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Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network

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

#131

Post by Dylan16807 »

skinkestek wrote: post #116
alpaca128 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weapons stopped Hitler. Weapons stopped USSR. Weapons stop US. Weapons stop todays Russia. That's just a rephrasing of the same old "good guy with a gun" meme.

Anything wrong with that? Think: if you try to remove all guns overnight the ones you get is the ones from the good guys. If you make guns illegal only criminals will have guns. Also: the biggest crimes against humanity have typically been made by the local rulers: Hitler can be discussed, Stalin, Pol Pot and a number of others cannot.

> Anything wrong with that?

Good guy with a gun tends to hit a bystander, or cause dangerous escalation in situations that don't warrant it, or have their gun stolen.

> If you make guns illegal only criminals will have guns.

That's one way to look at the very short term. But then since "criminal" is not an immutable quality of a person, millions of people that weren't criminals that then commit a crime will have no gun.

Trying to sort people into "good guys" and "bad guys" is a terrible idea in general.

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

#132

Post by int_19h »

kristopolous wrote: post #88
heavyset_go wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Android killed them, webOS existed, as did Maemo.

Would you be willing to entertain that maybe they died because most people who used phones found those platforms to be weaker product offerings with the things they cared about and that your value system may have fundamentally differences? Would you further entertain that the inability to perceive such realities and differences and manufacturers inability to navigate these preferences is a major determinant of succes…

> Would you be willing to entertain that maybe they died because most people who used phones found those platforms to be weaker product offerings with the things they cared about

That is true to a large extent, but it doesn't preclude Google from creating a situation where new contenders are effectively locked out. No matter how good Android is, they're not entitled to that.

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

#133

Post by chii »

prox wrote: post #100
whoisjuan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s probably already the case. This is a common area of speculation in the SEO community. Trying to figure what factors are used by Google to determine the ranking. People will add it in their configs and anecdotally perceive that it has an impact in their rankings. It would likely become a must for SEO. This a reflection of how incredibly genius the original PageRank was. It’s what makes Google the business it is…

This is my problem. I can circumvent Facebook, Apple and other bigtech companies in my work, if I so wished. But Google is everywhere and almost any business I work for has some connection to it (be it Adwords, Market, Business Tools or a simple Drive) This is why Google is a monopoly that needs to be looked into. We need to have choice again by allowing competition to thrive again.

may be search is a natural monopoly, and with it, there must be net neutrality legislation made so that the search rankings cannot be used to further a different business agenda.

If the electrical utility company said that they'd supply more (or better/stable) power to your premise because you were willing to buy a certain brand of electrical appliance, then it'd be grounds for anti-consumer action from the DoJ.

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

#134

Post by pjerem »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #77
pjerem wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a lot of work when all you have to do is to switch to another browser.

The browser I use does not process Javascript or CSS. I therefore have to do nothing. :) However, I would guess switching browsers is extremely unlikely for a great number of users. Google must know that. That is why they can do something like FLoC. They must know that not many users are going to switch browsers.

I agree, but those users are not willing to setup a proxy just to disable FLoC headers either.

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

#135

Post by tpxl »

dspillett wrote: post #65
edent wrote: post #7

Why isn't this opt-in? I'm sick of having to add yet another config option every time some Web giant decides it is OK to abuse my website and my visitors.

> Why isn't this opt-in? Who would opt in if it was? What benefit would there be to opting in? Unless Google make it a benefit in search rankings in which case some (possibly many) will for SEO purposes, bit still not enough I'd wager (and the balance would be such that lower quality sites, that prioritise SEO over actually useful content, would be the majority of those that went for it). This feels a bit like way-ba…

> Who would opt in if it was?

I imagine google analytics scripts would find a way to opt people in.

