Nobody is joining Google's FLoC • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#141

Post by cortesoft » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 3:39 AM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #108

xnx wrote: post #33

I'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.

You: Here's a cute picture of my cat, I'll post it on Instagram for my friends Instagram: cool! We're showing this to all your friends. BTW it costs us money to do this but don't worry, we don't charge you, we just show some ads to your friends. You: Hey, my kitten is really popular, a lot of people are liking it. Instagram: High five! You're popular. We ended up making a lot more money from selling ads than it cost…

Your cut is the free hosting and services... and both you and Instagram are subsidizing the people who use the service and don't generate many views.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#142

Post by physicles » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 3:41 AM UTC

kwdc wrote: post #136

Rant ON. Third party cookies are surveillance tech. So is FLoC. There is no need to track a person from one web site to another like some stalker. Any tech to stalk people like this isn't a good idea in general. This is antithesis to multiple business models. I know. But I see no reason to accomodate faulty models. Ironically however, I'm not against advertising. But my experience with targeted ads is that they are u…

Whether targeted ads work well from a user perspective is irrelevant to Google and FB. These companies only care about whether their ad tech can drive user engagement in such a way that advertisers think targeted ads work well.

After all, the advertisers are paying the bills.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#143

Post by throwaway3699 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 3:47 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #131

throwaway3699 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is the FreeBSD of browsers. Only good for very specific reasons as compared to Linux (Chromium).

Well that's incorrect. I only use Firefox at home. Works fantastic.

I'm not saying it's bad (FreeBSD is good too), but there's no denying it's pushing itself into a niche corner.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#144

Post by Hnrobert42 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 3:49 AM UTC

_abox wrote: post #127

likpok wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This means that the only way to make money is via subscriptions or cross promoting something that makes you the real money. The walled gardens, being able to both avoid Adblock and sell targeted ads, will do quite well. If your goal is the open web of yore, that doesn’t exactly sound like a win.

How do you get users into your walled garden though? I just walk away when I encounter a paywall and I'm sure most people do.

Examples of walled gardens that many people use are Instagram, FB, even Reddit to some extent which hamstring their mobile sites and push you to an app.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#145

Post by jrm4 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 3:55 AM UTC

roody15 wrote: post #112

xnx wrote: post #33

I'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…

And even that's a second order thing. Even if Patreon (or hey, onlyfans) aren't the dominant model now, I'm fine with breaking nearly any invisible system of content payment in favor of visible ones just to see what happens.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#146

Post by spideymans » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

acheron wrote: post #17

solosoyokaze wrote: post #6

Between FLoC and AMP, Google's attempts to destroy the web have surpassed even IE levels of toxicity. It's good to see the consumer focused forks of Chromium take a stand here.

Using any version of Chromium still contributes to Google’s attempts to destroy the web. If they actually cared they would use a different engine.

I'm really curious how these alternative browsers (including Edge) went about choosing which engine to fork. You'd think these piracy-focused browsers would opt for forking either WebKit or Gecko.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#147

Post by busymom0 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

shp0ngle wrote: post #139

People say how they hate surveillance tech, but at the end of the day, it pays half of the bills on this website. Most probably, there is Google Analytics and Facebook pixel on the very site you are building right now. So all these horribly, horribly outraged comments ring kind of hollow to me. I mean look at how many trackers are on The Verge site itself. Yeah FLoC is horrible. I hope it dies in a fire. It's just, p…

> People say how they hate surveillance tech, but at the end of the day, it pays half of the bills on this website.

HN has surveillance tech?

> Most probably, there is Google Analytics and Facebook pixel on the very site you are building right now.

Nope. I haven't used any of those since 2016. None of the apps I build for iOS have third party analytics, trackers or even ads. I solely rely on a single one time only in app purchase for monetization. Even my OCR app does all its processing locally on the device itself and none of the data leaves the device. I have a mood tracker app which obviously has a lot of intimate, confidential and private data from users - the data stays on their device and if they use iCloud syncing, then to Apple's server (despite all of Apple's flaws, they do seem to be doing much better when it comes to privacy). I have a school timetable app which also has lot of confidential data. Same thing on that app too - everything stays locally on the device or iCloud if user chooses. I DO NOT want user data. I have a site which is a resume builder which users input a lot of confidential data. Even that site never transfers any of the user data and everything is stored locally on the browser. There isn't even any ads or analytics on the site as can be confirmed by sniffing network requests. I had to spend couple extra weeks to get the PDF generation done locally in the browser instead of sending the user data to some server. This took extra time but it was worth it because I DO NOT WANT USER DATA. My Hacker News client app also has the same attention to privacy. I disclose to the user in the privacy policy that the only time the app accesses my own network is when it needs to fetch the favicon for the articles and I don't log these requests. I plan on adding notifications to that app and I will be disclosing that in the privacy policy that I will need to store the device token to be able to deliver the notifications. And the notifications will be opt-in so the user knows what data they are giving me to store. Other than that, I won't be using this for any tracking or other purposes.

Obviously I am aware I can make a lot more money if I put ads and trackers etc but I have been at a point for many years now where I would lose money and business if it means I get to starve the beast of some money. My customers appreciate my privacy policy and often email me or leave reviews appreciating the privacy policy. So there's a market for it (less money though and I am fine with that).

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hack-for-hacker-news-developer...

Privacy policy for HACK:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Cb282k7rrSi4awr0HizuRciX...

Here's another example of my resume builder's privacy policy:

https://resumetopdf.com/privacypolicy.html

Here's privacy policy for my MoodWell mood tracker:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19bIdiLwlnQxSIASNatVz8UpI...

Privacy policy for my Image Text OCR app:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f05TVHqZPnj8aM1d0b6y6u6H...

Simply saying one cares about privacy and users isn't sufficient. I think one has to really want to make less money and also have bitter feelings towards the beast to purposefully starve it if they want to care about user privacy.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#148

Post by arjunkava » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

This is actual blog by google https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/2021-01-privacy-sa...

and it says "eliminate third-party cookies by replacing them with viable privacy-first alternatives, developed alongside ecosystem partners, that will help publishers and advertisers succeed while also protecting people’s privacy as they move across the web."

Am I the only guy who is distracted by the blog which uses 13 third party cookies on the same page? Interesting!

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#149

Post by naikrovek » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 4:21 AM UTC

shp0ngle wrote: post #139

People say how they hate surveillance tech, but at the end of the day, it pays half of the bills on this website. Most probably, there is Google Analytics and Facebook pixel on the very site you are building right now. So all these horribly, horribly outraged comments ring kind of hollow to me. I mean look at how many trackers are on The Verge site itself. Yeah FLoC is horrible. I hope it dies in a fire. It's just, p…

> people that build websites want tracking. And it works. Retargeting works, banners work.

do they? I've never once bought anything because and ad made me aware of it, or because an ad convinced me I needed it. not once.

has anyone? I'm sure someone has, but how many? I would not be surprised if studies were done that computed a purchase rate overall for all the ads people see or hear in their lives, that the number is less than one purchase per billion ads exposed.

Re: Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

#150

Post by otabdeveloper4 » Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 4:21 AM UTC

mycall wrote: post #119

danShumway wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Google's whole business is selling ad data from their first-party cookie.

This is nothing but another anti-competitive move from the Google monopoly.