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What is wrong with FloC and what's a better alternative?

by gerash 6y ago

bww 6y ago
Your question assumes that transparent, behavior-based, cross-site user interest tracking is somehow essential functionality for the web and we just have to find the right way to do it. I think most people who are criticizing FLoC would challenge the idea that this class of functionality needs to or should exist at all.
- gerash 6y ago
  Content creators want to get paid as much as anyone else and it's either through direct payment by the consumers or by embedding advertisement in their content. All this FloC, third party cookies, etc. are efforts to make that advertisement route more efficient. So my question is what are the critics proposing instead? Get rid of ads and just ask the audience to pay per view or make everything a subscription? Not paying content creators (ad blocking) is certainly not a sustainable alternative.
  - hackerfromthefu 6y ago
    Simple advertisements like billboards. One image, no stalker tracking, no global user profiles, no malware, and no animation or movement. Advertising was effective as an image or text that shows the reader a value proposition. What we have these days is stalkers and information rapists pretending to be advertisers.
  - totony 6y ago
    The reason non-tracking ads pay less is that tracking ads are now the norm. If standards/laws were implemented to protect privacy and block such tracking, content providers (if they are so inclined) would make as much money with non-tracking ads as they do now with tracking, since there would be no invasive competition. Your daily paper didn't have a list of your interests yet succeeded in making money through advertising. Why can't they now?
livre 6y ago
Many things are wrong probably, here are some I can think of: it is extra data for more accurate fingerprinting, it is not really an alternative to tracking users because companies using it doesn't mean they'll stop tracking you, it's likely going to become another de facto web standard imposed by Google and used in conjunction with other tracking methods may more accurately reveal your browsing habits and history because it reduces the guess/search space from the whole web to a handful of websites in your cohort.

What is wrong with FloC and what's a better alternative?

by gerash 6y ago

What is wrong with FloC and what's a better alternative?

bww 6y ago

Your question assumes that transparent, behavior-based, cross-site user interest tracking is somehow essential functionality for the web and we just have to find the right way to do it. I think most people who are criticizing FLoC would challenge the idea that this class of functionality needs to or should exist at all.

gerash 6y ago
Content creators want to get paid as much as anyone else and it's either through direct payment by the consumers or by embedding advertisement in their content. All this FloC, third party cookies, etc. are efforts to make that advertisement route more efficient. So my question is what are the critics proposing instead? Get rid of ads and just ask the audience to pay per view or make everything a subscription? Not paying content creators (ad blocking) is certainly not a sustainable alternative.
- hackerfromthefu 6y ago
  Simple advertisements like billboards. One image, no stalker tracking, no global user profiles, no malware, and no animation or movement. Advertising was effective as an image or text that shows the reader a value proposition. What we have these days is stalkers and information rapists pretending to be advertisers.
- totony 6y ago
  The reason non-tracking ads pay less is that tracking ads are now the norm. If standards/laws were implemented to protect privacy and block such tracking, content providers (if they are so inclined) would make as much money with non-tracking ads as they do now with tracking, since there would be no invasive competition. Your daily paper didn't have a list of your interests yet succeeded in making money through advertising. Why can't they now?

livre 6y ago

Many things are wrong probably, here are some I can think of: it is extra data for more accurate fingerprinting, it is not really an alternative to tracking users because companies using it doesn't mean they'll stop tracking you, it's likely going to become another de facto web standard imposed by Google and used in conjunction with other tracking methods may more accurately reveal your browsing habits and history because it reduces the guess/search space from the whole web to a handful of websites in your cohort.