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WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

webkit.org

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Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#171

Post by blowfish721 »

makomk wrote: post #164
briandear wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one wants to spend money showing ads to bots Bots can watch TV, somehow TV ads work. Newspapers have audited circulation, it wouldn’t be that hard to have a website visit audit company to verify “circulation.”

Auditing of TV and newspaper ads is done largely on the receiving side, not the sending side - companies monitor what's actually shown in the stations broadcast and papers sent to real people, they pay people to install monitoring devices to see what they watch, and they contact people to find out what they're reading. The internet equivalent isn't really possible on iOS without doing some kind of Facebook-esque end-…

I don't know about the US but at least here in northern Europe on the broadcasting side this used to be true. Now the monitoring of what people are watching is done through the setup boxes as well as the web streams. When it comes to what commercials being broadcast it's usually done through logging in the software that handles the playlist (for linear tv) and then reported back to the advertisers. The advertisers probably have different systems in place to verify it as well however.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#172

Post by quotemstr »

p4bl0 wrote: post #166
quotemstr wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public suffix list is a gross hack. The public-ness of a particular domain level ought to be returned as part of the DNS response instead of being looked up out-of-band.

I understand your point, but the problem is that anybody can make their DNS response say whatever they want. And you can't even rely on crypto signatures (e.g. DNSSEC), as the people controlling some DNS records are not necessarily the same as their users. For example, GitHub controls DNS for *.github.io so if they wanted to track people across all GitHub Pages, they could. Also, the Public Suffix list isn't somethin…

I don't think we'd in practice see people lying one way or the other about a particular name level being "public". If GitHub wants to track people across all *.github.io pages, it can, trivially. It controls the infrastructure, after all.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#173

Post by inapis »

Vinnl wrote: post #159

One advantage of Google's dominance and their business model being so reliant on tracking, is that it's become the moat for its competitors: investing energy into tracking protection is a good way for them to gain a competitive advantage over Google, since it's a feature that Google will not be able to copy. So as long as Google's competitors remain in business, we'll probably at least have some alternatives that tak…

That's a very interesting point. But tracking-free services won't really have a major mindshare with the general public because you really can't compete with "free."

And there's nothing preventing Google from leveraging Youtube/Gmail/Search to push out other browsers which have tracking protection. Youtube already plays less well with Firefox. Gmail isn't exactly snappy on Safari either.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#174

Post by quotemstr »

saagarjha wrote: post #66
rale00 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it? Non-contextual advertising still exists, but it's perceived as less effective, so there's a lot less money in it. I don't know if that perception is correct, but I do remember back when a common complaint from people was that the ads they saw weren't relevant to them. It's also not just targeted…

> Non-contextual advertising still exists, but it's perceived as less effective, so there's a lot less money in it. I don't know if that perception is correct, but I do remember back when a common complaint from people was that the ads they saw weren't relevant to them. As far as I’m aware, the current state of advertising is people either being too creeped out by ad suggestions to buy anything or still feeling like…

> As far as I’m aware, the current state of advertising is people either being too creeped out by ad suggestions to buy anything or still feeling like they’re getting bad recommendations.

Given the massive revenues that advertising generates, how could you think this judgement (which I'm sure accurately reflects how _you_ feel) applies universally?

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#175

Post by sciurus »

the8472 wrote: post #130
jesstaa wrote: post #106

I expect that tracking will just move to being proxied server side. It will be more annoying for the people setting it up but services will spring up to help. Little will change in the advertising and tracking space.

That annoyance may be enough to keep many actors from just plugging 10 random trackers into their sites, especially when it means running code from less-than-trust-worthy parties on their own servers instead of their user machines. At the very minimum it aligns incentives better for developers to think about these things. And with IPv6 privacy extensions IP addresses will also be less useful for server-side tracking.

