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> We could allow them to group sites together and say things like, "I want news sites that I visit to know that I'm looking to buy a specific brand of car, but

> We could allow them to group sites together and say things like, "I want news sites that I visit to know that I'm looking to buy a specific brand of car, but I don't want any of the car dealership sites that I'm looking at to know what brand I want." But this this isn't how ads work. Most ads are served by an ad network, such as doubleclick, which does realtime bidding on the ad space. The exchange of cookies is between you and the ad network, not you and the publisher hosting the ad or you and the advertiser who placed the ad. Otherwise you make some great points and it seems that FLoC could well provide such tools for the user, because their profile is now rich and client-side instead of being stored on some tracker server and keyed by an opaque cookie id.

danShumway 6y ago
> The exchange of cookies is between you and the ad network, not you and the publisher hosting the ad or you and the advertiser who placed the ad. But my browser could be smart enough to only exchange those cookies (or whatever data format we want to use) based on the current origin I'm visiting. There's no rule that requires me to use the same doubleclick session on CNN and Reddit. If I visit a website that's classified as a news site, at that point doubleclick wants to know information about me so it can hold an auction to show me targeted ads. At that point, the browser could send doubleclick any information -- it could be based on the current origin, it could be based on the time of day, it could be based on what profile/identity I have manually switched on/off. The point I'm getting at is the model of "you have one persistent identity that doubleclick can hook into anywhere" is already broken. Part of choosing how we present ourselves online includes the freedom to have multiple identities and to choose when/how those identities are revealed.

danShumway 6y ago

> The exchange of cookies is between you and the ad network, not you and the publisher hosting the ad or you and the advertiser who placed the ad. But my browser could be smart enough to only exchange those cookies (or whatever data format we want to use) based on the current origin I'm visiting. There's no rule that requires me to use the same doubleclick session on CNN and Reddit. If I visit a website that's classified as a news site, at that point doubleclick wants to know information about me so it can hold an auction to show me targeted ads. At that point, the browser could send doubleclick any information -- it could be based on the current origin, it could be based on the time of day, it could be based on what profile/identity I have manually switched on/off. The point I'm getting at is the model of "you have one persistent identity that doubleclick can hook into anywhere" is already broken. Part of choosing how we present ourselves online includes the freedom to have multiple identities and to choose when/how those identities are revealed.