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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

#181

Post by tpetry »

bigiain wrote: post #107
aaronharnly wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources. Let me guess, “ads-related resources” are not defined, but in a court case in 5-10 years time it’ll be accidentally revealed that internally Google considers this to include “JavaScript, css, or HTML files”...

The court case will reveal that google used the string "ad" to search within html documents, thy completely missed that will contain the ad substring...

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

#183

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

roody15 wrote: post #178
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?

Yes it is absolutely worse. The very notion that we need a identification profile that tracks are behavior is ridiculous. Contextual advertising works. If you visit a blog that covers tech hardware... advertisers can pay to put ads here or PC parts etc. If you visit a website that covers hiking trails .. advertisers can buy ads here for camping gear etc. It is utter ridiculous to think we need to be tracked from site…

> Contextual advertising works

It would, unfortunately advertising agencies have showcased advertisers that they can hijack focus of an average website visitor with rich graphics irrespective of the context e.g. Say toothpaste ad on a tech blog; And the toothpaste company doesn't care as long as they get a click(even if the conversion is abysmal).

Other side of the story is that the tech blog would find it very hard to get a proper referral link for PC parts they're covering for contextual advertising unless they're of considerable size. Where as getting a banner ad to display what ever it wants is just usually couple of clicks.

As a result, whole Internet is full of rich graphics built by and built for these advertisers making simple text based readable websites an endangered species; Further making the lives of those with accessibility needs miserable.

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

#184

Post by ddevault »

jahewson wrote: post #72

Has nobody bothered to read anything about FLoC? The purpose of this permission is to prevent embedded third-party content from using FLoC. Besides that it’s a no-op. FLoC does not track arbitrary websites, it tracks sites which retrieve the FLoC cohort via JS. So instead of dropping a unique third party cookie, and associating it with the data on the page, sites can now retrieve a k-anonymous cohort id and associate…

If nothing else it serves to signal that your website doesn't want in on Google's bullshit.

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

#185

Post by BCM43 »

donmcronald wrote: post #169
martius wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good idea to read the article: > 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. (Ad Tagging in Chromium explains how Chrome's ad detection mechanism works.) Ad tagging? https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs... > Ad Tagging works by matching resource requests against a filter list (..…

> Ad Tagging works by matching resource requests against a filter list (...) to determine if they’re ad requests. This list should be shared with UBlock Origin. Let the people decide what they want IMO.

I'm pretty sure this is the list: https://github.com/chromium/chromium-ads-detection/blob/mast...

It's derived from easylist, and (I think) scoped down based on things that actually show up in the top X websites.

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

#186

Post by dcow »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #156
_underfl0w_ wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What about $otherthing?" Neither is good, but that doesn't necessarily make the topic you're attempting to pivot to relevant in this situation. Also, Cloudflare (provider of the external service you mention, assuming you're talking about DNS-over-HTTPS) definitely isn't Google. At least not yet.

No, I'm talking about their browser protection feature that is supposed to check for malware and unsafe domains.

Doesn't that use a bloom filter? So in reality it’s very few if any of the urls you visit are actually sent anywhere.

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

#187

Post by dcow »

syntactic-sugar wrote: post #174
ehsankia wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like people arguing that nuclear energy is a bad solution to climate change because it's not perfect and technically not renewable. - FLoC is still far better than third party cookies - As much as we'd love to live in a world without advertising, 95% of the internet wouldn't exist without it. - If we are going to have advertising, I'd much rather have FLoC than third party cookies

- FLoC is still far better than third party cookies I'd take issue with 'far' better, and it has the additional problem of turning the privacy issue in to a moving target. How long did it take to get the wider public and legislators moving on tracking cookies? Now it's a similar issue, just it's called FLoC and its code on your own machine doing the spying. - A world without advertising Super disagree that this at al…

Advertising without any sort of tracking just based purely on inbound search queries is still really good advertising and better than older ways. What most people don't want is a profile following you around everywhere.

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

#188

Post by colordrops »

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…

Absolutely. On Android, it's impossible to disable background network traffic for this very reason. It's a broken operating system.

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

#189

Post by lupire »

dspillett wrote: post #53
retor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that is only necessary if the page contains ads or ads-related resources, right? That’s how I interpret the previous quote.

Yeah and the system will never accidentally see something not advert related as advert related and turn the option on. Things like that never happen. And when that does happen, Google is famously transparent in its actions and easy to contact to resolve such issues. (You may detect a little touch of sarcasm above!)

If you detected it yourself, you should rewrite it to make your writing less confusing.

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

#190

Post by lupire »

lrem wrote: post #47
bushbaba wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dirty of google to hide behind “web.dev” and not make it front and center clear this is a google property.

Seems to mention Google more than on Youtube. Both use Google accounts, as seen in top right corner, but only web.dev has a footer mentioning Google.

Youtube is very old and has its own reputation and a made-up trademark name. It's not trying to hijack the entire concept of a generic idea like "web dev" that existed before Google existed.
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