post, unlike many of the other comments. It must have been a few Google bots... I especially like this text they wrote: "attempts to improve user privacy are having unintended consequences" Unintended consequences? Oh no! Google's evil business model is being messed with!!!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gipp 7y agoOh look, an article about Google. Surely the comments will be by people who have actually read the article and are discussing its substance.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gorhill 7y ago> large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting The safest assumption is that fingerprinting is and will be used regardless of whether local storages (of which cookies is one flavor) are forbidden -- these are not mutually exclusive.
- travisporter 7y agoI enabled fingerprint blocking on Firefox after reading this. Does it break a lot of websites? This site says some banks use it to authenticate. https://medium.com/slido-dev-blog/we-collected-500-000-browser-fingerprints-here-is-what-we-found-82c319464dc9 https://medium.com/slido-dev-blog/we-collected-500-000-brows...
- Semaphor 7y agoI’ve always enabled fingerprint-blocking, first with extensions, now in the browser. The only places I had problems logging in are some very few online shops. Never a bank, and I had a bank with a password limit of 6 characters (about 5 years ago)
- _underfl0w_ 7y ago> I had a bank with a password limit of 6 characters Clearly information security is their forte /s
- youngtaff 7y agoSome of the bot detection products use fingerprinting to try to establish whether someone is a real browser or not
- jazzyjackson 7y agoI closed my accounts with Chase and Citi because I kept getting locked out of my accounts for suspicious activity. Disabling PIA VPN helped but I never could figure out what else about me trying to avoid being tracked looked suspicious. Apparently they take a 'only criminals would clear cookies' approach.
- maximente 7y ago> Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do this statement is fraudulent and Justin Schuh should be embarrassed to have it associated with his name. i'm tired of being lied to about this company's obviously fake "values".
- rinchik 7y agoMy thoughts exactly, a desperate attempt of putting more expensive lipstick on that pig. Google is an antonym to Privacy.
- tobr 7y agoHere’s another fuddy lie: > Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web. I think you could argue that targeted advertisement has jeopardized the future of the vibrant web.
- ignoramous 7y agoI like the word, fuddy lie. Never heard it before. Here's a new motto for Goog in light of the current article: "Don't be fuddy". This Google piece somehow tops Mark Zuckerberg's 3000 word drabby drivel: https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-focused-vision-for-social-networking/10156700570096634/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/a-privacy-foc...
- benologist 7y agoThis is just their ordinary dishonesty. When Google wants to actually be fraudulent they do it the Google way, they hire thousands of genius engineers to work on their ad software and then have none of them complete the endpoints for refunds and then have all of them ignore it, even willfully, until $75 million is stolen and a judge is sniffing around... twenty years later. https://www.businessinsider.com/google-emails-adtrader-lawsuit-refund-ad-click-fraud-2019-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/google-emails-adtrader-lawsu... The question is, does that $75 million of fraud include the twenty years of missing banned-Adsense-account revenue Google paid $11m to conceal what they do with... or is that a distinct other fraud. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/adsense-lawsuit/248135/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/adsense-lawsuit/248135/
- jedberg 7y agoAt the end of the day, Google has a fundamental crisis. Their entire business depends on your lack of privacy from them. They would be happy to help keep you private from everyone else but they definitely need to invade your privacy to keep their business alive.
- ProAm 7y agoTo be fair this is a project that will be cancelled in 18 months anyways.
- mav3rick 7y agoJust like Search was cancelled after 2000 or Maps or Youtube or Android ? Keep peddling the HN narrative.
- pessimizer 7y agoMaybe find an example too young to be in high school?
- joshuamorton 7y agoWhat's the exact age range you're looking for? 13 years is too old, its high school aged, but 3-5 years is too young? So we're looking what, only for products released from '07-'12? Drive fits the bill.
- ehnto 7y agoI wonder if they could survive off of search page ads and website contextual ads? No user targeted ads. If they could, they could squash the invasive marketing advertisers with lobbying for privacy policy and then regain a total monopoly as no other tracking adtech is viable anymore. I personally believe fingerprinting should be illegal, and that any company that relies on it is inherently unethical. I think Google could survive without it. I am by no means a Google fan either, just recognizing they have some power here and that fighting for ethical policy might actually be a good business move.
