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Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

brave.com

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Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#11

Post by fartcannon »

sneak wrote: post #9
fartcannon wrote: post #8

I would use Brave if they didn't use chrome as a backend. We need more diversity in rendering engines otherwise things like FLoC happen.

FLoC has nothing to do with rendering and can easily be removed from the codebase. People make this argument a lot but I don't think it makes logical sense. We all use libicu too, what does that ultimately matter?

Well that is great news.

It ultimately matters because if we didn't all use Chrome, Google would have to compete more on good things, instead of building bad things that we have to remove. Basically, it's the position of the privacy whack-a-mole oveton window.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#12

Post by bfung »

Use a different browser that’s not chrome.

Problem solved.

Disclaimer: I don’t use Brave because I don’t want to see more ads. In the 90s, there were little banner ads that ran on your pc in the same app that helped you connect to the internet. That’s essentially what Brave is, except I don’t NEED to see more ads, as I needed to pay for internet in the early days. Just us a browser that blocks cookies.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#13

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

"Don't be Evil" wasn't a motto --- it was a warning. A peak into their mindset that foretold what they were thinking and where they were headed. They sell you and your privacy to their "associates" --- aka, anyone willing to pay in some way. Their concern for your interests only extends to the level required to invade your privacy. The thing I find most disappointing is the fact that it took so many so long to realiz…

As I recall the phrase was originally a comment from a new employee who had previously worked in the hardware industry.

Still baffled by the ambiguous name given to this secretive, exploitive set of companies, "tech". What the heck is it. Its everything and nothing, IMO. A cover.

The company is an intermediary, what many in other industries refer to as a "middleman". HN commenters have tried to attack this term in the past, but I just saw it a few months ago being used in a marketing slogan on the side of a company van. People outside of HN know what it means. Perhaps those who argue it is ambiguous on HN are "tech" workers who are aware of its accepted connotation in the real world. Otherwise why be concerned with the term.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#14

Post by akvadrako »

sneak wrote: post #9
fartcannon wrote: post #8

I would use Brave if they didn't use chrome as a backend. We need more diversity in rendering engines otherwise things like FLoC happen.

FLoC has nothing to do with rendering and can easily be removed from the codebase. People make this argument a lot but I don't think it makes logical sense. We all use libicu too, what does that ultimately matter?

Diversity of code bases limits the impact of bugs and implementation quirks.

For example I used to be part of a team that ran an important DNS service. We purpously used several different server softwares on different nodes to increase resiliency.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#15

Post by dylan604 »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

"Don't be Evil" wasn't a motto --- it was a warning. A peak into their mindset that foretold what they were thinking and where they were headed. They sell you and your privacy to their "associates" --- aka, anyone willing to pay in some way. Their concern for your interests only extends to the level required to invade your privacy. The thing I find most disappointing is the fact that it took so many so long to realiz…

>The thing I find most disappointing is the fact that it took so many so long to realize this.

The lure of "free" useful things is greater than most's concern/understanding of the capabilities of tech. Gmail is useful. GDocs is useful. Search is useful. Googs has been very smart on exactly the tools they've brought to market so that the lure is maximized.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#16

Post by kmeisthax »

sneak wrote: post #9
fartcannon wrote: post #8

I would use Brave if they didn't use chrome as a backend. We need more diversity in rendering engines otherwise things like FLoC happen.

FLoC has nothing to do with rendering and can easily be removed from the codebase. People make this argument a lot but I don't think it makes logical sense. We all use libicu too, what does that ultimately matter?

Rendering engine diversity is a different problem. In order to actually have a web standard, then we need at least two frequently-used implementations. If there is only one implementation, or one dominant implementation, then people stop coding to the spec and start coding to whatever works in browser.[0]

Right now, if Mozilla goes bust, then the last hope for web standards is the fact that Apple's mobile OS rules preclude shipping Blink on iOS. If everything is Chrome, then we're right back to the days of Adobe Flash Player, where bugs in one implementation effectively become part of the spec.

If we didn't have or didn't care about this problem, then yes - we could just clip FLoC out of the browser and run that. However, that also assumes Google won't mandate FLoC or ban alternative browsers. Their recent attempts to cut down on credential stuffing through headless CEF browsers[1] have already made it harder to actually ship an alternative browser that can log into Google. So hypothetical future Evil Google could totally say "no FLoC, no service" and we would be screwed.

[0] This is the same reason why WebSQL died on the vine. SQL is a standard with a lot of wiggle room, enough that most applications either only work on one particular flavor of DB, or ship separate drivers for each DB they need to work with. In practice everyone shipped SQLite, so WebSQL was just "here's a sandboxed SQLite instance".

[1] Which, BTW, is not a bad thing in and of itself.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#17

Post by tadfisher »

fartcannon wrote: post #8

I would use Brave if they didn't use chrome as a backend. We need more diversity in rendering engines otherwise things like FLoC happen.

If you want to ship a browser without writing a browser engine, there are three realistic options. Chromium is the best of these options.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#18

Post by nl »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #13
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

"Don't be Evil" wasn't a motto --- it was a warning. A peak into their mindset that foretold what they were thinking and where they were headed. They sell you and your privacy to their "associates" --- aka, anyone willing to pay in some way. Their concern for your interests only extends to the level required to invade your privacy. The thing I find most disappointing is the fact that it took so many so long to realiz…

As I recall the phrase was originally a comment from a new employee who had previously worked in the hardware industry. Still baffled by the ambiguous name given to this secretive, exploitive set of companies, "tech". What the heck is it. Its everything and nothing, IMO. A cover. The company is an intermediary, what many in other industries refer to as a "middleman". HN commenters have tried to attack this term in th…

Paul B worked at Intel before Google. He never worked in telecoms. Incidentally he was moderately active here in the FriendFeed days.

Tech means technology. Nothing ambiguous about it.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#20

Post by ocdtrekkie »

bfung wrote: post #12

Use a different browser that’s not chrome. Problem solved. Disclaimer: I don’t use Brave because I don’t want to see more ads. In the 90s, there were little banner ads that ran on your pc in the same app that helped you connect to the internet. That’s essentially what Brave is, except I don’t NEED to see more ads, as I needed to pay for internet in the early days. Just us a browser that blocks cookies.

Brave is far from being my primary browser, but this is far from an accurate take.

I wanted to play with Brave Rewards, and it's actually surprisingly involved to enable it and get it to start showing ads... By default, Brave is pretty much "just another Chrome clone", albeit with default privacy settings that everyone but Chrome has accepted should be standard.

FWIW, NetZero was pretty cool if you couldn't afford the phone bill for using AOL. :P

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