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The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

vivaldi.com

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Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#131

Post by zamadatix »

rufugee wrote: post #78

Anyone using Vivaldi full-time? As a Firefox user, I find I have to install a number of third-party extensions to get some basic functionality that Vivaldi has out of the box (ad-blocking, note taking). Anyone made the switch, and, if so, can you share your experience?

Vivaldi has always been great on features and garbage on performance/resource usage. Every once in a while they have a new release where they say they've really cleaned up performance so I try it out for a bit and it still has the same memory issues and same rendering performance issues compared to any other chromium based browser or Firefox.

But if the performance/resource usage isn't a problem for you and you don't mind using a close sourced browser it's top notch compared to Firefox.

Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#132

Post by frombody »

kristofferR wrote: post #17
jereees wrote: post #10

I’m sure there has to be a better way to introduce the audience to FLoC. I’m over five paragraphs in and the article hasn’t properly articulated what is FLoC and _why_ it is bad. Just that it is bad.

Please RTFA before commenting, they explain it very well further down. The subsection literally has the header "How does FloC work?", not exactly hard to find.

No need to be so harsh. I read their comment as a simple suggestion to the author to introduce the topic before discussing it.

Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#133

Post by gsich »

loa_in_ wrote: post #124
gsich wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. For non-essential stuff you need permission from your user. So don't track and you don't need to show a cookie banner even if you use cookies.

You mean it's not a pain, or that it's not helpful?

Not a pain.

Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#134

Post by drstewart »

laurowyn wrote: post #52
sanxiyn wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on what you are doing. If you are doing ecommerce, you need shipping address. GDPR does add work in this case.

Is not using the shipping address for any other reason than shipping an order really that much more effort? Sure, protecting that information is more effort, but you should be doing that already, right? not just from a GDPR perspective but a business perspective too - if a competitor can get a list of all your clients and send them brochures with 10% discount on your prices, you'll close down pretty quick.

> not just from a GDPR perspective but a business perspective too - if a competitor can get a list of all your clients and send them brochures with 10% discount on your prices, you'll close down pretty quick.

Link to this ever happening pre-GDPR?

Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#135

Post by kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj »

dubcanada wrote: post #13
kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google needs to be split up, plain and simple. They are the most dangerous company in America

Then Microsoft would just take over? You can't just point fingers at a specific company and say, yes that giant monopoly out of the other 50 monopolies is the bad one. The others are perfectly fine.

Microsoft doesn't own 95% of the ad market, pretty much the entire search market, the browser market (and thus web standards pretty much), and also email, storage, etc.

Google owns the internet.

But hey, you are right. Split MS up as well. All of these companies have gotten too damn big.

Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#136

Post by dvdgsng »

rufugee wrote: post #78

Anyone using Vivaldi full-time? As a Firefox user, I find I have to install a number of third-party extensions to get some basic functionality that Vivaldi has out of the box (ad-blocking, note taking). Anyone made the switch, and, if so, can you share your experience?

Vivaldi has been my daily driver on Linux, Windows and Android for years now. It's just super efficient to work with.

    - vertical tabs
    - tabs tiling, stacking & 2nd tab-bar
    - full page screenshots
    - notes
    - page actions (including a very useful CSS debugger, focus & hover highlighting, a freaking PAGE MINIMAP)
    - sync
    - mouse gestures
    - all Chrome extensions work
    - easily disable any Google services
    - ad-block (i'm using it in addition to uBlock origin, uMatrix and Pi-Hole)
    - no serious performance issues yet
What I DONT care about is the Email client they are working on. I'd rather see them focus on the browser features.

I don't use Vivaldi for any Google services, except search sometimes, for that I keep a Chromium instance around instead.

Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#137

Post by joshuamorton »

alerighi wrote: post #122
joshuamorton wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this isn't correct. You only ever belong to a single FloC. So let's for a second assume the non-adversarial use case. The advertiser isn't using any additional tools to track you. Then the only thing the advertiser has is your FloC. This doesn't identify you individually, but it might correlate with various interests. If your FloC changes, which it will periodically, the advertiser doesn't have any history, so th…

It's not the same as third party cookies! Third party cookies works only if: a) every site you visit loads some Google/Facebook/whatever JavaScript to track you. That are not all sites. b) you didn't disable these scripts with extensions like UBlock (that to me is essentials these days) or use a browser that value your privacy (like Firefox) that blocks them by default. This system not only is deeply integrated in th…

> a) every site you visit loads some Google/Facebook/whatever JavaScript to track you. That are not all sites.

Right, but it is, to a first approximation, all of the sites that are going to be showing you personalized ads.

> Another bad thing about this system is that is integrated inside the browser, meaning that for a closed source browser like Chrome only Google knows how it works and what exactly it does. While classical tracker scripts that uses third party cookies are implemented in JavaScript, minified and obfuscated, but still you can in theory read the source code and understand what they do.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. The setting and reading of a cookie by a client, yes, will be written in JS. That doesn't mean that you can know what its doing (there are likely cookies on your system that contain encrypted payloads that you can't read). The system that "actually" reads those cookies is hidden behind an API, so you don't have access to even the binary code.

From that perspective, FloC is no worse, and is usually better, as the payload itself is generated and managed on your machine.

Tangentially, FloC is similar to but probably more privacy preserving than the way Brave Browser does advertising today, and that was heralded by many on HN as a huge privacy improvement.

Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#138

Post by MiddleEndian »

nitrogen wrote: post #90
MiddleEndian wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course the FLoC team would want browsers to throw an exception, since that wouldn't damage the perceived legitimacy of FLoC. But as a user I'd rather feed them false data if possible.

There are quite a few ways for a site to distinguish private/incognito from normal browsing, and IMO these differences should be treated as bugs. Indeed, these differences often break sites (including a vaccine registration site) that should work fine. We don't need even more ways for sites to break in private/incognito mode.

Totally agree, browsers should strive to make it so websites cannot tell if users are browsing privately or not.

Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#139

Post by paulryanrogers »

jimmydorry wrote: post #125
freeone3000 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave runs their own ad network. So does Edge. Firefox makes their money through search engine placement and donations. I don't think these browsers being less valued on another company's ad network is actually a loss for them.

>Firefox makes their money through search engine placement and donations I have to assume you wrote this in good faith, however, this is a circuitous way of describing how Mozilla / Firefox makes its money. It comes directly from Google! One can easily imagine a future where Firefox must implement FLoC to continue receiving that money.

While it has largely come from Google they have at times and in some markets had other search defaults.

Re: The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

#140

Post by memling »

dvdgsng wrote: post #136
rufugee wrote: post #78

Anyone using Vivaldi full-time? As a Firefox user, I find I have to install a number of third-party extensions to get some basic functionality that Vivaldi has out of the box (ad-blocking, note taking). Anyone made the switch, and, if so, can you share your experience?

Vivaldi has been my daily driver on Linux, Windows and Android for years now. It's just super efficient to work with. - vertical tabs - tabs tiling, stacking & 2nd tab-bar - full page screenshots - notes - page actions (including a very useful CSS debugger, focus & hover highlighting, a freaking PAGE MINIMAP) - sync - mouse gestures - all Chrome extensions work - easily disable any Google services - ad-block (i'm usi…

> What I DONT care about is the Email client they are working on. I'd rather see them focus on the browser features.

Like you, I've used Vivaldi for years. I downloaded because of the email client. Opera's M2 was a great mail client. I'm probably in the minority of users who don't use the usual suspects for webmail, and having an integrated mail client is nice. M2, in particular did some nice things:

* Fast full-text search through mail

* No organization: automatic mailing list aggregation; easy contact management; easy email filter by contact or thread

* Keyboard navigable.

* Doesn't default to top-quoting.

* RSS integration.

The M3 client had to be rewritten, one presumes, as a Chrome extension. This had to be pretty awful, considering, and probably explains part of the reason that everything took so long. I've been driving M3 for awhile, and what I really miss is suitable keyboard shortcuts. For the most part I've been very happy with it, though.

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