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Wow, the bias in this article is unbelievably blatant: "[Amazon is] preventing Google’s tracking system FLoC — or Federated Learning of Cohorts — from gatherin

by lisper 5y ago

Wow, the bias in this article is unbelievably blatant: "[Amazon is] preventing Google’s tracking system FLoC — or Federated Learning of Cohorts — from gathering valuable data reflecting the products people research in Amazon’s vast e-commerce universe" Compare with, e.g.: "Amazon is taking steps to protect its user's privacy by blocking Google's heavy-handed overreach in leveraging its Chrome browser to spy on user's personal shopping habits and sell that information to other retailers". (Note: I'm not saying my rewrite is unbiased. It's not. It's just biased in a different direction to highlight the contrast.)

fastball 5y ago
Yeahhhh, but Amazon makes a ton off their own ad business and is trying to turn everyone's personal devices into a mesh network they own. They don't give af about user privacy.
- kevingadd 5y ago
  IMO these two things are compatible. Their mesh network is incredibly gross but it's not a privacy violation, it's bad in other ways.
  - fastball 5y ago
    It's almost guaranteed to be a privacy violation unless you think Amazon can write complicated yet bug-free networking code.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - noahtallen 5y ago
      I’m not sure about the privacy part, but they do have very good success with AWS, which I’m sure includes loads and loads of network code.
      - dcow 5y ago
        Amazon has some top notch mesh engineers, I know this personally. I highly doubt their talent is being used on this mesh effort, sadly.
- Havoc 5y ago
  > They don't give af about user privacy. That part seems to be the only universal truth these days.
- ActorNightly 5y ago
  They very much do. When is the last time you heard about any private data leak from Amazon?
  - jptech 5y ago
    So your suggesting that add long as our personal information is in their hands and is utilised for maximizing profits but hasn't leaked we shouldn't worry about privacy?
  - jay_kyburz 5y ago
    That suggests that they are keeping it safe, not that they are not storing or using it.
  - gtyras2mrs 5y ago
    Security != Privacy
judge2020 5y ago
Isn't FLoC on-device? So 'gathering valuable data' would be users' own devices doing so, right?
- t0mas88 5y ago
  Does it matter whether the code Google wrote to do it executes on your device or on their servers? In the end they try to group people based on their Amazon browsing behavior and Amazon doesn't want that. Nor should any sane user want that, and Google knows that that's why it's opt-out instead of opt-in. Thank god they figured out it is illegal in Europe to do this without opt-in and didn't roll out FLoC here...
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  It's pretty complicated and my understanding could be wrong and definitely not an expert. All the stupid CIA-style names that keep changing don't help. Turtledove, fledge, sparrow lol. But from what I think I know that's kind of right technically, but kind of not in terms of actual real privacy. Yes, the actual browsing data, e.g. for the basic floc cohorts only what amazon product page you visited, is no longer 'sent' to ad networks (that's a pretty big oversimplification of how ad networks track you but for brevity). That data is parsed in your browser to generate a cohort ID for you. But this cohort ID is exposed to the world document.interestCohort() and is what's used for targeting and tracking. To me it seems that the cohorts are so small "thousands of people" + IP or UA it's basically the same as a semi-long lasting uuid. And if you have like even 10 different cohort IDs, even if some of them are 'fake'/'noise' that's probably enough to ID you alone Here's an image from google's site. https://web-dev.imgix.net/image/80mq7dk16vVEg8BBhsVe42n6zn82/wnJ1fSECf5STngywgE7V.png https://web-dev.imgix.net/image/80mq7dk16vVEg8BBhsVe42n6zn82... It also seems like Chrome/google might be still defaulting browser settings to give themselves even more data just like they currently do? https://github.com/WICG/floc#qualifying-users-for-whom-a-cohort-will-be-logged-with-their-sync-data https://github.com/WICG/floc#qualifying-users-for-whom-a-coh... BUT when you layer on the other proposals (Fledge/Turtledove/Dovekey or whatever) - which I don't understand that much maybe someone else can explain - it seems like it basically collect this page/product level data and makes it available to DSP etc for tracking/ad serving (again if not technically 1:1 basically in consequence given the sizes of these groups). Like one of the proposals talks about a 'trusted' key/value server which doesn't seem that different from what already happens? The original proposal wanted to move the entire ad bid/target/serve process into the browser.

