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Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
- unicornporn 6y agoGoogle's ~64% market share is bad enough as it is. Android being the dominant OS helps, I guess.
- JKCalhoun 6y agoJust have it default-off, allow the user to turn it on if they want to be "ad targeted". I mean I keep hearing how, as a consumer, I want this.
- vineyardmike 6y agoAs a consumer, i want targeting features default-off.
- drusepth 6y agoAs a consumer, I want targeting features default-on, but I also don't mind too much having to turn them on manually.
- throwaway2048 6y agowhy do you want them default on?
- throwaway3699 6y agoI am okay with targeted ads, and I know others are too. The other day, my Dad said he's happy that Amazon and Google are showing him the products he's been browsing for recently. They bought a mattress and are looking at buying another to replace the other beds.
- sanxiyn 6y agoI think it's pretty simple. drusepth wants targeting on, so of course drusepth also wants default on. It is generally desirable for defaults to match what you want since it saves you effort to configure.
- drusepth 6y agoI'd guess the majority of people don't hold a strong opinion on them one way or the other, and being default-on for more people results in more data that can be used to make ads more relevant for everyone, instead of just relying on whatever subset of users actually know to opt in.
- krrrh 6y agoThe thing is that I could actually see this working, because advertisers and publishers would have to incentivize people for turning the feature on. If it became widespread known that turning targeting on resulted in seeing relevant 10% discount ads a lot of people would give up privacy for that, probably for less. You can see this behaviour in the success of browser extensions like Honey which are privacy nightmares to people like us, but totally acceptable to most people.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- the_lonely_road 6y agoDo you support organ donation being opt-in as well?
- guillem_lefait 6y agoOnce you're dead, GDPR does not apply to you/your data anymore.
- bluefirebrand 6y agoHoly false equivalence batman. Organ donation is a great good for society, saves lives. Google's FLOC does what exactly?
- qnsi 6y agoad targeting is good for economy and small businesses. Imagine all the wealth created by being able to show people ads they might be interested in seeing
- bluefirebrand 6y agoI'm extremely anti-ads and tracking. Part of that was because I used to work for a website that was an ads publishing platform. And I'm here to tell you: More accurate metrics don't actually generate any kind of wealth. What they do is allow ad buyers to push down the prices they have to offer to publishers for clicks or lower the overall numbers of impressions they are willing to buy, based on the targeting metrics they have for the publisher. More precise, fine-grained targeting information = fewer and lower value spends to gain the same conversion rate value.
- madeofpalk 6y agodid small businesses not exist before google?
- pydry 6y agoIt's not really great for small businesses to get their margin eaten by Google. Without ads users wouldn't stop using small businesses products. They would just go looking for them in places that aren't as monetized. When they do, the small business will get to keep more of the margin.
- quaffapint 6y agoI've spoken with more than 1 non-tech person who has said if they're going to see ads, they want them to be at least relevant, targeting nor not.
- mehlmao 6y agoSurely they'd be happy to opt-in to FLoC.
- throwawayboise 6y agoI've blocked ads for so long that I can't remember the last time I saw one. However, if I had to have them, I think I could tolerate ads that were relevant to the content of the page. If I'm reading an article about gardening, I could understand seeing an ad or two about gardening tools. It's what my mind is focused on, it's relevant, and it's even potentially something I might want to buy. This doesn't require FLoC, cookies, or any other form of tracking. What I do not want to happen after reading my gardening article, is to be dogged relentlessly for days with ads for gardening tools on every website I visit, and in apps on my phone. It's creepy, it's irrelevant to what I'm currently focused on, and it's creating a negative impression in my mind about the businesses that are appearing in the ads.
- tristan957 6y agoThere is no evidence tracking-based ads are more fruitful than contextual ads. That is what you should tell your non-tech person.
