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Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

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Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#161

Post by teeray »

function_seven wrote: post #150
hkai wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a solution, I propose a popup on each website that forces the user to accept FLoCs.

I have a suggestion to improve your idea: Allow the user to deny the FLoC if they wish, by redirecting them to a byzantine "Preferences" page with 2 dozen options to opt in or out of. Promise to apply the user's choices within 7 business days.

Bonus points if you make the preferences page a dungeon that users have to navigate with twisted meanings and options that work counter to the user's actual preferences.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#162

Post by stjohnswarts »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #160

I didn't realize FLOC was already in use. Looks like to disbable it in Chrome... you have to find a deeply nested config and then tell chrome you want to "disable privacy-preserving features". !?!? I can do this. But of course nobody else is, it's telling you are disabling privacy-preserving features! Its' making me kind of livid.

by disabling it you're giving more uniquely identifying info to the fingerprinting backend apps lol

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#163

Post by Corazoor »

doomslice wrote: post #155
reaperducer wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FLoC (and FLEDGE, and PARAKEET, and a million other bird proposals) is being used as a way to mitigate some of the loss that publishers and advertisers will see when those privacy measures are put into place. I think this illustrates that the whole bird-brained idea is to placate the advertisers so they won't run to congress, while continuing to allow Google to fingerprint people with its own, better, data, thus incr…

That's one way to look at it, and certainly a view that many share -- but isn't that more likely to attract regulatory scrutiny instead of deflect it? I sit in on many of these W3C meetings (I'm not from Google) and the discussion is always "given that we want to achieve X definition of privacy (where X varies depending on the proposal), how can we mitigate some of the fallout that will happen". It's never "how can w…

You cannot separate the morality of an action from it's usefulness to business, thats putting the horse before the cart.

Modifying your last sentence illustrates this nicely:

You can argue that slavery is a net negative for the world or that it's evil or whatever you want, but if you frame it as "how can we take steps to make things better for slaves without completely destroying the way business on the world make money" then I think the current path is a reasonable one.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#164

Post by classichasclass »

pjerem wrote: post #134
unknown_error wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably the engine SHOULD be the standard. The W3C and WHATWG have never been able to reliably document, much less enforce, standards. Add in ECMAScript variances and all the other newfangled web APIs and it's a losing proposition. The standards bodies never could keep up with the pace of innovation. Might as well let the code BE the standard. That's already the way it works in the real world... the standards are ir…

Yes but its giving too much power to one actor only. What if Google decides to stop supporting an architecture, or decides that it's ok to have 8GB ram as a requirement ? What if they choose to implement a hardware accelerated feature that works only with NVIDIA LATEST-WHATEVER-AI-VR-HYPE ? What if they want to implement "crypto payment" as a standard and, oh, that's GDollars ? Of course those are just random made up…

Google already does this. Ask OpenPOWER or *BSD users about the fact their patches must live outside the Chromium tree and be merged in manually, for example. Mozilla has been much more friendly to niche systems as long as they don't impact higher-priority tiers; OS/2 survived in tree for literal years because it was self-contained and non-obtrusive.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#165

Post by thomasahle »

judge2020 wrote: post #133
CivBase wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about FLoC as an alternative to third party cookies, but major browsers had already done away with those before the rollout of FLoC. If getting rid of third party cookies was two steps forward, FLoC is one step back. We're technically further ahead than where we started, but that certainly wasn't thanks to FLoC. Without it we'd be even further ahead, so that's what we should be advocating for.

It was created so that well-behaved adtech companies could target based on FLOC alone, without having to resort to fingerprinting. Just as before, less-reputable adtech will continue to fingerprint to try to advertise to people with third party cookies turned off. As chrome continues to implement fingerprint resistance technologies, these techniques will continue to be less useful for people trying to advertise not b…

> It was created so that well-behaved adtech companies could target based on FLOC alone, without having to resort to fingerprinting.

I think this is a pretty good take. With floc there is a possible storry to tell companies that want to target/customize, but only in the amount tolerated by the users.

Once thats established, it's much easier to go after shutting down businesses using less ethical means.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#166

Post by Spivak »

hkai wrote: post #145
______- wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> End the arms race on fingerprinting Google is known to fingerprint you on their sites[0] and this practice will continue unless some sort of political action is taken to make fingerprinting illegal. WebGL is not the only heuristic used to reliably determine it's a specific device accessing a site, but a whole slew of techniques can be used to reliably determine it is 'you' who is on a site (you can even detect if a…

Why do you want to disable it? Isn't it nice to see ads that are interesting and useful to you rather than looking at some useless ads you're not interested in?

The issue is buried in the premise of the question.

“If you’re going to see an ad regardless, would you rather it be relevant to you or not?”

The answer is and always has been “I don’t want to see an ad in the first place, I don’t want you collecting any information about me under any circumstances, and anything that makes ads spots worth less is a positive.”

You know the cheeky “you won’t see fewer ads, they’ll just be leas relevant” line? The only long term solution to actually see fewer ads is to drive their value down to nothing.

The fact that you can pay to remove ads on a lot of services kinda gives the game away that they’re a net negative. Why would you ever want them gone if they’re so useful and helpful?

AdTech is such a garbage industry — drunk on their own delusions of facilitating commerce and helping businesses reach customers while being so annoying and vile that the only way their products to function is to insert themselves into every facet of life because nobody would ever seek them out on their own. Bleh.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#167

Post by pluc »

dylan604 wrote: post #147
pluc wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you block out the "big advertisers", you get advertisements from smaller companies or even individuals.

That actually sounds like something is working within AdTech! How can that possibly be?

A good lie is based in truth!

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#168

Post by plushpuffin »

alias_neo wrote: post #69
pluc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to have fun with Twitter ads, block the advertiser whenever you see them. After two weeks or so you start to get really.. different stuff.

When you say "block", do you mean Twitter block the account which is the Advertiser?

Block the account whose tweet is being promoted, and/or the account promoting it (sometimes there will be tiny text saying "promoted by"). You'll never see tweets from that brand again, whether promoted or unpromoted.

After a few weeks of this you'll get some pretty strange tweets from really obscure brands. You will however still regularly see promoted tweets from financial services companies, because there are apparently an infinite number of them.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#169

Post by Topgamer7 »

teeray wrote: post #161
function_seven wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suggestion to improve your idea: Allow the user to deny the FLoC if they wish, by redirecting them to a byzantine "Preferences" page with 2 dozen options to opt in or out of. Promise to apply the user's choices within 7 business days.

Bonus points if you make the preferences page a dungeon that users have to navigate with twisted meanings and options that work counter to the user's actual preferences.

Critical hit if the preferences page has toggles that actually don't toggle, and just remain "on". This tracking data sent to a third part is certainly crucial in development of a website.

Re: Ad tech firms test ways to connect Google’s FLoC to other data

#170

Post by lurkerasdfh8 »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #162
jrochkind1 wrote: post #160

I didn't realize FLOC was already in use. Looks like to disbable it in Chrome... you have to find a deeply nested config and then tell chrome you want to "disable privacy-preserving features". !?!? I can do this. But of course nobody else is, it's telling you are disabling privacy-preserving features! Its' making me kind of livid.

by disabling it you're giving more uniquely identifying info to the fingerprinting backend apps lol

"the only wining move is not to play"

really, if you are in a point where you hunt for hidden settings to disable in your browser? why not just use firefox?

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