- techntoke 7y ago"Some ideas include new approaches to ensure that ads continue to be relevant for users, but user data shared with websites and advertisers would be minimized by anonymously aggregating user information, and keeping much more user information on-device only. Our goal is to create a set of standards that is more consistent with users’ expectations of privacy." These ideas don't work together Google. First, I don't want to see ads at all to lookup information. Encyclopedias didn't have advertisements in their Table of Contents. Second, you can't show relevant ads for users while keeping user data anonymous, especially when your algorithms and methods of doing so are closed-source.
- wybiral 7y agoThis reads as "save the cookies" to me. From a company who specializes in tracking of all forms including location from our phones and parsing all of our emails to enumerate our recent shopping orders on 3rd party sites. What if websites just return to contextual ads and proper opt-in consumer studies (as traditional groups like nielson still do) instead of tracking everything their users do online and offline for aggressive targeting? Then we wouldn't need to "save the cookies".
- starbugs 7y agoThis reads as "we will make tracking harder for everyone else but us" to me, which is even worse.
- dimator 7y agoWait how is that? At the very least, what they're proposing sounds like open specs and industry standards.
- starbugs 7y agoIt doesn't matter. That's the beautiful thing about being the owner of Chrome, which kind of is "the web" now. Open specs and industry standards are basically what you propose and accept. And you get the data anyway regardless of these standards since you own the OS (Android), the browser (Chrome), and the search engine. So anyone else getting less data equals you being ahead of all others even more equals your risk of being disrupted is even lower. Welcome to the net monopoly!
- tcd 7y agoYet they don't mention Android, where the security is so lax you can also be fingerprinted and data sent to a remote server without you ever knowing, where Chrome on Android doesn't even allow you to use ad blocking tools? This is a weak attempt at showing how tracking Google has been a part of and enabled is not being accepted by certain vendors anymore. Let's build a cross OS, cross browser and cross platform set of standards, not just for the web but computing as a whole. Also, didn't Google propose cutting the web manifest to prevent tools like uBlock from working as well? Not sure what's going on with this...
- falcolas 7y agoPersonally, I don't trust the fox (Google) to guard the hen house (my privacy). Sure, they might keep other foxes away, but I'll still be short a few hens at the end of the day.
- dessant 7y ago> First, large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting. Including delivering browser exploits [1] to better track users, for which Google was fined. People's privacy is undermined primarily by companies which would do anything to track users, not by attempts to prevent tracking. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19200279 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19200279
- jszymborski 7y agoIf they want to build a more private web, they can start by nixing AMP and (more existentially) Google Ads.
- cameronbrown 7y agoRelevant Chromium Blog post: https://blog.chromium.org/2019/08/potential-uses-for-privacy-sandbox.html https://blog.chromium.org/2019/08/potential-uses-for-privacy...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ylambda 7y agoThe chromium blog entry mentions a browser that blocks cookies. Which browser are they referring to? > We’ve seen this recently in response to the actions that other browsers have taken to block cookies - new techniques are emerging that are not transparent to the user, such as fingerprinting.
- ziddoap 7y agoFirefox allows control over cookies, and there are a number of extensions which serve this function as well. Does Chrome not give an option re cookies?
- olivierduval 7y agoIt's (almost) funny to see how Google "reframe" the concept of privacy to preserve its business model !!! - "large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting"... so it means: one way or another, it's OK to gather as much information as possible to show relevant (targeted and weel paid) ads. But there are good ways (cookies) and bad ways (fingerprinting). - "blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding". And what about delivering "standard" ads ???? Newspapers have shown non-targeted ads for years and nobody complained about that (I mean... except marketers maybe). If publishers stopped relying on targeted ads, maybe they may at last find some really new business model (like shared subscription) instead of just being lazy, using Google/Facebook products ? - "If this funding is cut, we are concerned that we will see much less accessible content for everyone", meaning...? Oh... less things to show on google search engine and with AMP. As Google is not producing content by itself but using (stealing?) content produced by others, it's quite understandable that their bottom line is tied up to the content publishers providing free content. Actually, maybe Google should pay content provider to be able to include it in their serach engine ? (ok... link the link tax) It seems to me that Google doesn't understand that users DON'T WANT TO BE TRACKED AT ALL. It has gone too creepy for years. It's not a matter of being tracked by one trick or another, it's not been tracked AT ALL. But, admitting this would mean the end of GoogleAds. And Google seem to has lost any creativity to find new solutions to replace that product that users can't bear anymore. Sad... "do no Evil" if really gone forever :-(
- kotrunga 7y agoYou're right. But, Google does understand that their users don't want to be tracked. They just don't care. The real solution is to "Get off Google". If everyone reading this did that, would it impact them? No, they would be fine. But I think it's better to do something rather than nothing.