- salawat 6y agoIf you're going to hold a gun to my head and force me to give you the contents of my wallet, you can at least be polite about it and say please and thank you. If I have to be on the receiving end of non-consensual sex, I at least want the perpetrator to wear protection and be STD free. The particular phenomena at play there is an early stage of Stockholm Syndrome/learned helplessness, and it isn't a good thing. It is also a byproduct of intentioned shaping of dialogue and expectation normalization that has been an ongoing effort by Big Tech for decades. Don't be fooled.
- Ekaros 6y agoI don't understand why isn't this default already. Why do I need to install add-on for google not to track me? Shouldn't it be exactly opposite, install one to allow them to track me?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- solosoyokaze 6y agoBetween FLoC and AMP, Google's attempts to destroy the web have surpassed even IE levels of toxicity. It's good to see the consumer focused forks of Chromium take a stand here.
- jhoechtl 6y agoThere are still Firefox and Safari free of FLoC
- acheron 6y agoUsing any version of Chromium still contributes to Google’s attempts to destroy the web. If they actually cared they would use a different engine.
- blacktriangle 6y agoYou say that like there's another option.
- henriquez 6y agoFirefox is a good option!
- throwaway3699 6y agoFirefox is the FreeBSD of browsers. Only good for very specific reasons as compared to Linux (Chromium).
- 2bitencryption 6y agoIs it just me, or is FLoC simply an act? A way for Google to say, "See, regulators, we're trying! You don't have to regulate us, we're doing it on our own!" While they know full well the web will never get on board with this. Seems like just a way to buy time, to muddy the waters. Make the ecosystem more complicated. Pin the blame on others for not getting on board with your attempt to "fix" the situation. "We tried our best, but Mozilla won't join us!!"
- rchaud 6y agoIf it is, it's a pretty poor act. It doesn't matter if Firefox, Brave and Edge don't want to use Floc. Google controls Chrome and almost all of the non-FB digital ad ecosystem. They can still derive enormous benefits from it once third party cookies are extinct.
- soared 6y agoI don't agree with this, but there is evidence that kind of supports it. The W3c group set up to build on privacy sandbox that came up with floc/petrel/etc wrote an open letter to the w3c advisory about how google was refusing to work with the group. https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/17/aggrieved_ad_tech_types_decry/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/17/aggrieved_ad_tech_typ...
- tmccrary55 6y agoKinda Gates or Ballmer era Microsoftish?
- nonbirithm 6y agoThe way I see FLoC is that it's nothing more than a compromise. This isn't a web standards feature like WebMIDI or WebHID that fulfills the (ever expanding) requests for features from web developers. It isn't a feature that the average user would ever ask for. It's simply a way for Google's ads business to continue functioning in spite of a web community that is gradually becoming privacy-conscious.
- chmod775 6y ago
- soared 6y agoThese browsers make up less than 4% of market share and their actions are largely meaningless. Only fringe users (IE readers of hackernews) use these browsers. If you're looking for info on adtech changes outside of chrome, look at safari. Apple has been making big pro-privacy moves for a couple years, and they actually have meaningful market share.
- pdq 6y agoSafari is the browser for iOS, so your 4% number is not accurate.
- SwiftyBug 6y agoNot only the browser for iOS, but the only browser that run on iOS.
- krrrh 6y agoIt’s the only browser engine, but do all of the privacy protections carry over to iOS versions of Chrome, Brave, Firefox, or Firefox Focus? They all seem to have really different approaches to advertising and tracking and cloud syncing of user data.
- kevingadd 6y agoSafari is one of the browsers mentioned in the article.
- marvinblum 6y agoAs a website owner, you can opt out by setting the Permissions-Policy header to "interest-cohort=()". I rolled that out for pirsch.io today.
- tomxor 6y agoCmon, this is as backward as the "do not track" header... asking websites to explicitly opt out... in order to protect users from the users's own browser!? No, just don't build stupid things into browsers.
