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Privacy Analysis of FLoC

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#81

Post by alyandon »

giantrobot wrote: post #55
throwaway2048 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is the only place on the internet I've seen people expound their love for personalized advertising.

I don't mind the concept of ads. I didn't really mind early ads on the web. They were a lot like magazine ads, the website owners would run ads in the same broad interest category as their site. Then early AdTech happened and went fucking insane. Google's early text ads, before the DoubleCkick reverse takeover, were a sane reaction to insane web ads. Google's ads too went insane. Now ads aren't just ads but crazy tra…

Exactly that. If ads were like they were back in the early days I wouldn't feel forced to run an adblocker to protect myself from the malware they've become.

Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#82

Post by GekkePrutser »

codetrotter wrote: post #34
throwaway2048 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is the only place on the internet I've seen people expound their love for personalized advertising.

I hate ads. They hijack my attention and they promote things for the companies that have the most money to spend on screaming at me about their products. I wish the advertising industry simply disappeared. In fact if I had three wishes they would be 1. End poverty and allow everyone in the world to pursue their dreams while still being able to live acceptably well. 2. Make it impossible for anyone to amass more than…

I second those wishes :)

Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#83

Post by GekkePrutser »

google234123 wrote: post #72
p49k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end doesn’t justify the means. Finding out about some cool stuff doesn’t justify the insane amount of collection of ones personal data by hundreds of companies in a manner which is basically impossible for a person to reasonably prevent.

An internet with no ads will have much less content.

True but probably a lot better content. It would disincentivise clickbait.

Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#84

Post by GekkePrutser »

jedberg wrote: post #47
j_wtf_all_taken wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd just be nice to have a little more control, for starters. So advertisers try to figure out what we want by what websites we visit and are not too good at it. They could also just ... ask? I'd like to have an ad service that I can tell what I'm actually interested in these days, and that forces the companies to provide lots of information about the product they are advertising for (documentation and stuff). So if…

Unfortunately asking users doesn't usually work out well. My favorite example is from Netflix. They asked users, "What movie needs to be on the service for you to consider it a good service with good movies that you would want to see repeatedly". A lot of people answered "Schindler's list". But when you looked at those same user's actual viewing, they never once watched Schindler's list, but they watch Jackass multip…

That may be true but what the advertisers do doesn't work well at all either.

Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#85

Post by johnfernow »

jedberg wrote: post #37
leipert wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I just dislike ads altogether. Especially Instagram feels very manipulative. So far nothing we have bought based on Instagram or Facebook ads has been useful in the long run. Personally I prefer to either have a need for something (I want to solve problem X) and do some research based off of that. Or I share an experience with a friend where they make a recommendation. Funniest Facebook ad by the way: I…

I dislike ads too. I'd rather just pay to use the sites. But I also understand not everyone can afford that. The ads are there for them. So examples of things that I've bought from Instagram ads: The most recent Pride lego set. I would have never known it existed, but I'm glad I know now, because I want to give my kids something fun to build that sparks a conversation about Pride and what it means and why it's import…

Thank you for mentioning the comma2. I also knew about OpenPilot but didn't realize there was a commercial product where most things are ready to go. I checked it out and am thinking about getting one now.

Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#86

Post by lvass »

google234123 wrote: post #72
p49k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end doesn’t justify the means. Finding out about some cool stuff doesn’t justify the insane amount of collection of ones personal data by hundreds of companies in a manner which is basically impossible for a person to reasonably prevent.

An internet with no ads will have much less content.

Imagine a world where OpenStreetMap is financially sustainable but Google maps were not. That's where we would be without ads, and it's beautiful.

Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#87

Post by bingidingi »

aboringusername wrote: post #17

It's really a genius level move by Google here. Get rid of the cookie, implement your own solution, make it seem somewhat unique and rely on other data to identify users and claim impunity since it's nothing to do with them. So how about this, Google must not, and cannot implement FLOC without it being a cross-browser standard; that is to say if anyone of Microsoft, Apple or Mozilla veto FLOC, it's dead. This is how…

Google has zero incentive to adhere to any standards because they already own the majority of the browser market.

The fact that Google is an ad provider and a browser vendor and trying to implement a browser-level tracking API is very alarming.

As mentioned in the Mozilla analysis, Google is also saying that they're who determines which sites are considered "protected" categories... which is the cherry on top of all of this nonsense.

I'd really like to understand how someone working on this thinks that it improves the web for everyone... not just Google.

Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#88

Post by GekkePrutser »

o8r3oFTZPE wrote: post #30

Is there anyone on HN who believes Mozilla will not implement FLoC in Firefox. Mozilla has stated over and over that it is a firm believer in advertising as "essential" for the internet to survive. In practice, they never phrase it as an opinion or even an underlying assumption (that can be questioned), they try to state this as a "fact".[1] This is called advocacy. Mozilla is an advocate for online advertising. They…

Yes I believe Mozilla will not implement FLoC or at least offer a way to turn it off.

Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#89

Post by jedimastert »

justinplouffe wrote: post #12

What bothers me the most about FLOC is that there is no reason or advantage for me as a user to run it unless I'm forced to. Cookies, even if they get hijacked for tracking, are genuinely useful to persist state and having them on results in a better experience. Even in the case of something more invasive like DRM/EME, I might want to turn it on in exchange to be able to watch some new show on a streaming service. Tu…

> Turning on FLOC brings nothing to the user in return and feels like charity towards advertisers.

I would call it a charity to the site owner whose (presumably) free content you're consuming. What it brings to the user is the ability of the site owner to continue making content.

Re: Privacy Analysis of FLoC

#90

Post by jedimastert »

tomrod wrote: post #18

FLoC: micro market segmentation. Profiles versus data. It requires on 33 bits to uniquely identify an individual. [0]. I would be interested to learn whether FLoC employed k-anonymity measures, and their report on it. If I am retired, female, live in the 830* zip3, and own a sedan, it is probably hard to identify me. Add that I am Korean and am searching for thyroid cancer treatments on Tuesday at 8:43AM local, then…

> searching for thyroid cancer treatments

Subtle note, this would probably fall under the "sensitive topics" category discussed and not be tracked, but insert niche hobby here and your point still stands

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