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Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

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Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#191

Post by stjohnswarts »

xvector wrote: post #83
judge2020 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except with FLOC you can watch your network connection in/out and see that, instead of a persistent identifier being used to track you, you only send your interest categories. FLOC's intent is to keep their money making operation afloat, but this time without direct web browsing activity tracking of users.

> but this time without direct web browsing activity tracking of users. Your FLOC cohort is a summary of your web browsing activity. FLOC doesn't solve the privacy problems that trackers create - it just hands them your browsing history on a silver platter.

It cuts down the fingerprint to a pool of just a few thousand and then you can just use other fingerprint items to get down to a completely unique id that you can track.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#192

Post by mcny »

Sorry if this has been asked before but why does google need any of this? Assuming a user is logged into Google, Google already knows a lot about the user.

Is this about users who are not logged into google? Is this to share information with vendors such as WPP? What is the point of this?

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#193

Post by jefftk »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #72
HeckFeck wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preach. I don't consent to tracking. I don't want my browser helping anyone track me in any way. I don't want to be pressured and manipulated into buying things I don't need. Advertising is not moral and I owe nothing to anyone who tries to manipulate me. Websites can move to more efficient and lighter methods of delivery to cover the absence of advertising revenue. Anyone skilled who works in the advertising industr…

> Anyone skilled who works in the advertising industry is freed to offer his skills to better human endeavours. I don't want to be rude, but won't they just end up losing their livelihoods? If the advertising industry goes, most programmers will see their salaries drop hugely. Even those not working in advertising will see a drop due to the flood of supply.

Eh. I work in advertising as a programmer, and if advertising were banned there would still be lots of other programming work I could do.

(I do think advertising is net positive and prohibiting it would be a bad idea: https://www.jefftk.com/p/effect-of-advertising)

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#194

Post by doomslice »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #93
mcint wrote: post #7

FLoC stands for Federated Learning of Cohorts which aims to target advertising better without it directly relying on singularly personal information. https://web.dev/floc/ FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. FLoC provides a privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based ad selection. As a user moves around the web, their browser uses the FLoC algorithm to work out it…

> FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. Nevertheless it seems a formidable addition to a browser user fingerprint.

FLOC is being introduced now in advance of privacy features coming in chrome (removal of third party cookie and privacy budget) which apparently will hurt ad revenue. FLOC is supposed to help targeting without exposing user data.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#195

Post by jefftk »

TheSmiddy wrote: post #149
lupire wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not every web page has an associated strong commercial intent. Most sites, quality sites, would lose out to commerical junk sites if only commercial sites could make money from ads.

Can you think of an example where there isn't an associated industry that would be able to serve ads? A philosophy blog is the first thing that comes to find but even then that can have ads for universities, textbooks, quirky t-shirts, etc.

While you can often come up with relevant tie-ins for websites (a weather site could sell vacation packages, a news site could sell... insurance?) it turns out that for a huge fraction of websites relevant commercial interest is just very low.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#196

Post by derekdahmer »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #93
mcint wrote: post #7

FLoC stands for Federated Learning of Cohorts which aims to target advertising better without it directly relying on singularly personal information. https://web.dev/floc/ FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. FLoC provides a privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based ad selection. As a user moves around the web, their browser uses the FLoC algorithm to work out it…

> FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. Nevertheless it seems a formidable addition to a browser user fingerprint.

The idea with this proposal is to avoid browser fingerprinting. Cross site cookies are going away and there are essentially two possible paths for ad networks to compensate: a common approach like FLoC is adopted, or ad networks will continue to do ever more advanced fingerprinting based on things that are identify you individually and hard to obfuscate like graphical rendering and audio quirks. The proposal is if Google adopts FLoC they won’t use browser fingerprinting.

Which reality is better is up for debate but they won’t be doing both for the same client.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#197

Post by jefftk »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #153
mcint wrote: post #7

FLoC stands for Federated Learning of Cohorts which aims to target advertising better without it directly relying on singularly personal information. https://web.dev/floc/ FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. FLoC provides a privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based ad selection. As a user moves around the web, their browser uses the FLoC algorithm to work out it…

From the README.md at https://github.com/WICG/floc : "This API democratizes access to some information about an individual's general browsing history (and thus, general interests) to any site that opts into it . This is in contrast to today's world, in which cookies or other tracking techniques may be used to collate someone's browsing activity across many sites." Can the user detemrine whether a site has opted in wi…

"Users of browsers that support FLoC can either send real FLoC or random FLoC, but they cannot send no FLoC."

Why? I would expect a browser extension to be able to override document.interestCohort to throw an exception?

(Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#198

Post by kelnos »

derekdahmer wrote: post #196
qwerty456127 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FLoC enables ad selection without sharing the browsing behaviour of individual users. Nevertheless it seems a formidable addition to a browser user fingerprint.

The idea with this proposal is to avoid browser fingerprinting. Cross site cookies are going away and there are essentially two possible paths for ad networks to compensate: a common approach like FLoC is adopted, or ad networks will continue to do ever more advanced fingerprinting based on things that are identify you individually and hard to obfuscate like graphical rendering and audio quirks. The proposal is if Go…

There's a third option: we make it hard enough to fingerprint users that doing so is too costly when compared to what the ad networks gain from doing it.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#199

Post by kelnos »

petters wrote: post #138
matkoniecz wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strictly prefer irrelevant ads less likely to influence me. I really have enough projects, TODO lists, interesting things to buy to last for lifetime of 250 years. Why I would want ads likely to influence me? There is basically no chance that ad will show me useful, worth using object or service to buy that I would not discover anyway. It would be just another scam more effectively targeting me.

This has not been true for me. I have discovered interesting things in Facebook ads that I would not have discovered and bought otherwise. (They were obscure Kickstarter projects)

I have a fundamentally different view of this: I don't want people advertising to me at all, and I am perfectly fine -- happier, really -- if I "miss out" on buying something I might like because I didn't "get to" see an ad for it.

Advertising is psychological manipulation at its worst, and we'd all be much better off without it.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#200

Post by jefftk »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #16
dataflow wrote: post #11

Is there any evidence behind the idea that FLoC is more privacy-preserving than third-party cookies? Intuitively that is not obvious to me at all, especially given there are so many other fingerprinting techniques it could be combined with.

I don’t think that’s the real goal. The real goal is to remove cookies so that compares other than google cannot use them for tracking. Then google uses FLOC as a substitute; they’re the only ones who can use FLOC so it works out great for them.

> they’re the only ones who can use FLOC

It is available to everyone:

    cohort = await document.interestCohort();
See https://github.com/WICG/floc

(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)

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