- Despegar 7y ago>If everyone reading this did that, would it impact them? No, they would be fine. But I think it's better to do something rather than nothing. As with climate change, systemic problems can't be solved with individual action.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- thsealienbstrds 7y agoTIL: you don't always need to read TFA before you can conclude with reasonable certainty that it is BS.
- jsgo 7y agoGoing to try to respond to this in good faith. I know there is some intrinsic bias what with Google being an ad company, but I'll try to ignore that and assume they wish to protect users within Chrome, advertising division be damned. On point one, regardless of cookie blocking or not, these more aggressive means of tracking users are going to happen. If they (ad programs) can eke out extra data points on users, that's more value that translates into revenue for them so of course they're going to do it. They're saying they're going to do what they can to mitigate fingerprinting, face value, that's great, but it's like anything: a game of cat and mouse where when one opportunity closes, they'll chase another. Point two is going to be a hard sell. They're asking users to care about advertisers when users have had issues with advertisers before (massive string of redirects to a "congratulations, click here for your free Amazon gift card/Xbox/whatever" page that screws with the tab's history to the point you can't even get back to where you were before requiring closing the tab anyone?). I don't disagree that advertisers are a necessary evil on the Internet (sites want to make money, we're usually not paying them, so forth and so on), but at the same time, some networks are historically bad for user experience: not in a "ah man, that banner ad is annoying" way, but in a "it just hijacked the page and now I'm trying to do a bunch of stuff to get back to the content/away from the site" way.
- kotrunga 7y agoI don't think Google has its customers best interest in any of this. They try to make it seem like it at face value, but to deliver real privacy, they wouldn't get the data they need for their own business. An example from the article- "First, large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting." I'm pretty sure fingerprinting can happen either way. It's just easier for Google to control cookies and prevent users from blocking cookies because cookies will provide more exact data on what Google wants. They'll sell the point that they will keep your data safe from 3rd parties... but they will use it for their purposes however they please.
- AlexandrB 7y ago> I don't think Google has its customers best interest in any of this. It absolutely does! Google’s biggest customers are its advertisers. We’re Google’s users.
- bonsai80 7y agoLooks like Google has their calendars messed up and meant to post this on April 1. "Privacy is paramount to us" and then blaming abuses of my privacy on me? Funny stuff Google; you've really outdone yourselves with your April Fools post this year!
- strzzz 7y agoWhen first sentence is a lie, why should you read the rest?
- open-source-ux 7y agoIt's hard to take seriously initiatives like this. Google tracks users on a industrial scale that no other online company can match. Their digital fingerprints can be found in every corner of the web. Just why are they so obsessed with tracking users to death? I'm beginning to believe that tracking online behaviour is in the DNA of the company and that it simply can't reign itself back. It escapes serious scrutiny, not least because the tech community would rather rush to it's defence than scrutinise it's practices and behaviour. It has, in my view, a narrow view of privacy (shared by large swathes of the tech community) which is essentially: privacy = security. Of course, you can't have privacy without security, but security by itself does not equal privacy. Or put another way, Google's attitude is essentially: we'll track you to death, but we guarantee that information will never leak from Google. The response from large swatches of the tech community: that sounds fine.
- sdinsn 7y agoI don't like this article. 1. Fails to mention that the reason why many people block ads is because publishers sue overly aggressive ads or ads that advertise harmful content (scams). Publishers who use these practices should be losing money. 2. Pretends that if cookies are used then companies will stop trying to fingerprint. 3. Sounds like they are trying to prevent blocking cookies entirely- I'm not sure how that is giving more power to the users.
- benologist 7y agoThis is like when Nintendo and Microsoft demand loot boxes include the 0.00000001% odds of getting what you want. They do this because they are looking for a way to save loot boxes because childhood gambling is immensely profitable and some children are so generous they may even spend thousands. They seek a safe middle-ground where most children can still be exploited and their parents defrauded but the mechanic itself is not made illegal and they are not breaking any law. Google wants to save internet-wide tracking before it is irreversibly thwarted or outlawed for being generally abusive to society, because it put a hundred billion in their savings account and there's more coming.