- marvinblum 6y agoYeah, it's stupid, but the only option we have right now if the user does not disable FLoC in Chrome. We also honor the DNT header btw :)
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoChrome users should just run a local proxy that inserts the header for them.
- marvinblum 6y agoThat is a good solution for corporate networks.
- takeda 6y agoChrome users should seriously reconsider switching to Firefox. We've created another Internet Explorer.
- rudasn 6y agoSo, I was experimenting with this concept yesterday but couldn't get it to work... How do you set up a local proxy to do this kind of stuff? I got up to the point of changing request/response headers but couldn't manage to actually edit the data going through, esp when dealing with ssl (which is the point really, of ssl).
- jhoechtl 6y agoNo wonder, it's a dead-hug for everyone but Google.
- dheera 6y agoDoes this affect Chromium at all?
- livre 6y agoTry running your Chromium with these flags[1] and see what that page says about it. If it says anything other than "not supported by this browser" then Chromium supports it (may not be enabled by default though). [1] https://floc.glitch.me/ https://floc.glitch.me/
- SquareWheel 6y agoIs FLoC considered more or less invasive than the advertisement ID used by platforms like iOS and Windows 10? I believe these systems are also opt-out.
- Daniel_sk 6y agoiOS is now switching to opt-in.
- xnx 6y agoI'm definitely in the minority of commenters on these FLoC threads. I hate that 3rd party cookies exist, and support FLoC if it would hasten the demise of 3rd party cookies. It seems like many consider the alternative to FLoC to be an anonymous web where content can be accessed without login. The migration of content into walled gardens like Instagram seems more likely to me.
- livre 6y agoThe idea that FLoC is a more privacy-friendly alternative to third-party cookies is deeply flawed, please read [this](https://github.com/WICG/floc/issues/100 https://github.com/WICG/floc/issues/100).
- xnx 6y agoThanks. Good thread. Sounds like FloC is definitely more anonymous than third party cookies that are already in use today. There might are some hypothetical situations with FLoC where some information might be able to be inferred given sufficient data, but this is not trivial/direct like it is today.
- z77dj3kl 6y agoNo, that attack is trivial and direct, that's the problem.
- livre 6y agoI have my doubts about the "more anonymous" part, mainly because 3p cookies are constrained to a single browser on a single device and can be easily erased or blocked, but your browsing habits that will land you on a certain cohort will remain the same across devices so you could technically be tracked cross-device even if you don't sync your browsing history or cookies (if I am reading right the way FLoC works). Quick edit: you are certainly right that it will be less direct and more effort than cookies.
- ljm 6y ago
- linuxhansl 6y agoFWIW, I've been blocking all 3rd party cookies in Firefox for years.
- sunstone 6y agoYes it's the first thing I do when I install a new browser. I'm not sure how well that protects me from tracking but I do notice that the creepier kind of stuff stops happening. I've also noticed that it's been getting harder and harder to find and activate the third party cookies block with successive version of Chrome.
- 74d-fe6-2c6 6y agoI just googled that FLoC stands for Federated Learning of Cohorts ... excuse my superficial knee jerk reaction but I feel like nothing good can come from something named like that.
- jpollock 6y agoAren't IP header fields granular enough for most tracking purposes? On mobile, you can do interesting things with Header Enrichment, which helps even more. IPv6 should "just work", but it seems there's fingerprinting available. That leaves residential IPv4, which you can solve with some coordination between site owners. This seems to say - Yes? https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/testing/paper/33794 https://www.sans.org/reading-room/whitepapers/testing/paper/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_stack_fingerprinting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_stack_fingerprinting Once you get some sort of fingerprint, then all that's needed is for one site to share with another and they're back to tracking across devices and sites.
- xmly 6y agoBecause the 3rd party cookies are still here.
