I'm going to be that guy tonight. I never post online. I don't see value in posting online. But I feel as if I have to weight in on this conversation.
I run an online business. I depend on ads. I hate being tracked.
Here's the deal, Google is tracking you no matter what. Even if they aren't using your information for advertising, you still feed them all the best first party data in the world. You give them your search queries, emails, your phone location etc..
Your information is valuable. Even if you block online advertising, you are still going to be targeted in the real world the same way.
Facebook, yes they are shitty too, but again, they are fed all this information. Now, their information is 3rd party. They get pixel fires about you that allow them to coorelate data about you, but it isn't first part exactly.
In the advertising world you target the person or you target on page. The issue with on page is there just isn't enough content about a subject to target and frankly, just beacuse you read something, doesn't mean you are interested in buying it.
I don't care if it's a cookie, or FLoC, or what ever, people are going to be monitored, it's too large of a business. As an individual if you are afraid of it, you have the choice to use Brave or what ever. But at large scale, most people don't care. I believe that this tracking rhetoric is dangerous. At least we are having the conversation about tracking and allowing the people who don't want to be tracked to avoid it. If it were the inverse, these things would still happen behind closed doors, because it's extremely profitable.
Governements have been tracking people forever. Some choose to do evil, populations revolt. People can always beat governments.
Yes I am bias becuase my business does depend on paid advertising like many others. I understand the "big brother" effect. But I also know that other agencies (NSA/CIA) are already doing these things and are either forcing the tech companies to collect the data and share it or are willing to do it. The fact that we all focus on private companies being the crux of the problem and aren't focus on the 3 letter agencies.
Either way, we live in new uncertain times and the US economy has always been about consumerism. These ads have generated incredible amounts of wealth for indvidiaul companies and the tech companies. I do agree that Google makes too much money. As an advertiser, I know that their algorithm is essentially a black box and as an advertiser we are getting fucked. We have no real transparency that our bids are true. We are hoping to hit a CPA and just keep to it.
I can tell you that in the last 2 years, online advertising performance has dropped a lot. It's a combination of people having less money and our economy doing worse and there's a lot more competition. I suspect that these companies are inflating their bids artificially. We know that Facebook penalizes people it doesn't like but provides absolute no transparency on the system. These penalties also cost you more money - which is bullshit.
All of these companies have no support to contact and you are at the beck and whim of a 3rd world outsourced tech support agent that can't do anything.
To summerize. I agree tracking is bad. But you offer all of your data up every time you use email or a search engine. It's all collected and there is no better alterantive. At least these companies are providing a service for businesses to thrive. I think they make wayyyyy too much money. If you think disabling FLoC is going to stop anyting, you havn't looked at the big picture.
If people want to stop being tracked, get off the internet, don't use a search engine, don't use email. But that isn't practical. If you think any of these "Privacy Safe" companeis are doing anything other than just charging you and still handing your data over to what ever 3 letter agency requests it under an NSL, you're crazy.