- ldng 7y agoHow am I going to trust google on the word Privacy when just yesterday my Android smartphone force updated 3 apps on me while on 4G and preference is set to "no automatic" update at all and only on WiFi ?
- hedora 7y agoWhy should Google explain their actions to you? Respect their privacy.
- segmondy 7y agoThis is disgusting. I was actually excited in thinking this was a development of a new concept, instead it's a plea for folks not to use ad blockers so they can make money from tracking and adds. If this was April 1st, I would laugh at how hilarious it reads, but it's not.
- danShumway 7y ago> "large scale blocking of cookies undermine people’s privacy by encouraging opaque techniques such as fingerprinting" "If y'all had just handed over your wallet when we asked, we wouldn't have had to hurt you. So really, this is your fault." More seriously, what Google is saying here is that privacy can't be mainstream. It's no different from the arguments that advertisers gave when they rejected DNT. They're willing to let a few privacy-minded people avoid being tracked, as long as that group never becomes a majority. But it was never their plan to get rid of tracking, every compromise they ever offered had the catch, "as long as it doesn't affect our bottom line." It's just another Equifax settlement. "Yeah we offered it, but we never assumed that so many of you would take it. Be reasonable." Heck that. If you genuinely believe that people should have a choice about privacy, then you have to accept that maybe the majority of people will decide they don't want cookies. You have to take a step back and consider that browsers that block cookies by default are just reflecting what their users already widely want; people want their browsers to protect them from tracking by default, without configuration.You're not offering users a choice, you're just mad that you can't use dark patterns to make users unsafe-by-default. This entire article is just insulting.
- Ajedi32 7y ago> "If y'all had just handed over your wallet when we asked, we wouldn't have had to hurt you. So really, this is your fault." Seeing as Google doesn't engage in fingerprinting and are actively taking steps to block it[1], I don't think this is a fair characterization of Google's position. [1]: https://blog.chromium.org/2019/05/improving-privacy-and-security-on-web.html https://blog.chromium.org/2019/05/improving-privacy-and-secu...
- someexgamedev 7y agoThis reminds me of oil companies sharing footage of their employees scrubbing oil off ducks.
- hedora 7y agoWhat? You want them to waste all that oil? Yeah; the analogy does work.
- sha666sum 7y ago> Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web. Herein lies the issue. Users blocking cookies are trying to avoid being tracked and "seeing relevant ads". Essentially, he is trying to create web standards in order to do the thing that users specifically don't want them to do. Google's business model requires Schuh to twist logic in a manner that makes it seem like it isn't so.
- tomComb 7y agoI agree that that is the crux of the matter, but I'm not sure that the two sides are irreconcilable. Google and site owners want to do targeted ads. I'm not sure that users hate targeted ads specifically. I, for one, am not a site owner myself, but I'm sympathetic enough to their need for revenue that I'm OK with targeted ads. I hate stuff like auto-play video (and am thrilled that Firefox has well and truly conquered that issue) and I'm pissed that many companies sell or leak my data but I'm not looking to reject targeted ads outright.
- jamesdwilson 7y agoYouTube autoplays just fine in firefox. What did you mean?
- vmateixeira 7y agoAnd that's exactly the problem.. it used to be very hard to block just a few weeks ago.
- jamesdwilson 7y agoSorry, what do you mean? How can I block autoplaying yt vids in firefox?
- Hitton 7y ago
- arendtio 7y agoIt would be a start if users could select in the browser if they want to receive personalized content/advertising, be tracked or whatever. All those new GDPR induced layers definitely make the web a whole step worse (and I don't blame the GDPR for that). Every time I see a website having 'essential' and 'functional' cookies I start freaking out because, in my opinion, those websites are just lying. In most cases, their 'functional' cookies are either marketing or tracking cookies, but never relevant for the core functionality of their website. And there are still too many websites out there which either try to make you click the 'Accept all' button or simply don't understand that the law requires an opt-in and not opt-out. Pushing the UI for the cookie-use-case selection into the browser would at least end this UI layer hell. But I am sure, some browser vendor will mess up the party and go some extra way, similar to what we had with the DNT header... Maybe we just need another law like 'Do Not Track means Do Not Track!'.
- ocdtrekkie 7y ago"Privacy Sandbox" ...Okay, sounds good. "ensure that ads continue to be relevant for users" ...Oh, that's what this is about.
