Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network • Hacker News Board

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#21

Post by peanut_worm » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:00 AM UTC

I think I will just block Chrome users from my websites

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#22

Post by fabrice_d » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:00 AM UTC

encryptluks2 wrote: post #12

cratermoon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me turn the question around: to what extent are website owners who do not opt out accomplices with Google in the privacy violations implicit in their creepy surveillance profiling tech?

Let's rephrase that... to what extent are website owners who do not opt accomplices with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, etc. Please also note that Firefox enables multiple telemetry features by default, such as safe browsing lists that checks links you visit presumably also tracking your URLs in the process.

Please read about how safe browsing works in Firefox (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Safe_Browsing): it's using the privacy respecting update API described at https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4/

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#23

Post by _underfl0w_ » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:00 AM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #15

Let me get this straight: even if my site has no ads or trackers, Chrome will now use my visitors data for advertising and surveillance??? Does anyone else see FLoC as worse than the current state we're in?

Definitely worse, but also the next logical step given that an ad company has achieved relative browser dominance and has such weight to throw around in defining web standards. Moves like this were inevitable. Writing's been on the wall a while now too.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#24

Post by aaronharnly » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:03 AM UTC

dannyw wrote: post #15

Let me get this straight: even if my site has no ads or trackers, Chrome will now use my visitors data for advertising and surveillance??? Does anyone else see FLoC as worse than the current state we're in?

It seems not. The FLoC page (https://web.dev/floc/) says:

> For pages that haven't been excluded, a page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#25

Post by oh_sigh » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:06 AM UTC

supernovae wrote: post #6

encryptluks2 wrote: post #2

How does it benefit website owners to opt out?

It's tech that only benefits Google.

Doesn't it also benefit anyone who buys ads or anyone who displays ads?

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#26

Post by Dunedan » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

aaronharnly wrote: post #24

dannyw wrote: post #15

Let me get this straight: even if my site has no ads or trackers, Chrome will now use my visitors data for advertising and surveillance??? Does anyone else see FLoC as worse than the current state we're in?

It seems not. The FLoC page ( https://web.dev/floc/ ) says: > For pages that haven't been excluded, a page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources.

Excluding a page is a manual process however, requiring to set the header mentioned in the blog post. So website owners have to explicitly opt-out of FLoC.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#27

Post by kjrose » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

Waiting for google to make this a ranking factor for SEO like they did with amp.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#28

Post by berniemadoff69 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

> add_header Permissions-Policy interest-cohort=();

what does that even do?

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#29

Post by kovac » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

zenincognito wrote: post #5

Only a little bit of time before the opting out process is made redundant by some API that will break somewhere or something that will be brought in as an RFC in chrome. Chrome's & Android's entire existence is to ensure Google ads business survives. This until Google can find another business that produces the same returns or dies. I wish there were more entities that would focus on developing tools for open web. Op…

I think the state of affairs with the mobile world is the worst. I can't help but think that Android was the worst disaster that happened to software industry.

Android corrupted the ethos of FOSS, decimated all hopes for privacy, contributed to destroying the environment, stripped users of freedom of choice. I think it'll take a very special group of people to reverse the tide.

Re: Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

#30

Post by lstamour » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 5:19 AM UTC

jedwhite wrote: post #8

Add a simple header to block FLoC on your website (fortunately): `permissions-policy: interest-cohort=()` It's only deployed on a test set of Chrome browsers so far, and it does create a warning message on browsers that don't support it. [1] [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66997942/error-with-perm... Edit to note support for blocking this!

That said, according to that StackOverflow page, the error only appears in DevTools. That's not as bad as it sounded at first. I was worried it would be an IE-style alert on page load, for example, or a visible bar across the top of the page. It's not, it's just spam in the DevTools console.