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> Can anyone explain to me why this is worse than third-party cookies? How about thinking the other way around: Can you, or anyone else for that matter, expla

> Can anyone explain to me why this is worse than third-party cookies? How about thinking the other way around: Can you, or anyone else for that matter, explain to me why this is better than commercial interests not following us around at all? > turn off third-party cookies, but a bunch of the internet breaks if you do that Most of what breaks is just tracking for ad serving purposes. I'm fine with that breaking. Some authentication services have trouble, but there are other ways of implementing that, so they could be fixed without needing to keep 3rd party cookies enabled. > I expect that most sites will be forced to make themselves work without third-party cookies As they should, if competently designed. > … but naively I'd rather … Call me dogmatic, but I'd rather not be followed around at all, even as a group. I don't trust that the data cannot be de-anonymised in any way, and I don't trust a company that would gain from that to do its best to make sure it can't happen.

esteth 3y ago
I totally appreciate the desire not to want an advertising profile build for you at all! I think that in practice, interest-based-advertising is going to happen, and I think if chrome can provide a way for it to be done without involving so many sketchy third-parties then I'm for that. I don't know a huge amount about the wider ecosystem here, but I can imagine that if chrome were to disable third-party cookies without providing an alternative, then advertisers will go to fairly great lengths to fingerprint you to build a profile. Right now my guess is that Firefox users benefit from the fact that it's probably not worth investing all that much in alternative tracking techniques since you capture the vast majority of people with techniques which work in chromium browsers. Again, I really don't know that much about all this, but my feeling is that this is moving in the right direction, even if it's not the solution I'd ultimately prefer as an individual user.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  I think a big flaw of interest based ads is that my interests rarely line up with what I am in the market for. Say I am interested in some hobby. I probably have all my gear already, and if I buy new gear it means doing enough research to breach through the fog of marketing to see it for what it is. I might spend all my days reading about hobby x online, when I really ought to be advertised the differences of some other products y and z that I actually will buy, which I only see when I visit a physical store and see them together on a shelf.
- josho 3y ago
  What is lost in this discussion is that now my browser, software on my machine, using my resources is the agent that is acting against my own interests.
  - tantalor 3y ago
    Your browser has been serving ad banners since 1994, nothing new here.
    - dspillett 3y ago
      The simple display of a sponsored banner and the systematic tracking of people throughout their online activities are not the same thing.
      - tantalor 3y ago
        > not the same thing Never said they were, only that they both using your browser & resources "against your own interests", and this is not a good argument against tracking.
        dspillett 3y ago
        When just displaying a static banner add, your browser is a lot more passive than implied by "agent that is acting" in the GPP. Simply displaying an image (with a little HTML for the link) and perhaps caching it in local storage is quite different from collecting & collating logs about you and distributing that back out to the where internet. You are right about the bit of the post you noticed though, both do use at least some resources. This system more, but the simple banner still some.
vxNsr 3y ago
> Some authentication services have trouble, but there are other ways of implementing that, so they could be fixed without needing to keep 3rd party cookies enabled. not to mention that if the goal is to remove 3PC, this new ad tracking doesn't solve the auth problem at all.
jpadkins 3y ago
> Can you, or anyone else for that matter, explain to me why this is better than commercial interests not following us around at all? Because people prefer free, ad supported content on the internet. Once you accept that premise, then it's a matter of balancing privacy, volume of ads, and payments to creators (ad tech companies are going to get theirs). Do you think the majority of people would prefer fewer, better targeted / higher yielding ads as long as it is tracking them anonymously? Or more ads, with worse targeting? Or neither and less payments to creators?
- bombolo 3y ago
  [dead]
- Ajedi32 3y ago
  I can see both sides of this. There's the side of me that looks at advertising and sees it as a necessary annoyance. It's the primary funding source for the open web today, and thus far that model has been very successful. Advertising has enabled the development of well polished, incredibly useful software like YouTube, Google Maps, search engines, etc without requiring users to directly pay a single cent for those services. Then there's the Stallmanesqe, crypto-anarchist side of me that says it's my machine and it shouldn't do anything that doesn't directly benefit me. Tracking and ads don't directly benefit me, so my machine shouldn't cooperate in running them and if your business can't survive under those conditions then it doesn't deserve to. I'm not 100% on how to resolve that tension, but I can't really fault Google for the way they're handling it. (As an optional, yet on-by-default feature that cooperates in serving relevant ads in a way that's more private than cookies but less private than just blocking everything.)
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  If there was only a single choice for advertisers to place a completely static banner on the page, they would still be happy. As long as no other advertiser had more capabilities. Restrict them all and the money would still flow as the ads would increase sales just as much.
  - 3y ago