- rapht 7y agoI couldn't resist laughing out, just as I think if this guy Justin Schuh had been presenting this in-person at any non-adtech gathering, he would have been laughed out of the room.
- deburo 7y agoMaybe if he presented it to the Hacker News crowd, for which the popular opinion seems to be that anything less than 100% privacy is acceptable. You know this, but plenty of people, including me, prefers free content to paywalls at every corner. That Google is ramping up efforts in trying to improve privacy while maintaining the viability of free content providers is very positive. What's interesting anyway is what mechanisms they'll implement. I'm intrigued about the fingerprinting budget: how well will it really work?
- rapht 7y agoI for one don't believe 100% privacy is even possible, and you've got to keep some kind of reality principle to decide what's "acceptable". But anyway, as someone else said, I don't trust the fox to guard the hen house - even though again there's some kind of reality check that says if (one of) the most powerful actor starts doing something, there _will_ be some traction, so yeah, let's see concretely what it is about... About the privacy budget: if I understand well, they want to count API calls that return device/environment-specific data, probably giving some set of weights to each of calls and stop accepting requests after a certain threshold. I'm a bit skeptical with that kind of complexity but why not.
- ignoramous 7y agoPrivacy Budget seems like a repackaged DNT. It is going to be better before it gets worse.
- RonaldSchleifer 7y agoGoogle talking about enhancing privacy on the web reeks of the sulfurous lies of Satan speaking through his children on earth. Google has 0 incentive to actually introduce privacy, let alone anonymity or Constitutional rights to free speech. But ALL the incentive to undercut and take out all the actual efforts to redistribute the web and introduce real freedom and privacy and allowing humans to have the rights they already have and which government does not have the right to curtail or allow the curtailment of in any way (as outlined in the Bill of Rights); regardless of whether the tyrants keep trying to ever increasingly tighten the noose they have slipped over our neck at this point. No need to try to flee or put your efforts into redistributing the internet, citizen, see, we are providing all you need here on FAANG Ranch.
- anaphor 7y ago> We are following the web standards process and seeking industry feedback on our initial ideas for the Privacy Sandbox. In other words, they're not doing anything new or taking any real risks. They're going with whatever the status-quo (i.e. broken solution) is.
- secfirstmd 7y agoThis is about an insincere as Google's lazy abandoned efforts to do something about bringing in end to end encryption for email following its exposure as being involved in PRISM.
- pgcj_poster 7y agoI can't read this because I block all Google's domains in my hosts file for privacy reasons. Can someone tell me what it says?
- groovybits 7y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20190822160008/https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/building-a-more-private-web/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190822160008/https://www.blog....
- ignoramous 7y agoIf you also don't block msft domains (GitHub), follow links from my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20770080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20770080
- akiro 7y ago> If this funding is cut, we are concerned that we will see much less accessible content for everyone. Yeah, that is exactly what Google is concerned about. /s
- ghostwords 7y ago>Recent studies have shown that when advertising is made less relevant by removing cookies, funding for publishers falls by 52% on average The source for this seems to be a Google Ad Manager "study" (a paragraph in the middle of https://www.blog.google/products/ads/next-steps-transparency-choice-control/ https://www.blog.google/products/ads/next-steps-transparency...). Was this an apples-to-apples comparison, i.e. did they serve relevant contextual ads when they turned off cookies? Other studies disagree: >We find that when a user’s cookie is available publisher’s revenue increases by only about 4% -- Online Tracking and Publishers’ Revenues: An Empirical Analysis (https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/05/WEIS_2019_paper_38.pdf https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/...) Edit: >After GDPR, The New York Times cut off ad exchanges in Europe — and kept growing ad revenue -- https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut-off-ad-exchanges-europe-ad-revenue/ https://digiday.com/media/gumgumtest-new-york-times-gdpr-cut...
- _underfl0w_ 7y agoNice fact-checking. It seemed like the lack of reference in TFA to the source of that study - specifically the lack of name-dropping of the source to serve as an ethos - made me immediately assume that it was probably a study run by the very company putting this borderline propaganda out. Glad to have it confirmed.
- jefftk 7y agoThis is a study any publisher can replicate today. Compare an experimental group with setRequestNonPersonalizedAds [1] against a control group. I think you'll see similar numbers. [1] https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/7678538 https://support.google.com/admanager/answer/7678538 (Disclosure: I work at Google, on ads. Speaking only for myself. I haven't seen anything internal about how this study was run.)