- snug 6y agoChrome has 65% market share, even if "nobody' joins, still it's a strong majority of users that have FLOC enabled
- roody15 6y agoGood
- lootsauce 6y agoI don’t think the demise of 3rd party cookies is going to be the boon for privacy some think it will be. Marketers still want to advertise and track performance of ads and are all moving to first party cookies with Facebook and Google and other mar-tech vendors. This could lead to leakage of data as it gives anyone let into the fist party domain access to all the other tracking identifiers.
- gruez 6y ago>I don’t think the demise of 3rd party cookies is going to be the boon for privacy some think it will be. [...] This could lead to leakage of data as it gives anyone let into the fist party domain access to all the other tracking identifiers. Not really. They can still track users across visits, but they can't track users between websites. That's the privacy improvement.
- GekkePrutser 6y agoVery good news. It might even hurt Chrome's monopoly.
- GNOMES 6y agoHopefully this isn't a new Coke kinda deal, where they are gonna reverse this idea, and secretly kill adblocking a little more.
- kwdc 6y agoRant ON. Third party cookies are surveillance tech. So is FLoC. There is no need to track a person from one web site to another like some stalker. Any tech to stalk people like this isn't a good idea in general. This is antithesis to multiple business models. I know. But I see no reason to accomodate faulty models. Ironically however, I'm not against advertising. But my experience with targeted ads is that they are useless anyway. I remember having gone to plenty of websites searching for very specific but commonly bought car parts. Google had full transactions as I wandered through various websites. Google searches etc all that data along with time of day. Did they provide useful ads? No. Really? That was with third party cookies enabled. I've been looking for parts and am actively buying parts and yet no useful ads, even from parts competitors? All that tech and I'm still having to dig around for suppliers? What about tools? Nope. Not a single relevant ad. Even with access to my search history. Not even when I have purchase receipts emailed to me. Amazon footprints, emails etc going to gmail. Searches done while logged into chrome. Can't help the feeling that this stalking actually has little to do with real advertising and is more about authoritarian ideals. Real advertisers would have an advertising arrangement set up with each website. Then just cross reference the first party cookie ids in aggregate. Third party cookies were never necessary. So this leaves us with the third party cookies purely for stalking purposes. So I gave up. Now I just use ddg and figure that the tracking is purely for surveillance. I have no guilt now in dropping third party cookies. Perhaps, instead of using surveillance tech, why can't I tell google search I'm doing a project involving cars. And it goes and does its correlation magic to explore what I actually use and need. It could do actual linking. Show me actual suppliers. Affiliate links. I could add additional searches and attach them to the project as well. Eg add a line item for insurance, etc. now google knows I need insurance as well. Show me options. More opportunities... But that would all be useful. It would help advertising and drive sales. And this tracking is really about surveillance, isn’t it...?
- dvdhnt 6y agoI absolutely agree with your statement. Anecdotally, the majority of targeted ads I see are for services or products I already use or pay for! That makes no sense to me. It does not drive loyalty, it simply annoys me. I’d opt out in a second if possible. Please give me contextual ads.
- shp0ngle 6y agoPeople say how they hate surveillance tech, but at the end of the day, it pays half of the bills on this website. Most probably, there is Google Analytics and Facebook pixel on the very site you are building right now. So all these horribly, horribly outraged comments ring kind of hollow to me. I mean look at how many trackers are on The Verge site itself. Yeah FLoC is horrible. I hope it dies in a fire. It's just, people that build websites want tracking. And it works. Retargeting works, banners work. That's why it's everywhere, nonstop. We all do it, we secretly crave all the tracking data from our users. We are addicted to A/B testing and referrer tracking and ad revenue. So, I donno. There is a reason why Google does this.