esteth 3y ago

I totally appreciate the desire not to want an advertising profile build for you at all! I think that in practice, interest-based-advertising is going to happen, and I think if chrome can provide a way for it to be done without involving so many sketchy third-parties then I'm for that. I don't know a huge amount about the wider ecosystem here, but I can imagine that if chrome were to disable third-party cookies without providing an alternative, then advertisers will go to fairly great lengths to fingerprint you to build a profile. Right now my guess is that Firefox users benefit from the fact that it's probably not worth investing all that much in alternative tracking techniques since you capture the vast majority of people with techniques which work in chromium browsers. Again, I really don't know that much about all this, but my feeling is that this is moving in the right direction, even if it's not the solution I'd ultimately prefer as an individual user.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
I think a big flaw of interest based ads is that my interests rarely line up with what I am in the market for. Say I am interested in some hobby. I probably have all my gear already, and if I buy new gear it means doing enough research to breach through the fog of marketing to see it for what it is. I might spend all my days reading about hobby x online, when I really ought to be advertised the differences of some other products y and z that I actually will buy, which I only see when I visit a physical store and see them together on a shelf.
josho 3y ago
What is lost in this discussion is that now my browser, software on my machine, using my resources is the agent that is acting against my own interests.
- tantalor 3y ago
  Your browser has been serving ad banners since 1994, nothing new here.
  - dspillett 3y ago
    The simple display of a sponsored banner and the systematic tracking of people throughout their online activities are not the same thing.
    - tantalor 3y ago
      > not the same thing Never said they were, only that they both using your browser & resources "against your own interests", and this is not a good argument against tracking.
      - dspillett 3y ago
        When just displaying a static banner add, your browser is a lot more passive than implied by "agent that is acting" in the GPP. Simply displaying an image (with a little HTML for the link) and perhaps caching it in local storage is quite different from collecting & collating logs about you and distributing that back out to the where internet. You are right about the bit of the post you noticed though, both do use at least some resources. This system more, but the simple banner still some.

vxNsr 3y ago

> Some authentication services have trouble, but there are other ways of implementing that, so they could be fixed without needing to keep 3rd party cookies enabled. not to mention that if the goal is to remove 3PC, this new ad tracking doesn't solve the auth problem at all.

jpadkins 3y ago

> Can you, or anyone else for that matter, explain to me why this is better than commercial interests not following us around at all? Because people prefer free, ad supported content on the internet. Once you accept that premise, then it's a matter of balancing privacy, volume of ads, and payments to creators (ad tech companies are going to get theirs). Do you think the majority of people would prefer fewer, better targeted / higher yielding ads as long as it is tracking them anonymously? Or more ads, with worse targeting? Or neither and less payments to creators?

bombolo 3y ago
[dead]
Ajedi32 3y ago
I can see both sides of this. There's the side of me that looks at advertising and sees it as a necessary annoyance. It's the primary funding source for the open web today, and thus far that model has been very successful. Advertising has enabled the development of well polished, incredibly useful software like YouTube, Google Maps, search engines, etc without requiring users to directly pay a single cent for those services. Then there's the Stallmanesqe, crypto-anarchist side of me that says it's my machine and it shouldn't do anything that doesn't directly benefit me. Tracking and ads don't directly benefit me, so my machine shouldn't cooperate in running them and if your business can't survive under those conditions then it doesn't deserve to. I'm not 100% on how to resolve that tension, but I can't really fault Google for the way they're handling it. (As an optional, yet on-by-default feature that cooperates in serving relevant ads in a way that's more private than cookies but less private than just blocking everything.)
raxxorraxor 3y ago
If there was only a single choice for advertisers to place a completely static banner on the page, they would still be happy. As long as no other advertiser had more capabilities. Restrict them all and the money would still flow as the ads would increase sales just as much.
- 3y ago