- rurp 7y agoDoes that test replace targeted ads with contextually relevant ones?
- no_wizard 7y agoHere's a thought, addressing the point of >>Recent studies have shown that when advertising is made less relevant by removing cookies, funding for publishers falls by 52% on average Has anyone ever done a study of some sort of natural heuristic advertising? Instead of tracking people, track what a publisher publishes and through that, you can make some very plausible (and specific, I'd think) assumptions about the people who consume those publications. Like, if I'm reading arstechnica, you don't need a tracking cookie to tell you that I am likely intersted in: - Video Games - Consumer Electronics - Some light-medium scripting/programming - Generally am technology minded Is that not valuable to advertisers somehow? I might have this whole game wrong.
- etchalon 7y agoWasn't this sort of the point of the Google Ad Network, originally? You could place ads on sites which contained keywords relevant to your target. Of course, content farm sites ruined the whole thing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- iamben 7y agoProbably going to take some heat for this answer, especially as many of the comments here are very negatively Google, but I actually think that was pretty balanced. Sure they're (obviously) protecting their own interests, but realistically SO much of the web relies on advertising. I mean, how many startups did we watch over the last 20 years with no real source of revenue (but some of which were actually fun/useful) end up doing the whole "we'll just use ads" thing? And ultimately as a product owner (web or otherwise), you're not going to spend money on ads (and thus fund a whole load the Internet) if you a) can't make a return on your ad spend, and b) can't understand what and where performs best. Don't get me wrong, I hate the super spammy intrusive ads, and sometimes retargeting does feel like I'm being eavesdropped on, but I can't be the only one that prefers to see relevant ads? I'd much rather see ads for sneakers and watches (which I'll frequently click), than I would for some other junk that doesn't interest me. I genuinely don't mind ads if I know it's supporting the thing it's displaying ads on. And as for the cookie stuff - it's a complete mess now. I get that we as a community should probably be spearheading SOME sort of privacy to bubble down to those that don't 'get' it, but talk to the bulk of my non-tech friends and it's a non issue. All those cookie popups are clicked without being read (and they never will be read ever get, that behaviour has been established) - the brightest button gets the click and they can move on and get to actually looking at what they wanted. Literally nobody reads, cares or understands. Even the "they're selling my data" / "they're tracking me scandals" - maybe five minutes of outrage and then assuming you can still share cat memes and holiday photos, who cares? Yesterday people were all over Instagram sharing an outraged message that "Instagram have no permission to do what they want with my content" - and yet no one left IG. Everyone is still back today, business as usual. I think at least _exploring_ this whole thing in a way that's balanced towards the entire internet ecosystem is way more thoughtful than a knee-jerk "block everything, privacy everything" response. It's a pretty emotive topic, and close to a lot of our hearts, but we definitely need more talk. Just my 2c!
- saagarjha 7y ago> Don't get me wrong, I hate the super spammy intrusive ads, and sometimes retargeting does feel like I'm being eavesdropped on, but I can't be the only one that prefers to see relevant ads? I'd much rather see ads for sneakers and watches (which I'll frequently click), than I would for some other junk that doesn't interest me. I genuinely don't mind ads if I know it's supporting the thing it's displaying ads on. None of this fundamentally requires the surveillance apparatus that most ad scripts come with.
