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EFF is really deciding to die on a hill on a feature where all the tracking is moved to your owned device instead of being held on some foreign servers? Despite

by izacus 6y ago

EFF is really deciding to die on a hill on a feature where all the tracking is moved to your owned device instead of being held on some foreign servers? Despite that giving your software full control what it collects and reports to the servers? Even Apple uses this kind of federated learning approach for their data collection needs. Is EFF fighting to improve privacy or are they only interested in attacking certain corporations?

tareqak 6y ago
I could very well argue that ad sellers are trying to die on the hill where they try to track their users for increasingly better ad-targeting to the point where some instances of that targeting becomes downright scary and/or illegal.
- izacus 6y ago
  According to the articles I've read, this will actually decrease the quality of targeting in exchange for keeping the data locally. Is that wrong?
  - Macha 6y ago
    You're assuming this is also responsible for the decrease in targeting quality. Apple and Mozilla have implemented similar anti-tracking changes in ITP and ETP without a similar compensatory system like FLoC and GDPR enforcement is slowly moving into gear hence Google's redesigned consent dialog after their latest fine which puts making an ad tracking decision on the front page. What advertisers have is going away, whether FLoC gets implemented or not, FLoC is Google throwing the advertising industry a bone so they don't get accused of anti-competitive behaviour by implementing rules in their OS and browser businesses that will affect them less due to all their first party users when customer and regulatory pressure forces them into following Apple
  - tareqak 6y ago
    How about not tracking users period? Billboard ads and street ads are still things advertisers buy even though they cannot track individuals.
dathinab 6y ago
Federated learning on itself is not the problem. But just because it's federated doesn't mean it's privacy friendly or creates a massive subtle vendor locking situation.
- izacus 6y ago
  Genuinely - what's stopping Firefox from implementing this and sending a set of data that's either chosen by you in UI or setting it to empty? As a replacement for server-side tracking? Which part of this is not a net win for privacy?
  - dathinab 6y ago
    > Which part of this is not a net win for privacy? The way google implements it all of it! Google will assign you a Id, sure this Id is shared with others but on a It/Statistic scale it's not that many others. Furthermore every website you and every add on it gets the Id. If you combine that id with other identifying information you can easily extract from a browser without needing any permissions you get a pretty close to or maybe even fully unique id! In the end while it seems to be an improvement on the first look it actually makes deeply privacy invasive tracking easier, not harder. EDIT: At the same time it allows google to pretend to be good in front of law makers. And potentially hide behind things like "our AGBs require that you don't abuse the Id" (which given that it's send to anyone independent of weather or not they agreed to the AGBs is stupid, and also even if every one did agree to the AGBs common abuse of the android advertiser Id without consequences shows how well that works.) A proper federated ad system doesn't provide a way to unique identify you to advertisers. It lets advertisers provide a selection of labeled add slots and the browser then pics one of them without any information besides the choice ever going to the advertiser. This (oversimplified presented approach) still can slightly be abused. But is one of the few ways you can have personalized ads without a absurd invasion of privacy. > Genuinely - what's stopping Firefox from implementing this and sending a set of data that's either chosen by you in UI or setting it to empty? I haven't looked at the tech but most likely it might involve certificates, drm, and legal agreements which would make it impossible for a cooperation to do so.
yosamino 6y ago
> data collection needs. There are no "data collection needs" there are "data collection wants". If they asked, people would say no. To pour so much effort into manipulating people into letting themselves be monitoring and just tracking people without their consent is straight up abusive. They asked "Hey can I have this data about you?" We said "We´d actually rather you didn´t." End of discussion. This is not complicated concept. Informed consent is not a complex theory, it´s possible for a class of 2nd graders to grasp it. I don´t need new and improved ways for this dystopian garbage to be more convenient to me. I need it so stop.
- gtf21 6y ago
  This is exactly the point I've been wondering about. What strikes me about this FLoC stuff is that we're removing a technology which was genuinely built for the user (cookies) to a technology whose SOLE purpose is tracking users. For some reason we're not properly questioning the assumption that this is remotely reasonable: why should we have tracking at all? It's as though we replaced facial recognition cameras piggy-backing on CCTV security systems with chipping every citizen and then saying "but it's just a better tracking system" rather than "is this even reasonable?"
- mk81 6y ago
  This all stems from people having been trained to expect everything online to be "free".
  - tareqak 6y ago
    I disagree because everything on antenna, cable, satellite television or radio is similarly “free” unless it is locked somehow (e.g. cable or satellite programming packages, pay-per-view television, different radio technology like SiriusXM, etc.).
  - gxnxcxcx 6y ago
    I hold the view that, on the contrary, this all mostly stems from people having been trained to expect everything they want to do online can be turned into a "business" by itself.
IshKebab 6y ago
Yeah I don't understand their stance. If this becomes popular and everyone uses it then it will become trivial to avoid being tracked. Is that not something they want?

