101–110 of 167 posts
Did google ever seek proper peer review for FLoC before they started testing it on people?
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…
This isn't how internet standards work, or the how they have ever worked. Take the development of HTTP/2:
[2009] Google researches how HTTP could be improved and develops SPDY: https://blog.chromium.org/2009/11/2x-faster-web.html https://dev.chromium.org/spdy/spdy-whitepaper
[2010] Chrome implements SPDY, and they start gathering real world performance data.
[2011] Several rounds of iteration to make it faster, more reliable, and fix bugs.
[2012] Major websites built out support, Firefox adds support, the process of standardizing it with the IETF begins: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-mbelshe-httpbis-...
[2013] More and more sites build support, CDNs enable it by default
[2014] Safari adds support.
[2015] Standardized as HTTP/2: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7540
Standardization follows cross browser support, and cross browser support follows single browser support.
This is the path FLoC is following: it's currently incubated under the WICG (https://github.com/WICG/floc) and Chrome is developing it. Other browsers are paying attention and evaluating: that's what this Mozilla article is about. If at some point we get to a version that other browsers are happy with and choose to implement, then it could potentially be standardized.
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like personalized ads. If I have to suffer with ads to support the websites I like, I'd rather have them personalized. Instagram is really good at this -- I probably click on at least 1/4 of the ads I get, and have definitely made purchases based on Instagram ads. So as a user, the benefit would be better ads. Honestly I'll probably leave FLOC on if given the option (although I use Firefox and Safari, and as far as…
Better ads isn't a product I have much interest in. I have very much literally never seen a targeted ad I like or even found useful. This sounds like Google employee speak to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm defining good as "informing of things I didn't know existed". I consider advertising just another news channel. Copying from my comment above, here are some examples of things I've bought. I like trying out new things because I can afford it, but I don't always have time to go out and look for them. So examples of things that I've bought from Instagram ads: The comma2 (autopilot for my Honda van). I knew OpenPilo…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW, I am "personally" sick of the Internet reminding me of the thing I already bought yesterday, along with doubling down on ads for things I only engage with because I want to show my friends how stupid the ad/product is, which seems to be the state of the art of "personalized" Internet ads. I would honestly get more value--if I am forced to see ads--out of less personalized ads. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KbKd…
"This person bought a vacuum cleaner yesterday, they will probably want to buy another tomorrow" is what personalised ads are. I wanted to check the price of the cheapest SSD price I could find on Amazon, and I've been getting sale notifications of cheap-ass 64GB SSD since. Of course these advanced AIs are not so intelligent to see that I've bought multiple 1TB and 2TB SSDs lately or hundreds of different products, b…
It should be "this person bought a vacuum cleaner today, so let's wait two months and start showing them ads for vacuum cleaner bags" or "maybe they are buying equipment for a new apartment, so maybe they would also like a toaster oven and a lamp".
Like, imagine you had an actual salesman--a good one, as opposed to the "targeted salesman" from the video--who you bought all your stuff through and who was excited to make commissions off of you. They would never waste your time or attention or trust asking you to buy a second vacuum cleaner.
If someone buys a treadmill, they probably don't want a second one, but maybe they now want some free weights. The current algorithms are just so stupid... like, I almost appreciate the premise that if you had an "actual AI" helping find you stuff to buy that could be fun, but what we have is just wasting everyone's time.
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.
Google could enable FLoC in Chromium by default and then, correct me if I am wrong, the browsers based on Chromium would have to disable it.
Mozilla of course is not based on Chromium.
However, Mozilla does try to match Chrome feature for feature and Google also is the hand that feeds Mozilla.
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…
I like personalized ads. If I have to suffer with ads to support the websites I like, I'd rather have them personalized. Instagram is really good at this -- I probably click on at least 1/4 of the ads I get, and have definitely made purchases based on Instagram ads. So as a user, the benefit would be better ads. Honestly I'll probably leave FLOC on if given the option (although I use Firefox and Safari, and as far as…
The problem with ads, no matter how "personalised", is that they are sent to everyone by default. Almost no one changes defaults. Often there is not even an option to opt-out. Whether two users got the same or different ads ("personalisation") is not the issue. The issue is that they were sent ads when they did not conscisouly request them.
Thus, the fact that jedberg likes ads is not an argument for sending ads to everyone. In the same way that if some user dislikes ads it is not an argument to stop sending ads to jedberg.
Users are not being given a choice. When they are given a choice, e.g., to reject tracking on their smartphones, the result can be a decision that the online advertising industry dislikes.
Tech company employees can call themselves users, but there is a serious bias and conflict of interest that other users being subjected to ads do not have.
What if we just send ads to tech company employees. The tech worker cohort. They will not complain because they believe ads are "necessary". Problem solved.
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…
I like personalized ads. If I have to suffer with ads to support the websites I like, I'd rather have them personalized. Instagram is really good at this -- I probably click on at least 1/4 of the ads I get, and have definitely made purchases based on Instagram ads. So as a user, the benefit would be better ads. Honestly I'll probably leave FLOC on if given the option (although I use Firefox and Safari, and as far as…
FLoC is not immune to this: it relies on the device being able to track users and then provide advertisers "blurry" access to that tracked data. The problem is that we already have plenty of other tracking mechanisms that we can't reasonably restrict and that will interfere with the privacy protections built into FLoC. You will always be able to fingerprint and FLoC will always provide some fingerprintable entropy.
Even if FLoC was trustworthy enough to do what it claims, your interest cohorts alone can reveal your secrets. There's the classic example of Target knowing a woman was pregnant before her father was, for example. Yes, Google is going to try and filter out sensitive interests in cohorts, but that's an additional layer of trust you can't control. What if Google's definition of sensitive interest differs from yours?
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…
This. FLoC has no value proposition for end users.
Your position regarding cookies lumps two categories of cookies together. Cross-site cookies, and same-site cookies. Tracking isn’t exclusive to cross-site cookies, but the effectiveness (and invasiveness) of tracking is orders of magnitude more effective with cross site cookies. With the near-elimination of cross-site cookies, it turns out you can have your useful client side state and eat it too.