Brave disables Chromium FLoC features • Hacker News Board

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#81

Post by mavhc » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:23 PM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #62

morelisp wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cohorts could be reverse-engineered to give you a probability space of browsing history, which would be identical for any user in the cohort given a single sample. > There isn't really any hard bound on how much information could be leaked via these algorithms. With ~33k cohorts, there is literally a hard bound of just above 15 bits per visit. That's still theoretically a lot if you have some other stable identifier,…

Except the privacy conscious just won, so there is no need to compare it to the former status quo. Why squander our victory?

If you want to pay to visit every site you go to, or see 10x as many ads because you'll be 10x less likely to find them useful, then you've won

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#82

Post by jcampbell1 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #17

mcint wrote: post #7

FLoC stands for Federated Learning of Cohorts which aims to target advertising better without it directly relying on singularly personal information. https://web.dev/floc/ FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. FLoC provides a privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based ad selection. As a user moves around the web, their browser uses the FLoC algorithm to work out it…

So, FLoC is a mechanism for facilitating your being targeted by commercial propaganda, but not as accurate/personalized as other mechanisms by Google, Amazon and others. Am I getting it right? But - if the regular, more accurate/personalized, mechanisms work in Chromium - why use the less-accurate ones?

Because Chrome’s competitors have all gotten rid of 3rd party cookies for privacy reasons, and Chrome wants to launch and claim the same feature but not damage the ad business.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#83

Post by xvector » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #40

mikl wrote: post #23

Good to see Brave sticking to their privacy guns. FLoC is a brazen attempt for Big Ad (aka. Google and its ilk) to keep their spying-on-users gravy train going, now that GDPR and similar laws are making their old methods illegal (without consent). No one wants to consent to being spied on, so FLoC is circumnavigating the GDPR consent requirements, letting them spy on all Chrome-users without consent.

Except with FLOC you can watch your network connection in/out and see that, instead of a persistent identifier being used to track you, you only send your interest categories. FLOC's intent is to keep their money making operation afloat, but this time without direct web browsing activity tracking of users.

> but this time without direct web browsing activity tracking of users.

Your FLOC cohort is a summary of your web browsing activity. FLOC doesn't solve the privacy problems that trackers create - it just hands them your browsing history on a silver platter.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#84

Post by chrisco255 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

tssva wrote: post #75

prepend wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see irrelevant ads anyway. I’d rather block all this and use Brave and/or an ad blocker. A choice of least worst is not necessary.

Brave is a protection racket, crypto scam, privacy violating always with an excuse after company. Why the hell would I trust them?

Brave is a free open source product that you don't have to pay for or use. It's a browser with an integrated ad blocker. I opted into Brave, no one forced me to. I asserted my right as a user to run software on my machine how I see fit when I browse the web. The ad model of the web is exploitative, monopolistic, privacy invasive, abusive to everyone, and makes the whole open web ecosystem bow down to the whims of Facebook and Google.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#85

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:25 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #35

JoshTriplett wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to have ads at all. The best option is an adblocker, and a non-Chrome-based browser.

Using an adblocker is like stealing candy from the store... They can handle some theft, but if literally everyone stole their candy, the store would close down and nobody can have candy.

[deleted]

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#86

Post by Ygg2 » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

Daho0n wrote: post #36

Ygg2 wrote: post #29

I wonder how long, before Google sabotages Chromium to hurt Brave and other downwards forks?

>Brave ..... downwards forks Very fitting.

Would downstream forks work better as a word there?

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#87

Post by mikl » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #40

mikl wrote: post #23

Good to see Brave sticking to their privacy guns. FLoC is a brazen attempt for Big Ad (aka. Google and its ilk) to keep their spying-on-users gravy train going, now that GDPR and similar laws are making their old methods illegal (without consent). No one wants to consent to being spied on, so FLoC is circumnavigating the GDPR consent requirements, letting them spy on all Chrome-users without consent.

Except with FLOC you can watch your network connection in/out and see that, instead of a persistent identifier being used to track you, you only send your interest categories. FLOC's intent is to keep their money making operation afloat, but this time without direct web browsing activity tracking of users.

Yeah, and every time you log in somewhere, they can link your FLoC cohort to your real identity and use the information to build a profile on you.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#88

Post by mikl » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

morelisp wrote: post #42

mikl wrote: post #23

Good to see Brave sticking to their privacy guns. FLoC is a brazen attempt for Big Ad (aka. Google and its ilk) to keep their spying-on-users gravy train going, now that GDPR and similar laws are making their old methods illegal (without consent). No one wants to consent to being spied on, so FLoC is circumnavigating the GDPR consent requirements, letting them spy on all Chrome-users without consent.

> Big Ad (aka. Google and its ilk) So to be clear, "Big Ad" is like, dentsu, Publicis, Omnicom, etc. Companies that don't show up on HN much (but do ultimately buy the services which pay a ton of HNer's salaries). They don't like Google very much, but Google owns a ton of space to put ads on, lots of first-party traffic with interesting properties, and more accurate targeting models than most other companies combined…

Google is an integrated part of “Big Ad”, they’re the largest advertising company in the world. And now they’re using their ownership of the most popular browser to sneakily install FLoC on their unwitting user’s machines.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#89

Post by karaterobot » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:32 PM UTC

HeckFeck wrote: post #47

londons_explore wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an adblocker is like stealing candy from the store... They can handle some theft, but if literally everyone stole their candy, the store would close down and nobody can have candy.

I'm not stealing anything by instructing my computer not to run code against my consent. No one is entitled to my CPU time. Least of all are advertisers. Also, the store isn't freakishly stalking me and noting down all my habits whilst sharing what it has collected with its friends, or indeed anyone who will buy the data. Besides, candy is impossible to replicate in the same way that data is. Theft of physical object…

The person you're replying to is not accusing you of stealing, they are using stealing from a candy store as a metaphor for how a certain amount of behavior that a company doesn't like is tolerated because it is not worth the effort to stop. The point is that Google could prevent most people from using ad blockers any time they wanted, but don't view it as worth the bad PR (or choose not to for other reasons).

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#90

Post by lxgr » Sat, Apr 10, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

HeckFeck wrote: post #47

londons_explore wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using an adblocker is like stealing candy from the store... They can handle some theft, but if literally everyone stole their candy, the store would close down and nobody can have candy.

I'm not stealing anything by instructing my computer not to run code against my consent. No one is entitled to my CPU time. Least of all are advertisers. Also, the store isn't freakishly stalking me and noting down all my habits whilst sharing what it has collected with its friends, or indeed anyone who will buy the data. Besides, candy is impossible to replicate in the same way that data is. Theft of physical object…

> I'm not stealing anything by instructing my computer not to run code against my consent. No one is entitled to my CPU time. Least of all are advertisers.

One might argue that you are then not entitled to view the content on ad-supported pages as well.

I use an ad blocker too because many ads are just horribly intrusive, but I honestly can’t blame any page circumventing ad blockers, nor do I believe that I am somehow morally entitled to an ad-free, compensation-free browsing experience.

Narrowing all of this down to CPU time misses the point entirely in my opinion.

> They're useless noise that contribute no value to anyone beyond whoever pays for them, and therefore I find it a moral responsibility to limit my exposure to them and restrain the harm they do to others.

They‘re literally paying for the content you get to view for free.