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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

#121

Post by jqpabc123 »

darinf wrote: post #61
the_duke wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is often dismissively called an ad company. Why is that? Because most of their revenue is from ads. How does Brave make money? With ads. Privacy-centric positioning makes sense to capture a part of the market. But the mis-aligned incentives are there for Brave just as much as they are for Google. Are they better right now than Google? Probably. Is it smart to trust a company that only makes money with ads with…

Check out Neeva. Ad free search. We have an iOS browser at the moment and desktop browser extensions. Both apply tracking protections. Disclaimer: I work for Neeva :)

I wish you all the luck in the world with your search engine. But I can't help but think you may have missed the mark with your business model.

What people (myself included) seem to really object to most are privacy invading personalized ads. These don't just provide benign info, they are actively taking something that belongs to you --- your privacy.

The more benign alternative is context sensitive ads --- ads based on the topic at hand. If I search for "pet supplies", I can tolerate and maybe even appreciate a few ads for dog food and flea collars. This might be distracting for cat owners but this is something I think most would be willing to accept in exchange for the "free" service.

DuckDuckGo seems to be growing very nicely with context sensitive ads.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#122

Post by hackerfromthefu »

sva_ wrote: post #72
adamsvystun wrote: post #53

I hate tracking as much as the next guy, but this article is so disingenuous that it's painful to read. If you literally look up the most upvoted HN article about FLoC [1], it specifies two main issues with FLoC in BOLD: Fingerprinting and Cross-context exposure. Which if I understand correctly the Topics API fixes. But the article implies that these are minor problems that we never really cared that much about. Whet…

> Whether it is this or constant aggressive writing, it seems that the goal of this blog post is to simply inspire anger and hate, while not furthering the discussion on the topic. There isn't much to discuss, I would think. This is an extremely user-hostile feature to be implemented in the clients (browsers) which comes with a lot of downsides, and absolutely no benefit to the user. I don't know how detached people…

The people implementing this know it's not okay, their plan is to use monopoly power to force it down the world's throat.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#123

Post by novok »

kmeisthax wrote: post #16
sneak wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Whats wrong with websql being sqlite?

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#124

Post by smoldesu »

waffle_maniac wrote: post #118
smoldesu wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps Brave shouldn't use other creator's likenesses without their express consent, and shouldn't treat their second-rate crypto as a legitimate or desirable currency to be compensated with. Why would I want to be paid in a centralized shitcoin where King Homophobe takes 30% and the revenue is generated by skipping the ads that would have otherwise just supported me directly? Creators don't get whatever Brave users…

> King Homophobe Uhhh… Your HN profile says: “serious discussions only”

Alongside the words "thought-thinker" and "media luminary". Pardon me for expecting everyone to understand that it is, in fact, a joke.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#125

Post by autoexec »

stingraycharles wrote: post #92
donkarma wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

feature was DRM

IMHO it was a big mistake of Firefox fighting the DRM for so long. It pushed many users and projects towards Chromium.

I wish they'd kept it up myself. It's not as if folks can't have more than one browser for different things. Now that even the W3C has sold us all out we're pretty much doomed to get screwed over by DRM at some point in our lives online.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#126

Post by waffle_maniac »

smoldesu wrote: post #124
waffle_maniac wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> King Homophobe Uhhh… Your HN profile says: “serious discussions only”

Alongside the words "thought-thinker" and "media luminary". Pardon me for expecting everyone to understand that it is, in fact, a joke.

Ah, so you're an abrasive jerk. Noted.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#127

Post by BrendanEich »

xg15 wrote: post #66
colordrops wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brave-hate meme is self perpetuating at this point. Brave is privacy-oriented out of the box. You have to opt in for the ads and crypto. Isn't that what everyone has been asking for? opt-in instead of opt-out? I'm convinced that Google is behind a smear campaign against Brave. If Brave got real traction it could be a serious threat to their business.

I'm still skeptical how that could reasonably work on an opt-in basis. Being annoyed daily by ads in exchange for some obscure crypto currency which might be worth something in the far future doesn't seem like a proposal to me that could convince a lot of people. So I wonder, how many Brave users actually do opt-in? More than five?

Over 17%, right now. It's been as high as 20%.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#128

Post by vntok »

hyperbovine wrote: post #117
vntok wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cannot be true that you never saw a single ad because brave cannot block first party ads and the probability that you never ever visited a site that uses 1st party ads is basically zero.

“Basically zero” is not the same thing as zero. “Probably untrue” is not the same thing as “not true”.

This very site uses 1st party ads, so we know for certain that the probability I was talking about is actually zero and not merely basically zero.
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