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

#136

Post by int_19h »

bhl wrote: post #106
kerng wrote: post #57

Today I looked at the source code of Chrome where this is implemented, so I'd understand it better. It made me realize that there is indeed (of course) software engineers (meaning: people) working on this who actually write that code. Does a high salary justify working on such features, or are modern day software engineers more like factory workers? I think not because most software engineers have a choice. Been thin…

There's two sides to every story. Reducing the amount of third-party tracking cookies on the web, and implementing a novel application of federated learning are definitely things some engineers would do, money aside, because they're technically challenging. Also link to that source code mentioned: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:c...

> Reducing the amount of third-party tracking cookies on the web

Why would anyone care about that, as opposed to, you know, reducing the amount of tracking?

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

#137

Post by dspillett »

tpxl wrote: post #135
dspillett wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why isn't this opt-in? Who would opt in if it was? What benefit would there be to opting in? Unless Google make it a benefit in search rankings in which case some (possibly many) will for SEO purposes, bit still not enough I'd wager (and the balance would be such that lower quality sites, that prioritise SEO over actually useful content, would be the majority of those that went for it). This feels a bit like way-ba…

> Who would opt in if it was? I imagine google analytics scripts would find a way to opt people in.

I would assume that anyway. Who other than sites using Google analytics or ads (so part of the tracking network anyway) would opt in to being part of the tracking network that (unless they switch to Google's ads too) offers little or no benefit to them?

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

#138

Post by girvo »

kristopolous wrote: post #88
heavyset_go wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Android killed them, webOS existed, as did Maemo.

Would you be willing to entertain that maybe they died because most people who used phones found those platforms to be weaker product offerings with the things they cared about and that your value system may have fundamentally differences? Would you further entertain that the inability to perceive such realities and differences and manufacturers inability to navigate these preferences is a major determinant of succes…

Maemo didn’t even get a chance. A literal single device that was dead on arrival due to that burning platform memo.

I miss my N9. One of the best smartphones I’ve used in the past 16 years

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

#139

Post by int_19h »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #131
skinkestek wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything wrong with that? Think: if you try to remove all guns overnight the ones you get is the ones from the good guys. If you make guns illegal only criminals will have guns. Also: the biggest crimes against humanity have typically been made by the local rulers: Hitler can be discussed, Stalin, Pol Pot and a number of others cannot.

> Anything wrong with that? Good guy with a gun tends to hit a bystander, or cause dangerous escalation in situations that don't warrant it, or have their gun stolen. > If you make guns illegal only criminals will have guns. That's one way to look at the very short term. But then since "criminal" is not an immutable quality of a person, millions of people that weren't criminals that then commit a crime will have no g…

It doesn't matter what you call the groups, or even how many groups you come up with. The point is that some are more compliant than the others - the conformists, the law-abiding etc - and it's those that you'll disarm first. The ones who don't actually care about the laws beyond the extent to which they can be meaningfully enforced will retain the means for violence. The only way to pretend-break this recursion is to outsource the violence (e.g. to the police and the military), and then claim that the rest of society is peaceful. But that's a sham - if you back a law that ultimately results in a cop enforcing it breaking the nightstick on someone's back, you're complicit in that act of violence.

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

#140

Post by prox »

kristopolous wrote: post #128
prox wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That it were weaker offerings is not always true. Google is the Gorilla in the room who simply squeezed out any competition by offering Android “for free” Microsoft Explorer did the same earlier with Netscape. Simply bundle your own software with the OS and watch the competition flutter. Your average consumer really doesn’t know the difference.

Yet they failed to gain a foothold in Windows Mobile after literally decades trying and they had to take 4 swings at Netscape before they really gained inroads. I question that common folklore and claim it uses anecdotal cherry picked non rigorous evidence. It's just a bad theory. Of course monopolies try to leverage their position as IBM tried with their failed MCA bus and failed XGA standard and failed OS/2 product…

That last point you make is crucial. Your average user just wants to go “on the web”, but doesn’t really know any difference between one browser or the next. This is why IE6 thrived, plus companies adopting it as their default install.
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