by izacus 6y ago

tareqak 6y ago

I could very well argue that ad sellers are trying to die on the hill where they try to track their users for increasingly better ad-targeting to the point where some instances of that targeting becomes downright scary and/or illegal.

izacus 6y ago
According to the articles I've read, this will actually decrease the quality of targeting in exchange for keeping the data locally. Is that wrong?
- Macha 6y ago
  You're assuming this is also responsible for the decrease in targeting quality. Apple and Mozilla have implemented similar anti-tracking changes in ITP and ETP without a similar compensatory system like FLoC and GDPR enforcement is slowly moving into gear hence Google's redesigned consent dialog after their latest fine which puts making an ad tracking decision on the front page. What advertisers have is going away, whether FLoC gets implemented or not, FLoC is Google throwing the advertising industry a bone so they don't get accused of anti-competitive behaviour by implementing rules in their OS and browser businesses that will affect them less due to all their first party users when customer and regulatory pressure forces them into following Apple
- tareqak 6y ago
  How about not tracking users period? Billboard ads and street ads are still things advertisers buy even though they cannot track individuals.

dathinab 6y ago

Federated learning on itself is not the problem. But just because it's federated doesn't mean it's privacy friendly or creates a massive subtle vendor locking situation.

izacus 6y ago
Genuinely - what's stopping Firefox from implementing this and sending a set of data that's either chosen by you in UI or setting it to empty? As a replacement for server-side tracking? Which part of this is not a net win for privacy?
- dathinab 6y ago
  > Which part of this is not a net win for privacy? The way google implements it all of it! Google will assign you a Id, sure this Id is shared with others but on a It/Statistic scale it's not that many others. Furthermore every website you and every add on it gets the Id. If you combine that id with other identifying information you can easily extract from a browser without needing any permissions you get a pretty close to or maybe even fully unique id! In the end while it seems to be an improvement on the first look it actually makes deeply privacy invasive tracking easier, not harder. EDIT: At the same time it allows google to pretend to be good in front of law makers. And potentially hide behind things like "our AGBs require that you don't abuse the Id" (which given that it's send to anyone independent of weather or not they agreed to the AGBs is stupid, and also even if every one did agree to the AGBs common abuse of the android advertiser Id without consequences shows how well that works.) A proper federated ad system doesn't provide a way to unique identify you to advertisers. It lets advertisers provide a selection of labeled add slots and the browser then pics one of them without any information besides the choice ever going to the advertiser. This (oversimplified presented approach) still can slightly be abused. But is one of the few ways you can have personalized ads without a absurd invasion of privacy. > Genuinely - what's stopping Firefox from implementing this and sending a set of data that's either chosen by you in UI or setting it to empty? I haven't looked at the tech but most likely it might involve certificates, drm, and legal agreements which would make it impossible for a cooperation to do so.

yosamino 6y ago

> data collection needs. There are no "data collection needs" there are "data collection wants". If they asked, people would say no. To pour so much effort into manipulating people into letting themselves be monitoring and just tracking people without their consent is straight up abusive. They asked "Hey can I have this data about you?" We said "We´d actually rather you didn´t." End of discussion. This is not complicated concept. Informed consent is not a complex theory, it´s possible for a class of 2nd graders to grasp it. I don´t need new and improved ways for this dystopian garbage to be more convenient to me. I need it so stop.

gtf21 6y ago
This is exactly the point I've been wondering about. What strikes me about this FLoC stuff is that we're removing a technology which was genuinely built for the user (cookies) to a technology whose SOLE purpose is tracking users. For some reason we're not properly questioning the assumption that this is remotely reasonable: why should we have tracking at all? It's as though we replaced facial recognition cameras piggy-backing on CCTV security systems with chipping every citizen and then saying "but it's just a better tracking system" rather than "is this even reasonable?"
mk81 6y ago
This all stems from people having been trained to expect everything online to be "free".
- tareqak 6y ago
  I disagree because everything on antenna, cable, satellite television or radio is similarly “free” unless it is locked somehow (e.g. cable or satellite programming packages, pay-per-view television, different radio technology like SiriusXM, etc.).
- gxnxcxcx 6y ago
  I hold the view that, on the contrary, this all mostly stems from people having been trained to expect everything they want to do online can be turned into a "business" by itself.

IshKebab 6y ago

Yeah I don't understand their stance. If this becomes popular and everyone uses it then it will become trivial to avoid being tracked. Is that not something they want?