They didn't have to run the code, e.g. example.com just has to run a proxy that accepts payloads at analytics.example.com and forwards them to the third party tracking providers.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#176

Post by quotemstr »

downandout wrote: post #51
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

I came here to say exactly this. Most profits for online ventures come from retargeted ads, and most businesses lose money on cold audiences just so that they can build retargeting audiences. As a result, when tracking dies, so does most online ad spend. I am really curious what the web itself (outside of apps) will look like in a world where the quality of content and services implodes because of the inability of pu…

Indeed. I think this effort to ban third-party cookies is fundamentally misguided. It'll only serve to entrench the current big advertising networks and make it difficult for new ones to emerge. Due to this market concentration, this move will reduce, not improve, privacy.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#177

Post by alkonaut »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #76
geofft wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it? I mean, maybe the answer is that those ads were only profitable because of the novelty factor and now that we have metrics we know they don't work, or at least don't work anywhere close to how much they cost. But I do miss things like the webcomics running their own ad network, Google's textual ads…

From what I can tell, the pre-surveilence norm was businesses having to find a website with an audience they wanted to advertise to, or a website finding a business that might want to market to their users, and then every website having to negotiate contracts with every business that wanted to set up ads. Basically the print magazine model. But as businesses wanted to advertise to larger populations (we want to do a…

And all I want my browser to do is make sure that is what online advertising returns to.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#178

Post by alkonaut »

rale00 wrote: post #64
geofft wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it? I mean, maybe the answer is that those ads were only profitable because of the novelty factor and now that we have metrics we know they don't work, or at least don't work anywhere close to how much they cost. But I do miss things like the webcomics running their own ad network, Google's textual ads…

> Didn't people make money off internet advertising before the modern surveillance-marketing complex? What happened to it? Non-contextual advertising still exists, but it's perceived as less effective, so there's a lot less money in it. I don't know if that perception is correct, but I do remember back when a common complaint from people was that the ads they saw weren't relevant to them. It's also not just targeted…

There is less money in that advertising because the invasive advertising exists. If browsers ensured it didn’t exist, money would return for static/untargeted/context-based advertising again.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#179

Post by Vinnl »

inapis wrote: post #173
Vinnl wrote: post #159

One advantage of Google's dominance and their business model being so reliant on tracking, is that it's become the moat for its competitors: investing energy into tracking protection is a good way for them to gain a competitive advantage over Google, since it's a feature that Google will not be able to copy. So as long as Google's competitors remain in business, we'll probably at least have some alternatives that tak…

That's a very interesting point. But tracking-free services won't really have a major mindshare with the general public because you really can't compete with "free." And there's nothing preventing Google from leveraging Youtube/Gmail/Search to push out other browsers which have tracking protection. Youtube already plays less well with Firefox. Gmail isn't exactly snappy on Safari either.

Yes, competing with Google is still a main challenge. Still, Apple seems to be managing by providing the browser for free as a value-add when you buy their hardware, and by preventing other browser engines from running on iOS.

Mozilla's financial dependence on Google is still a major challenge, which they'll hopefully be able to fix before push comes to shove.

Microsoft unfortunately did not seem to be able to financially justify the maintenance of their own engine - though then again, their bet appears to be on Windows integration rather than tracking protection.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#180

Post by alkonaut »

downandout wrote: post #51
rale00 wrote: post #40

So what is going to happen when Apple succeeds in making it impossible to make any money off advertisements shown to iOS users on the web? I'm currently imagining a future where publishers start to just redirect iOS traffic to install their app, where they can actually make money. Good news for the walled garden, I guess?

I came here to say exactly this. Most profits for online ventures come from retargeted ads, and most businesses lose money on cold audiences just so that they can build retargeting audiences. As a result, when tracking dies, so does most online ad spend. I am really curious what the web itself (outside of apps) will look like in a world where the quality of content and services implodes because of the inability of pu…

I’m completely happy for the AdTech bubble to die in the same fire as 90% of free products, services (and associated jobs) on the web.
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