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A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

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Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#91

Post by 3gg »

marketingtech wrote: post #34

It's easy to mock the pettiness of all parties described here, and it's common for people on this forum to take absolutist stances with regards to privacy/advertising, but it's also important to recognize that these arguments will actually define the future of the internet for the average user. There are trillion dollar companies on both sides of the argument, and their eventual compromise will establish the defaults…

In regards to your third paragraph, to me none of that matters. Mass surveillance on the Web is wrong, period. Meanwhile, all parties involved in this drama, except for non-profits like the EFF, are instead debating how people ("users") should be best exploited online for profit, while regulators arrive late to the party and focus on other less consequential matters such as antitrust and miss the forest for the trees.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#92

Post by _1gwx »

IX-103 wrote: post #54
rdsnsca wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googles business is advertising.. take away their ad revenue and see what happens to them.

Yes, but their business is search advertising. You can get really good targeting with just 1st party data (what the current user has searched for). That's completely different from display advertising. For most sites on the web there's not enough information about a user's interests on that site alone to get a lot of different bidders for the ad slot. Fewer bidders generally means the a list auction price, so less mo…

It's not just search advertising, that was in the early 2000s. Their business now is to profile you anywhere, anytime. That's why they bought Youtube, Android, Fitbit, and the reason for their every move.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#93

Post by summerlight »

IX-103 wrote: post #54
rdsnsca wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Googles business is advertising.. take away their ad revenue and see what happens to them.

Yes, but their business is search advertising. You can get really good targeting with just 1st party data (what the current user has searched for). That's completely different from display advertising. For most sites on the web there's not enough information about a user's interests on that site alone to get a lot of different bidders for the ad slot. Fewer bidders generally means the a list auction price, so less mo…

Regarding Google's business model; this problem gets fairly complicated in fact when it comes to the question that "what makes Google search alive?". Yeah, people go Google to search something and this loses its point without the open web ecosystem. Google's Display ads business certainly contributes to only a small fraction of its overall revenue but that's not the point of this business. Instead, its very existential reason is to remove paywalls from the web so Google search can remain useful.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#94

Post by 3gg »

spoonjim wrote: post #90

The W3C is not a relevant institution anymore so this raging privacy war will be wholly inconsequential. Google and Apple decide what desktop and mobile browsers will behave like.

Their petty war for how to exploit people online is pathetic to watch. The more general fight for privacy _is not_ inconsequential. It would indeed be mistaken to think that these corporations are the ones carrying the privacy fight. That is what the likes of Apple are basing their PR on these days; pure marketing trash.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#95

Post by jefftk »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #36

Funny how there is no (meaningful) user representation at W3C. Perhaps Wendy Seltzer is the closest to a user representative. A lawyer who is a Perl programmer, according to her Wikipedia profile. The arguments against Big Tech the smaller ad tech folks are raising sound legit, but obviously they are not being made in good faith. Big Tech has no more respect for user privacy than companies like Rosewell's. They are a…

> What does Google provide. We know they are fingerpringing on a mass scale.

Why do you say that? I'm not aware of any situations where Google targets ads based on fingerprinting, and if they did I probably would have come across it. And in March, Google Ads committed that "once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products" -- https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/a-more-privacy-fir...

(Speaking only for myself)

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#96

Post by jefftk »

pentagrama wrote: post #46

> One of Google's proposed standards — Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC for short — would eliminate the ability for advertisers to track specific users' web behavior with cookies. No, Floc will not "eliminate the ability for advertisers to track specific users with cookies", the phase out of third party cookies on Chrome will do that, Google needs something to replace the current tracking method for his ad busi…

They're not really separate things: Chrome has said removing third party cookies is dependent on finding good replacements. This goes back at least to https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-...:

After initial dialogue with the web community, we are confident that with continued iteration and feedback, privacy-preserving and open-standard mechanisms like the Privacy Sandbox can sustain a healthy, ad-supported web in a way that will render third-party cookies obsolete. Once these approaches have addressed the needs of users, publishers, and advertisers, and we have developed the tools to mitigate workarounds, we plan to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome.

(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#97

Post by floren »

DenseComet wrote: post #35
tenebrisalietum wrote: post #11

Want a Web run by human beings again? Want tracking methods impossible to implement in any meaningful fashion by design? Try Gemini. Gemini is here and can be used TODAY. https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ The only thing standing between you and the next web is... a lot, but try it anyway, things have to start somewhere.

Do you have a list of sites on Gemini that are interesting or useful? I don't use the web because it uses HTML or because it has JS or really any particular technical feature. I use it because it has sites like HN and Google, and I think the same thing applies to Gemini. I love the ideas behind Gemini, but I'm not sure why I'd use Gemini if there are not interesting sites.

Well, Gemini is the best place to read about Gemini :)

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#98

Post by o8r3oFTZPE »

lumost wrote: post #48

I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.

Progress. What would be neat is to see how much data Apple is collecting about its customers after purchase. Why wouldnt we want to know this. Could Apple provide option to hide true email address, tell app do not track and give visibility into data being sniffed without also collecting vast amounts of user data itself. We cannot answer that question until we see the data they collect. I used to be of the mind that Apple was not really hurting anyone until it became clear they are competing with Google and Facebook. Even Apple competing with Microsoft is unsettling because that company has been aggressively acquiring user data, also trying to compete with Google. On issues of user data, these companies have more similarities than they do differences. They are all hoovering it up, albeit through different channels.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#99

Post by fartcannon »

lumost wrote: post #48

I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.

Well, good, but you traded one bad apple for another. Apple is in the process of locking down freedom. And while you might not be tracked by Google, your quality of life in a closed ecosystem is just as bad in other ways. How many people have to contend with iCloud endlessly begging for money because they took a few photos of their child?

Isn't iCloud data backed up on Chinese servers? I'm pretty sure that means you're being spied on.

This is not to mention the waste generated by Apple actively fighting the right to repair.

So, good, Google needs to go. But so do the tech giants.

Re: A privacy war is raging inside the W3C

#100

Post by samplatt »

rodgerd wrote: post #82
lumost wrote: post #48

I used to be of the mind that ad tech et. al. weren’t really hurting anyone, and that the more extreme examples of privacy offenses were simple edge cases. That is until I switched to iOS and was given the option to hide my true email address, tell an app not to track me, and otherwise get visibility into just how much my data is getting sniffed for stupid reasons that have nothing to do with the service I’m using.

My tipping point was noticing that about 30% of my DNS traffic on my home network was Android devices calling out to tracking and advertising networks. Moving to iOS has dropped that dramatically, more than an order of magnitude. The fact that we're now seeing multiple lawsuits, PR campaigns, and lobbying to damage Apple since they put a requirement to disclose privacy details in the App Store shows how much surveill…

An alternative to giving your money to one of the largest tax-dodgers on the planet is a $30 raspberry pi with "pi-hole" installed.

Browsing on my phone at home with all those ad networks blocked okay... until you go outside your home network and get all the ads again. It's almost made my stop using my phone outside of my home network.

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