by lisper 5y ago

fastball 5y ago

Yeahhhh, but Amazon makes a ton off their own ad business and is trying to turn everyone's personal devices into a mesh network they own. They don't give af about user privacy.

kevingadd 5y ago
IMO these two things are compatible. Their mesh network is incredibly gross but it's not a privacy violation, it's bad in other ways.
- fastball 5y ago
  It's almost guaranteed to be a privacy violation unless you think Amazon can write complicated yet bug-free networking code.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - noahtallen 5y ago
    I’m not sure about the privacy part, but they do have very good success with AWS, which I’m sure includes loads and loads of network code.
    - dcow 5y ago
      Amazon has some top notch mesh engineers, I know this personally. I highly doubt their talent is being used on this mesh effort, sadly.
Havoc 5y ago
> They don't give af about user privacy. That part seems to be the only universal truth these days.
ActorNightly 5y ago
They very much do. When is the last time you heard about any private data leak from Amazon?
- jptech 5y ago
  So your suggesting that add long as our personal information is in their hands and is utilised for maximizing profits but hasn't leaked we shouldn't worry about privacy?
- jay_kyburz 5y ago
  That suggests that they are keeping it safe, not that they are not storing or using it.
- gtyras2mrs 5y ago
  Security != Privacy

judge2020 5y ago

Isn't FLoC on-device? So 'gathering valuable data' would be users' own devices doing so, right?

t0mas88 5y ago
Does it matter whether the code Google wrote to do it executes on your device or on their servers? In the end they try to group people based on their Amazon browsing behavior and Amazon doesn't want that. Nor should any sane user want that, and Google knows that that's why it's opt-out instead of opt-in. Thank god they figured out it is illegal in Europe to do this without opt-in and didn't roll out FLoC here...
dillondoyle 5y ago
It's pretty complicated and my understanding could be wrong and definitely not an expert. All the stupid CIA-style names that keep changing don't help. Turtledove, fledge, sparrow lol. But from what I think I know that's kind of right technically, but kind of not in terms of actual real privacy. Yes, the actual browsing data, e.g. for the basic floc cohorts only what amazon product page you visited, is no longer 'sent' to ad networks (that's a pretty big oversimplification of how ad networks track you but for brevity). That data is parsed in your browser to generate a cohort ID for you. But this cohort ID is exposed to the world document.interestCohort() and is what's used for targeting and tracking. To me it seems that the cohorts are so small "thousands of people" + IP or UA it's basically the same as a semi-long lasting uuid. And if you have like even 10 different cohort IDs, even if some of them are 'fake'/'noise' that's probably enough to ID you alone Here's an image from google's site. https://web-dev.imgix.net/image/80mq7dk16vVEg8BBhsVe42n6zn82/wnJ1fSECf5STngywgE7V.png https://web-dev.imgix.net/image/80mq7dk16vVEg8BBhsVe42n6zn82... It also seems like Chrome/google might be still defaulting browser settings to give themselves even more data just like they currently do? https://github.com/WICG/floc#qualifying-users-for-whom-a-cohort-will-be-logged-with-their-sync-data https://github.com/WICG/floc#qualifying-users-for-whom-a-coh... BUT when you layer on the other proposals (Fledge/Turtledove/Dovekey or whatever) - which I don't understand that much maybe someone else can explain - it seems like it basically collect this page/product level data and makes it available to DSP etc for tracking/ad serving (again if not technically 1:1 basically in consequence given the sizes of these groups). Like one of the proposals talks about a 'trusted' key/value server which doesn't seem that different from what already happens? The original proposal wanted to move the entire ad bid/target/serve process into the browser.