6 ms·

IMO the best replacement for third-party cookies is nothing. It should not be technically possible to track a user across sites.

jefftk 4y ago
> It should not be technically possible to track a user across sites. Chrome agrees with you on that: https://github.com/michaelkleber/privacy-model https://github.com/michaelkleber/privacy-model The replacements they are talking about attempt to maintain the economic benefits without cross-site tracking.
- freediver 4y ago
  Can you expand on what those economic benefits are, and how do they benefit the user of the browser?
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    The user of the browser is able to use free websites without paywalls that are supported by ads. The user also sees relevant ads rather than irrelevant ones, and thus has a higher likelihood of seeing a useful ad. Disclosure: I work at Google but not on ads or Chrome.
    - JoshTriplett 4y ago
      If the user is seeing an ad, the browser is not doing as good a job of being an agent for the user as it could and should be.
      - jefftk 4y ago
        Do you also feel this way about paywall circumvention logic? To me, this is an example of where a browser trying to be a good agent for users overall separates from a browser trying to be a good agent for any particular user. Yes, selfishly, I would rather skip paywalls and not see ads, but an internet where the browsers did that by default for everyone would be a much worse internet.
        JoshTriplett 4y ago
        An Internet where browsers suppressed ads by default would be a much better Internet. Yes, sites wouldn't be able to make money from ads. A subset of those sites would not be around; another subset would make use of patronage, subscriptions, selling something of value, "the person who runs this site has other sources of income", or some other model. And some additional sites would be around to fill the gaps. ("paywall circumvention" is a broad topic. I wouldn't want a browser, for instance, integrating "go get the mirrored content from another site" or "mirror paywalled content to other users", but things like "suppress specific popovers that also block scrolling", sure. If you don't want a user to have the content, don't serve it to them and then hide it.)
        jefftk 4y ago
        > I wouldn't want a browser, for instance, integrating "go get the mirrored content from another site" or "mirror paywalled content to other users" Why not? It sounds like if you accept the role of the browser as "do what is best for this specific user despite the broader consequences" they're worth doing?
        JoshTriplett 4y ago
        The unfortunate existence of copyright; browsers shouldn't get their users prosecuted. If copyright wasn't a factor, yes, browsers could absolutely support and contribute to mirror networks.
        Thorrez 4y ago
        Browsers suppressing ads by default leads to the question of what counts as an ad. Borderline cases: sponsored portions of YouTube videos (a la SponsorBlock), videos containing entirely sponsored content, movie trailers, game/software demos, freemium games, free credits for cloud services, product placement, soliciting Patreon subscriptions, sections calling out or listing names of Patreon subscribers, publicly thanking large donors (charities do this), things with ads in the name (e.g. sports arenas and events), things named after donors (e.g. college buildings), soliciting subscriptions to their own subscription service (e.g. Linus Tech Tips YouTube videos promoting Floatplane), soliciting subscriptions to a partnered subscription service (e.g. many youtubers promoting Nebula).
  - jefftk 4y ago
    https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads
    - freediver 4y ago
      I read your article and you miss the third option for the user c) do not consume the content It is actually the best option for the user in most cases when ad-supported content is in question. The way it evolved over the years, the purpose of the content became not to inform the user, but to monetize their visit. As such it transformed from being intelligence amplifying to intelligence insulting (in general). Why? Because ad supported content tends to be of lower quality, produced en-masse, with inherent conflict of interest, clickbaity and poorly written (ads significantly contributed to detoriation of journalism globally), littered with ads to the point of being impossible to read and finally infested with tracking in the worst privacy-invasive ways. In the event you still want to access it, the best your browser can do is indeed to try to block all ads/tracking on the page. What this converges to is either the sites producing low quality content disappearing or them actually making it worthwhile for people to pay for. Both outcomes are good for humanity, where preserving the current state is bad.
      - Thorrez 4y ago
        >As such it transformed from being intelligence amplifying to intelligence insulting The same thing happens with content supported through direct payments. Think video game streamers producing mindless content all day long, and asking for donations that allow viewers to get a flair next to their name or an in-stream callout of some chosen sentence. >ads significantly contributed to detoriation of journalism globally Ads have been in journalism for a long time. When would you say the deterioration happened?
        freediver 4y ago
        > Think video game streamers producing mindless content all day long, and asking for donations that allow viewers to get a flair next to their name or an in-stream callout of some chosen sentence. You get what you pay for. If the product is mindless to begin with, I do not think this proves any point. It would be different if stream was paid to begin with. > Ads have been in journalism for a long time. You still paid for the newspaper, meaning an economic transactio happend where you valued the content at some price point and were ready to pay. That meant content had to pass at least some quality threshold. Replacing this with fully free, ad-supported content totally changed incentives. Now the content can be of zero value (which it in most cases is) and will still be consumed because it is free.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  No, the replacements they are talking about are third-party cookies but only this time proprietary and Google-only.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    The replacements are topics, attribution reporting, fledge etc: APIs that allow you to either do something or learn something based on a user's behavior on a different site, but without allowing you to connect the user's identity on one site to their identity on another. None of them give Google's ad system special treatment. (I used to work on this at Google)
thayne 4y ago
There are quite a few uses for cookies besides tracking users across sites. Sometimes there are other ways to do it, but those ways are often significantly more complicated.
thehappypm 4y ago
Wouldn’t SSO be difficult ?
- grishka 4y ago
  Can be done with a redirect through the authenticator domain that would then pass a token in a query parameter or something. Not as streamlined, but it works. Some oauth flows are already doing this exact thing.