- ignoramous 7y agoHere are the initial proposals from Chrome engineering: > https://github.com/jkarlin/floc https://github.com/jkarlin/floc > Browsers would need a way to form clusters that are both useful and private: Useful by collecting people with similar enough interests and producing labels suitable for machine learning... This still doesn't address spreading mass propaganda (show feed of immigrant crimes to floc 43A8C before the elections, because well, they happen to be Xenophobic) and user control. They propose browsers send random flocs to avoid clustering flocks of sensitive categories, but pretty sure the default isn't going to be random. -- > https://github.com/bslassey/privacy-budget https://github.com/bslassey/privacy-budget > Fundamentally, we want to limit how much information about individual users is exposed to sites so that in total it is insufficient to identify and track users across the web, except for possibly as part of large, heterogeneous groups. So, this is a glorified version of Do Not Track but with budgets and involves more telemetry to be shared with browser vendors and/or websites? How is this even in the conversation? How about browsers simply block attempts to fingerprint a user or allow extensions that do? Penalise websites known to fingerprint from search results? Display a big red banner before the user navigates to that website? Proxy such websites, if the user so agrees and send only content that's relevant (like some kind of an advanced read-mode)? -- > https://github.com/dvorak42/trust-token-api#motivation https://github.com/dvorak42/trust-token-api#motivation > Preventing fraud is a legitimate use case that the web should support, but it shouldn’t require an API as powerful as a stable, global, per-user identifier. In third party contexts, merely segmenting users into trusted and untrusted sets seems like a useful primitive that also preserves privacy. This kind of fraud protection is important both for CDNs, as well as for the ad industry which receives a large amount of invalid, fraudulent traffic. I like the concept of issuing tokens and then redeeming them later... but it seems like a lot of elaborate crypto to only really prevent ad-fraud (the advanced fingerprinting techniques they talk about elsewhere cannot prevent it?). It opens up another attack surface, whilst also not being truly anonymous to the first-party that issues the tokens. -- > https://github.com/csharrison/conversion-measurement-api https://github.com/csharrison/conversion-measurement-api > Since the ads industry today uses common identifiers across advertiser and publisher sites to track conversions, these common identifiers can be used to enable other forms of cross-site tracking. > This doesn’t have to be the case, though, especially in cases where identifiers like third party cookies are either unavailable or undesirable. A new API surface can be added to the web platform to satisfy this use-case without them, in a way that provides better privacy to users. This is all out battle against content-blockers. Block third-party cookies, and still you're in their cross-hairs... but wait... this is more privacy-friendly, so will you, the end-user, please suck it up. -- I hope Raymond Hill is reading and already thinking of ways to mitigate this. I see this as push by Chrome in response to the ecosystem Brave is building and the direction Apple is going, and simply taking control of the privacy conversation by doing what's best for them, all around, without holding back any punches. That's not to say, Apple isn't doing the exact same thing! BigTech can't be trusted with privacy, and this post kind of proves it? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Indeed.
- sevenoutofmeh 7y agotlwr; How does this 'open standard' benefit google's ad strategy at the expense of its competitors in so many words ?
- hackerbrother 7y agoWhy can't publishers like the NYT simply sell ads directly to businesses, and display them without using adsense and tracking? Like newspapers used to do back in the day...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mosselman 7y ago> Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do There is either a problem with the meaning of “privacy” here or the meaning of “paramount”
- ignoramous 7y agoPrivacy is indeed paramount: If a few 100 million more users start taking matters in their own hands, Google is toast.
- OnlyRepliesToBS 7y agofox guarding the hen house
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- yalogin 7y agoThe post does not even give a high level technical aim of they want to achieve it. They just threw a "privacy sandbox" phrase at us that's it. If they are talking about standards there must be some technical solution they have in mind. What is this? Does anyone know?
- anaphor 7y agoAnd will we be stuck with whatever solution they come up with, even if it sucks, just because it's Google and they can pressure everyone into following them?
- Ajedi32 7y ago> We have also summarized these ideas today on the [Chromium blog][1]. [1]: https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/building-a-more-private-web/ https://www.blog.google/products/chrome/building-a-more-priv...
- samat 7y agoSuch bullshit
- z3t4 7y agoI have a better idea, bake in ID in browsers, then make the website/script request the ID and the user can choose if they want to identify themselves or not. A basic ID should only be a public key. Then the browser can make a "signup" request where they can get more info about the user. The user id can then be used for a passwordless login. Kinda like Google or Github ID but built into the browser, standardized and easy for developers to integrate. For extra security client certificates can be used (but current implementations need to be overhauled) and second factor hardware keys can be used for additional security. Ad publisher do not need to have the same level of security as bank id, so there need to be something very basic and easy to implement as well.
- Havoc 7y ago> Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do ...because we can't let you have any of it since our business model would collapse. So yes I can see how it's paramount Go away Google.
- Havoc 7y agoLoving how this is getting downvoted. Hi Googlers!
- user183736 7y ago"Recent studies have shown that when advertising is made less relevant by removing cookies, funding for publishers falls by 52% on average" It would be more profitable ir Google could read our minds. So... Should we allow that ?
- amluto 7y ago> Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, Cookies and tracking have nothing whatsoever to do with relevant ads. Publishers can put ads relevant to their content on their pages with no client-side participation whatsoever. Tracking is important for ads that target the user. The targeted advertising business may account for huge amounts of money spent, but I would argue that it is a race to the bottom and adds no value to the overall economy. The outright failure of the targeted advertising industry would arguably be a good thing.
