I don’t think the demise of 3rd party cookies is going to be the boon for privacy some think it will be. Marketers still want to advertise and track performance of ads and are all moving to first party cookies with Facebook and Google and other mar-tech vendors. This could lead to leakage of data as it gives anyone let into the fist party domain access to all the other tracking identifiers.
Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
111–120 of 186 posts
Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
#112I'm definitely in the minority of commenters on these FLoC threads. I hate that 3rd party cookies exist, and support FLoC if it would hasten the demise of 3rd party cookies. It seems like many consider the alternative to FLoC to be an anonymous web where content can be accessed without login. The migration of content into walled gardens like Instagram seems more likely to me.
Anonymous web makes sense. The very idea that we need an ad profile that follows us as we traverse the web is ridiculous.
Contextual advertising works. Visit a popular website covering PC hardware .. and advertisers can pay to put ads to parts, chips, cases, etc. Visit a website that covers hiking trails and companies can purchase ads for camping gear, travel lodging, etc.
The very notion that it should be normal for an ad profile to be built around everything I do on the web is frankly dystopian and depressing.
Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox is a good option!
Firefox is the FreeBSD of browsers. Only good for very specific reasons as compared to Linux (Chromium).
Been using firefox for years and haven't encountered a single usecase-breaking issue. Can you explain why you feel that way?
Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
#114I don’t think the demise of 3rd party cookies is going to be the boon for privacy some think it will be. Marketers still want to advertise and track performance of ads and are all moving to first party cookies with Facebook and Google and other mar-tech vendors. This could lead to leakage of data as it gives anyone let into the fist party domain access to all the other tracking identifiers.
>I don’t think the demise of 3rd party cookies is going to be the boon for privacy some think it will be. [...] This could lead to leakage of data as it gives anyone let into the fist party domain access to all the other tracking identifiers.
Not really. They can still track users across visits, but they can't track users between websites. That's the privacy improvement.
Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
#115As a website owner, you can opt out by setting the Permissions-Policy header to "interest-cohort=()". I rolled that out for pirsch.io today.
I don't get it. Couldn't you also just... not record any cohort information that is sent to you? (Admittedly I have not looked very deeply into FLoC.)
GP seems to be misunderstanding how floc is implemented. If your site doesn't call document.interestCohort(), the site isn't factored into floc calculations.
Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have my doubts about the "more anonymous" part, mainly because 3p cookies are constrained to a single browser on a single device and can be easily erased or blocked, but your browsing habits that will land you on a certain cohort will remain the same across devices so you could technically be tracked cross-device even if you don't sync your browsing history or cookies (if I am reading right the way FLoC works). Qui…
Not to mention that this only really makes it more difficult for businesses who haven't already infected the web with things like social media buttons, widgets, or analytics scripts. Neither Facebook nor Google require third party cookies to function, and I doubt FLoC would make any difference when they can already slurp up so much data that is voluntarily provided by other people without your consent (your address b…
Facebook ads and Google ads do not need third party cookies ?
How are they serving contextual ads if they don't know what you are doing on different websites if the myriad of trackers they offer to content websites do not track you by third party cookies ?
Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Firefox is the FreeBSD of browsers. Only good for very specific reasons as compared to Linux (Chromium).
Been using firefox for years and haven't encountered a single usecase-breaking issue. Can you explain why you feel that way?
And I'd add the only subpar-in-Firefox issues are caused by Google "accidentally" crippling performance of their pages/services, coupled with others optimising just/primarily for Chrome.
(But also, what Mozilla has been doing to Firefox last few years if both a travesty and a good thing.)
Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The idea that FLoC is a more privacy-friendly alternative to third-party cookies is deeply flawed, please read [this]( https://github.com/WICG/floc/issues/100 ).
Thanks. Good thread. Sounds like FloC is definitely more anonymous than third party cookies that are already in use today. There might are some hypothetical situations with FLoC where some information might be able to be inferred given sufficient data, but this is not trivial/direct like it is today.
> Sounds like FloC is definitely more anonymous than third party cookies that are already in use today.
Not at all.
My browser deletes cookies from any website (by default) as soon as I close the last tab for a given open site.
If the browser itself starts tracking me, my privacy is reduced, not enhanced.
Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
#119I'm definitely in the minority of commenters on these FLoC threads. I hate that 3rd party cookies exist, and support FLoC if it would hasten the demise of 3rd party cookies. It seems like many consider the alternative to FLoC to be an anonymous web where content can be accessed without login. The migration of content into walled gardens like Instagram seems more likely to me.
> if it would hasten the demise of 3rd party cookies Will FLoC speed this up? As far as I know, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are already largely publicly committed to phasing out 3rd party cookies over the next couple years. I guess FLoC might move that deadline up a bit? But I suspect some critics of FLoC are looking at the proposal as a compromise that we don't need to make. The thinking is, at the point where we ha…
I could see ad agencies start to buy well-known https endpoints per client domain that makes 3rd party cookies into 1st party cookies. This whole problem isn't going way -- it is just going to shift.
Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC
#120Very good news. It might even hurt Chrome's monopoly.