- busymom0 6y ago> People say how they hate surveillance tech, but at the end of the day, it pays half of the bills on this website. HN has surveillance tech? > Most probably, there is Google Analytics and Facebook pixel on the very site you are building right now. Nope. I haven't used any of those since 2016. None of the apps I build for iOS have third party analytics, trackers or even ads. I solely rely on a single one time only in app purchase for monetization. Even my OCR app does all its processing locally on the device itself and none of the data leaves the device. I have a mood tracker app which obviously has a lot of intimate, confidential and private data from users - the data stays on their device and if they use iCloud syncing, then to Apple's server (despite all of Apple's flaws, they do seem to be doing much better when it comes to privacy). I have a school timetable app which also has lot of confidential data. Same thing on that app too - everything stays locally on the device or iCloud if user chooses. I DO NOT want user data. I have a site which is a resume builder which users input a lot of confidential data. Even that site never transfers any of the user data and everything is stored locally on the browser. There isn't even any ads or analytics on the site as can be confirmed by sniffing network requests. I had to spend couple extra weeks to get the PDF generation done locally in the browser instead of sending the user data to some server. This took extra time but it was worth it because I DO NOT WANT USER DATA. My Hacker News client app also has the same attention to privacy. I disclose to the user in the privacy policy that the only time the app accesses my own network is when it needs to fetch the favicon for the articles and I don't log these requests. I plan on adding notifications to that app and I will be disclosing that in the privacy policy that I will need to store the device token to be able to deliver the notifications. And the notifications will be opt-in so the user knows what data they are giving me to store. Other than that, I won't be using this for any tracking or other purposes. Obviously I am aware I can make a lot more money if I put ads and trackers etc but I have been at a point for many years now where I would lose money and business if it means I get to starve the beast of some money. My customers appreciate my privacy policy and often email me or leave reviews appreciating the privacy policy. So there's a market for it (less money though and I am fine with that). https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer/id1464477788 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer... Privacy policy for HACK: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cb282k7rrSi4awr0HizuRciX-nIYpympfrxGLEt9cgc/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cb282k7rrSi4awr0HizuRciX... Here's another example of my resume builder's privacy policy: https://resumetopdf.com/privacypolicy.html https://resumetopdf.com/privacypolicy.html Here's privacy policy for my MoodWell mood tracker: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19bIdiLwlnQxSIASNatVz8UpICt7ygNjldtW_h4GOaDg/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/19bIdiLwlnQxSIASNatVz8UpI... Privacy policy for my Image Text OCR app: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f05TVHqZPnj8aM1d0b6y6u6Hfubhw1X8jxpSyClcOFA/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f05TVHqZPnj8aM1d0b6y6u6H... Simply saying one cares about privacy and users isn't sufficient. I think one has to really want to make less money and also have bitter feelings towards the beast to purposefully starve it if they want to care about user privacy.
- arjunkava 6y agoThis is actual blog by google https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/2021-01-privacy-sandbox/ https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/2021-01-privacy-sa... and it says "eliminate third-party cookies by replacing them with viable privacy-first alternatives, developed alongside ecosystem partners, that will help publishers and advertisers succeed while also protecting people’s privacy as they move across the web." Am I the only guy who is distracted by the blog which uses 13 third party cookies on the same page? Interesting!
- busymom0 6y agoIs it just me or does that statement read like a PR virtue signalling? They are almost trying to change the meaning of privacy with that statement. If they want to eliminate third-party cookies but replacing them to achieve the same goal as the third-party cookies (help advertisers), then nothing is actually changing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- marsven_422 6y agoAll this tracking and the adds are still irrelevant garbage.
- TeeMassive 6y ago> It uses an algorithm to look at your browser history and place you in a group of people with similar browsing histories so that advertisers can target you. No, just no. Just because cookies are a necessary evil that is being abused doesn't mean normalizing the abuse makes it not abuse. Also the normalization of unacceptable behavior only makes things worse since it implies permission. I just want stuff that remember my settings and logins as for the rest just leave me alone.
- cybert00th 6y agoAdvertisers are gonna advertise! We just need to find ways to stop them invading - and by extension, controlling, our lives.
- rippeltippel 6y ago...Google's FLoP