- zelphirkalt 7y agoIn general, if Google talks about open standards, don't let it blind you. Somewhere in there _will_ be some loophole, through which Google will benefit from any standard they propose. And, in the very unlikely case, that we cannot find that loophole, their benefit will be, that some competitor has a disadvantage. When Google talks about privacy, you can be 100% sure it is some kind of deception to make you trust them more or shift how you perceive things, in such a way, that benefits Google. They are riding that "It's open! It must be good!" wave quite hard and too many people are fooled by such a tactic.
- Ajedi32 7y agoWhat's funny is, despite all the criticism this is getting on Hacker News, this move is probably going to end up doing more to improve the online privacy of the average user than every ad blocker and tracking blocker has combined over the last decade or so. Google, the world largest ad provider and browser vendor, is essentially proposing to tear down the web's current free-for-all cookie-based ad targeting and conversion tracking system, and replace it with a privacy-respecting one built on standardized APIs implemented by the user's browser. If they're even moderately successful at this, it's going to be a huge improvement to the current status quo of online advertising from a privacy perspective. For those who haven't, read the Chromium blog post on this effort[1] and the associated early proposals[2]. They're a lot more concrete about what exactly this new vision entails. And for those cynics who are skeptical of this effort just because of their preconceptions surrounding the company proposing it, consider this: Google has every reason to want to improve the reputation of online advertising. Better, more privacy-respecting ads mean less people blocking ads, which means more revenue for Google. Last year Chrome implemented a built-in ad blocker for a similar reason[3]. Personalized ad targeting doesn't have to mean compromises to user privacy, and Google intends to prove it. [1]: https://blog.chromium.org/2019/08/potential-uses-for-privacy-sandbox.html https://blog.chromium.org/2019/08/potential-uses-for-privacy... [2]: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandbox https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb... [3]: https://blog.chromium.org/2017/06/improving-advertising-on-web.html https://blog.chromium.org/2017/06/improving-advertising-on-w...
- danShumway 7y agoAll of these proposals are compromises. Even Privacy Budgets (a genuinely interesting proposal) is not particularly useful right now, because in order for a Privacy Budget to work, you first have to identify and build blocking tools for all of the potential fingerprinting vectors it encompasses -- that's the actually hard problem that Safari and Firefox are working on right now. The only reason Google is at the table at all is because they have to be. They've disclosed multiple times in their earning reports that they consider adblocking to be a threat to their business, and adblock usage is pretty steadily rising. Right now adblockers are a minority, but if nothing changes they will eventually be a majority. Google's only here to stick a foot in the door and say, "but you're not gonna block all tracking, right? We'll come up with some advertising tools that are actually palatable." But that's the problem: palatable isn't good enough any more. Given that Google is likely only here because they feel threatened, and given that other browsers like Firefox are putting in the majority of the work right now to actually block fingerprinting in the real world outside of proposal documents -- as a user, why should I be excited about compromising with the advertising industry? Why should I be excited about blocking most tracking, when I have two browsers who are committed to blocking all tracking? Google is really misreading the room here. Since when has the advertising industry ever showed restraint about anything? They're not going to stop fingerprinting just because an extra API exists. We can't bribe the industry into not tracking us with concessions, we just have to buckle down and block fingerprinting. There's no advantage to compromising; there's no reason to be excited about a theoretical new, better way to serve targeted ads when you can just block ads instead.
- jakeogh 7y agoStop executing their code. Disable JS.
- johnson429738 7y ago> Privacy is paramount to us, in everything we do. Go fuck yourself, you pathetic liars.
- ggg3 7y ago> privacy is paramount to us they should add "unless it affects google bottom line, then we silently remove features like we did with all the only-send-referrer-headers-to-same-domain and many others." freaking cynics.
- musicale 7y ago> Second, blocking cookies without another way to deliver relevant ads significantly reduces publishers’ primary means of funding, which jeopardizes the future of the vibrant web. 1. Other media - TV, radio, print magazines - seem to have no trouble delivering advertising without using tracking cookies. 2. The web was pretty vibrant before adtech became the monster it is today.
- tannhaeuser 7y agoI've got a better idea: let's continue to get rid of fingerprinting and third-party cookies alltogether, then place ads on topical interesting sites (eg lets return to content-based ads). This will also greatly counter the web becoming a few portal sites to other people's content. It solves two problems at once - that of surveillance and that of monopolization.