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> but this time without direct web browsing activity tracking of users. Your FLOC cohort is a summary of your web browsing activity. FLOC doesn't solve the pri

> but this time without direct web browsing activity tracking of users. Your FLOC cohort is a summary of your web browsing activity. FLOC doesn't solve the privacy problems that trackers create - it just hands them your browsing history on a silver platter.

yunohn 6y ago
It’s literally a cohort ID? Where did you get “hands them your browsing history on a silver platter” from?
- type0 6y ago
  because combined with browser fingerprinting it is exactly the outcome
  - vbezhenar 6y ago
    https://amiunique.org/ https://amiunique.org/ "Yes! You are unique among the 3387629 fingerprints in our entire dataset." Browser fingerprinting already works fine without FLoC.
    - xvector 6y ago
      That site seems to be pretty buggy. https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ has more visitors and seems to have a wider collection. With Safari on macOS I get a score of ~1/8500. Not amazing, but certainly not catastrophic.
      - mnw21cam 6y ago
        It turns out my browser is unique just based on the http_accept header alone. How the heck did we end up in that situation?
        vbezhenar 6y ago
        It's similar to Spectre. We had more pressing issues back then. As those issues are solved, we moved to more tricky ones which did not get much attention before.
- quotemstr 6y ago
  You're going to drive yourself crazy if you try to make sense of "privacy"-advocate objections on an object level. It's not actually about privacy. No matter how much FLoC or something FLoC-like preserves your actual privacy, advocates will be against it. That's because they don't actually care about privacy and have always used concerns about "privacy" as a pretext for killing ads.
  - o_p 6y ago
    Fingerprinting is hardly just advertising.
    - quotemstr 6y ago
      Then fix fingerprinting. "But fingerprinting!" is yet another pretext for just trying to make advertising in general non-viable for aesthetic or ideological reasons.
      - o_p 6y ago
        True, we have to make advertising non-viable, that's the point. Id gladly pay for my content just to watch the ad-tech industry die, its not just about "ads", they are building the infrastructure for the surveillance police state.
        quotemstr 6y ago
        > True, we have to make advertising non-viable, that's the point. But why? > they are building the infrastructure for the surveillance police state. But FLoC is explicitly about doing ads in a way that does not lead to a "surveillance police state". So why is it bad?
        o_p 6y ago
        There are no specifications about what the cohorts will be, Google is literally leaving that for the ad companies to figure it out. It wouldnt be suprising it at all they realize a way to make small enough cohorts in such a way you can be fingerprinted. The bottom line is that you are giving them your browsing data, obfuscated by fancy algorithms. Unless you trust ad-tech to have the best interests about your privacy (ha!)
stjohnswarts 6y ago
It cuts down the fingerprint to a pool of just a few thousand and then you can just use other fingerprint items to get down to a completely unique id that you can track.

yunohn 6y ago

It’s literally a cohort ID? Where did you get “hands them your browsing history on a silver platter” from?

type0 6y ago
because combined with browser fingerprinting it is exactly the outcome
- vbezhenar 6y ago
  https://amiunique.org/ https://amiunique.org/ "Yes! You are unique among the 3387629 fingerprints in our entire dataset." Browser fingerprinting already works fine without FLoC.
  - xvector 6y ago
    That site seems to be pretty buggy. https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ has more visitors and seems to have a wider collection. With Safari on macOS I get a score of ~1/8500. Not amazing, but certainly not catastrophic.
    - mnw21cam 6y ago
      It turns out my browser is unique just based on the http_accept header alone. How the heck did we end up in that situation?
      - vbezhenar 6y ago
        It's similar to Spectre. We had more pressing issues back then. As those issues are solved, we moved to more tricky ones which did not get much attention before.
quotemstr 6y ago
You're going to drive yourself crazy if you try to make sense of "privacy"-advocate objections on an object level. It's not actually about privacy. No matter how much FLoC or something FLoC-like preserves your actual privacy, advocates will be against it. That's because they don't actually care about privacy and have always used concerns about "privacy" as a pretext for killing ads.
- o_p 6y ago
  Fingerprinting is hardly just advertising.
  - quotemstr 6y ago
    Then fix fingerprinting. "But fingerprinting!" is yet another pretext for just trying to make advertising in general non-viable for aesthetic or ideological reasons.
    - o_p 6y ago
      True, we have to make advertising non-viable, that's the point. Id gladly pay for my content just to watch the ad-tech industry die, its not just about "ads", they are building the infrastructure for the surveillance police state.
      - quotemstr 6y ago
        > True, we have to make advertising non-viable, that's the point. But why? > they are building the infrastructure for the surveillance police state. But FLoC is explicitly about doing ads in a way that does not lead to a "surveillance police state". So why is it bad?
        o_p 6y ago
        There are no specifications about what the cohorts will be, Google is literally leaving that for the ad companies to figure it out. It wouldnt be suprising it at all they realize a way to make small enough cohorts in such a way you can be fingerprinted. The bottom line is that you are giving them your browsing data, obfuscated by fancy algorithms. Unless you trust ad-tech to have the best interests about your privacy (ha!)

stjohnswarts 6y ago

It cuts down the fingerprint to a pool of just a few thousand and then you can just use other fingerprint items to get down to a completely unique id that you can track.