jefftk 4y ago

> It should not be technically possible to track a user across sites. Chrome agrees with you on that: https://github.com/michaelkleber/privacy-model https://github.com/michaelkleber/privacy-model The replacements they are talking about attempt to maintain the economic benefits without cross-site tracking.

freediver 4y ago
Can you expand on what those economic benefits are, and how do they benefit the user of the browser?
- Thorrez 4y ago
  The user of the browser is able to use free websites without paywalls that are supported by ads. The user also sees relevant ads rather than irrelevant ones, and thus has a higher likelihood of seeing a useful ad. Disclosure: I work at Google but not on ads or Chrome.
  - JoshTriplett 4y ago
    If the user is seeing an ad, the browser is not doing as good a job of being an agent for the user as it could and should be.
    - jefftk 4y ago
      Do you also feel this way about paywall circumvention logic? To me, this is an example of where a browser trying to be a good agent for users overall separates from a browser trying to be a good agent for any particular user. Yes, selfishly, I would rather skip paywalls and not see ads, but an internet where the browsers did that by default for everyone would be a much worse internet.
      - JoshTriplett 4y ago
        An Internet where browsers suppressed ads by default would be a much better Internet. Yes, sites wouldn't be able to make money from ads. A subset of those sites would not be around; another subset would make use of patronage, subscriptions, selling something of value, "the person who runs this site has other sources of income", or some other model. And some additional sites would be around to fill the gaps. ("paywall circumvention" is a broad topic. I wouldn't want a browser, for instance, integrating "go get the mirrored content from another site" or "mirror paywalled content to other users", but things like "suppress specific popovers that also block scrolling", sure. If you don't want a user to have the content, don't serve it to them and then hide it.)
        jefftk 4y ago
        > I wouldn't want a browser, for instance, integrating "go get the mirrored content from another site" or "mirror paywalled content to other users" Why not? It sounds like if you accept the role of the browser as "do what is best for this specific user despite the broader consequences" they're worth doing?
        JoshTriplett 4y ago
        The unfortunate existence of copyright; browsers shouldn't get their users prosecuted. If copyright wasn't a factor, yes, browsers could absolutely support and contribute to mirror networks.
        Thorrez 4y ago
        Browsers suppressing ads by default leads to the question of what counts as an ad. Borderline cases: sponsored portions of YouTube videos (a la SponsorBlock), videos containing entirely sponsored content, movie trailers, game/software demos, freemium games, free credits for cloud services, product placement, soliciting Patreon subscriptions, sections calling out or listing names of Patreon subscribers, publicly thanking large donors (charities do this), things with ads in the name (e.g. sports arenas and events), things named after donors (e.g. college buildings), soliciting subscriptions to their own subscription service (e.g. Linus Tech Tips YouTube videos promoting Floatplane), soliciting subscriptions to a partnered subscription service (e.g. many youtubers promoting Nebula).
- jefftk 4y ago
  https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads https://www.jefftk.com/p/why-i-work-on-ads
  - freediver 4y ago
    I read your article and you miss the third option for the user c) do not consume the content It is actually the best option for the user in most cases when ad-supported content is in question. The way it evolved over the years, the purpose of the content became not to inform the user, but to monetize their visit. As such it transformed from being intelligence amplifying to intelligence insulting (in general). Why? Because ad supported content tends to be of lower quality, produced en-masse, with inherent conflict of interest, clickbaity and poorly written (ads significantly contributed to detoriation of journalism globally), littered with ads to the point of being impossible to read and finally infested with tracking in the worst privacy-invasive ways. In the event you still want to access it, the best your browser can do is indeed to try to block all ads/tracking on the page. What this converges to is either the sites producing low quality content disappearing or them actually making it worthwhile for people to pay for. Both outcomes are good for humanity, where preserving the current state is bad.
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      >As such it transformed from being intelligence amplifying to intelligence insulting The same thing happens with content supported through direct payments. Think video game streamers producing mindless content all day long, and asking for donations that allow viewers to get a flair next to their name or an in-stream callout of some chosen sentence. >ads significantly contributed to detoriation of journalism globally Ads have been in journalism for a long time. When would you say the deterioration happened?
      - freediver 4y ago
        > Think video game streamers producing mindless content all day long, and asking for donations that allow viewers to get a flair next to their name or an in-stream callout of some chosen sentence. You get what you pay for. If the product is mindless to begin with, I do not think this proves any point. It would be different if stream was paid to begin with. > Ads have been in journalism for a long time. You still paid for the newspaper, meaning an economic transactio happend where you valued the content at some price point and were ready to pay. That meant content had to pass at least some quality threshold. Replacing this with fully free, ad-supported content totally changed incentives. Now the content can be of zero value (which it in most cases is) and will still be consumed because it is free.
otabdeveloper4 4y ago
No, the replacements they are talking about are third-party cookies but only this time proprietary and Google-only.
- jefftk 4y ago
  The replacements are topics, attribution reporting, fledge etc: APIs that allow you to either do something or learn something based on a user's behavior on a different site, but without allowing you to connect the user's identity on one site to their identity on another. None of them give Google's ad system special treatment. (I used to work on this at Google)

thayne 4y ago

There are quite a few uses for cookies besides tracking users across sites. Sometimes there are other ways to do it, but those ways are often significantly more complicated.

thehappypm 4y ago

Wouldn’t SSO be difficult ?

grishka 4y ago
Can be done with a redirect through the authenticator domain that would then pass a token in a query parameter or something. Not as streamlined, but it works. Some oauth flows are already doing this exact thing.