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WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

webkit.org

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181–190 of 254 posts

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#181

Post by auslander »

Vinnl wrote: post #179
inapis wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 financ…

> Apple seems to be managing by providing the browser for free

Plus @icloud.com email service

> Mozilla's financial dependence on Google is still a major challenge, which they'll hopefully be able to fix

I honestly do not see how. Sticking to Safari for now.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#182

Post by luzjh »

ferzul wrote: post #132
cthaeh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your given definition, Google isn't a monopoly either as there are clear alternatives to them in every sector that they are in.

Although the definition the other user posted was too strong, it was mitigated by the observation that Apple is barely 50%. If we compare Google's marketshare in end user email, video hosting and search, we can see Google is a lot stronger in many markets, than apple is in their best market. (I wish I could use an iPhone, but having to use Mac OS for development is a real turn off, considering how sucky Mac OS, in my…

>(I wish I could use an iPhone, but having to use Mac OS for development is a real turn off, considering how sucky Mac OS, in my view, has ever been.)

Buying a mobile for your personal use means you have to develop for it?

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#183

Post by the8472 »

yyyk wrote: post #154
the8472 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"IPv6 privacy extensions...." I recall these extensions are just optional. How many implementations actually implement these extensions? I recall Windows 10 had this broken for a year and almost nobody noticed...

They were broken in the sense that the preferred address would revert back to the permanent address. IPv6 still worked.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#184

Post by feanaro »

downandout wrote: post #71
saagarjha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You were enraptured by content and services provided by companies that lost billions of dollars, courtesy of investors, during the dot com era. What about the independent blogs?

Of course anyone who wanted to spend their time back then doing what we now call blogging, who wanted to pay for their own hosting, could have done so. However, I am not sure that the ability to read the thoughts of independent bloggers was a major driving force behind the mass adoption of the Internet. It was quality content and services, subsidized by investors who for the most part hoped companies could generate r…

I often see this vague and unsubstantiated "quality content" mentioned in relation to this, but seeing this immediately after and counterpointed to independent, information rich blogs is even more puzzling. I see it mentioned, but I'm at a loss to what this financed quality content is.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#185

Post by vinay_ys »

om2 wrote: post #9
saagarjha wrote: post #5

Actual link to the policy: https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/ . One thing that I found interesting was these two quotes: > Our current anti-tracking mitigations in WebKit are applied universally to all websites, or based on algorithmic, on-device classification. > If a party attempts to circumvent our tracking prevention methods, we may add additional restrictions without prior notice. These restrictions…

We're willing to do specifically targeted mitigations, but only if we have to. So far, nearly everything we've done has been universal or algorithmic. The one exception I know of was to delete tracking data that had already been planted by known circumventers, at the same time as the mitigation to stop anyone else from using that particular hole (HTTPS super cookies). This is in contrast to Mozilla and Edge tracking…

This is all good, but I'm not a fan of my browser being remotely controlled by anyone to modify any of its expected behavior to do special/specific things on different websites without my informed consent.

Even the browser vendor has to be held to the same high standard (or even higher) of being completely open and transparent about what they and when they do it.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#187

Post by feanaro »

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…

The web as a knowledge disseminating medium will neither disappear nor suffer if or when the targeted ad industry wilts away. The physicists, mathematicians, programmers, computer scientists, biologists, chemists, ... of the world will still need and want to communicate and collaborate, not to mention the variety of hobbyists and people with odd but passionate interests. And they will do so freely, because this is the only way it makes sense. This is only beneficial for those who value knowledge and discussion since the interests are then actually aligned with those activities, instead of being only tangentially hitchhiked on top of something else.

What would fail is the likes of the fashion industry, such as Instagram influencers peddling Nike sneakers and cosmetics.

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#188

Post by TelmoMenezes »

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.

> And there's nothing preventing Google from leveraging Youtube/Gmail/Search to push out other browsers which have tracking protection.

Nothing except antitrust laws...

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#189

Post by TelmoMenezes »

downandout wrote: post #71
saagarjha wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You were enraptured by content and services provided by companies that lost billions of dollars, courtesy of investors, during the dot com era. What about the independent blogs?

Of course anyone who wanted to spend their time back then doing what we now call blogging, who wanted to pay for their own hosting, could have done so. However, I am not sure that the ability to read the thoughts of independent bloggers was a major driving force behind the mass adoption of the Internet. It was quality content and services, subsidized by investors who for the most part hoped companies could generate r…

> It was quality content and services, subsidized by investors

You're joking about the "quality content" part, right?

Re: WebKit Tracking Prevention Policy

#190

Post by jefftk »

Fnoord wrote: post #136
winrid wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, thanks. Somehow I missed that. Things move so fast.

Google forked WebKit (itself a fork of KDE Konqueror's KHTML). Blink is from 2013. [1] I wonder how source incompatible these are? Is it difficult to backport? Because KHTML was LGPL the source must remain available. Or is it just that these are API incompatible? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine)

After the fork both WebKit and Blink were able to delete large amounts of no-longer-shared code. Not half the codebase, but still quite a lot. The fork was a recognition of their having been growing apart for a long time.

Both groups still watch each other's changes, but it's very rare that a patch would apply cleanly.

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