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How to fight back against Google FLoC

plausible.io

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Re: How to fight back against Google FLoC

#2

Post by eterevsky »

While I do understand that some people may not like it, I don't see how FLoC is particularly harmful. I've read several articles about it, and most of them just say something like "you are being put in a advertising cohort -- see how creepy it is", which doesn't really prove anything.

One more specific argument against FLoC is that it will make help tracking users via fingerprinting. I don't really buy it. First of all, the estimations from [EFF article](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-...) are just plainly wrong. They are talking about narrowing down to thousands of users, while in fact if Chrome has on the order of a billion users, and if FLoC has only 8 bits of entropy, the actual number of users in a cohort is on the order of millions. Secondly, from my understanding this cohort is based on your recent activity, so it will change over time.

Re: How to fight back against Google FLoC

#4

Post by sanxiyn »

eterevsky wrote: post #2

While I do understand that some people may not like it, I don't see how FLoC is particularly harmful. I've read several articles about it, and most of them just say something like "you are being put in a advertising cohort -- see how creepy it is", which doesn't really prove anything. One more specific argument against FLoC is that it will make help tracking users via fingerprinting. I don't really buy it. First of a…

FLoC is not particularly harmful, but Google is harmful, and harming FloC will harm Google. So I fully support fighting against FLoC.

Re: How to fight back against Google FLoC

#7

Post by kemonocode »

eterevsky wrote: post #2

While I do understand that some people may not like it, I don't see how FLoC is particularly harmful. I've read several articles about it, and most of them just say something like "you are being put in a advertising cohort -- see how creepy it is", which doesn't really prove anything. One more specific argument against FLoC is that it will make help tracking users via fingerprinting. I don't really buy it. First of a…

> While I do understand that some people may not like it, I don't see how FLoC is particularly harmful.

Sure, I can give an example: it goes beyond simple basic fingerprinting, it allows you to be associated with a group of "others" (your cohort) in ways that can be dangerous to you.

Suppose you live in a country where you may not enjoy certain freedoms or some behaviors may be outlawed; end up in the wrong cohort(s) and a state actor will be able to know these things rather easily, this is not to say there aren't already means to do it today, but why make the job even easier for them?

Re: How to fight back against Google FLoC

#9

Post by notum »

Would I be terribly downvoted if I said that I prefer targeted ads? I'd rather see GPUs than feminine hygiene products.

FLoC seems like a method of saving my preferences locally, which is fine. I'm not interested. I won't use Google's browsers and I'll continue to filter my traffic.

Internet privacy will always be an uphill battle, there's worse things going on, starting with centralized and monopolized DNS, I feel we should focus on fixing that.

Re: How to fight back against Google FLoC

#10

Post by timdaub »

sanxiyn wrote: post #8

I want to suggest another thing you can do as a web developer. If you can afford it, block all Chrome users, and instruct users to download Firefox instead. Explain why your website is not available for Chrome.

yeah, like back in the old days!

I wish we all did it. However, I think we're often obsessed with delivering our products to the broadest possible audience.

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