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Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

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Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#291

Post by CameronNemo »

ripdog wrote: post #283
cookiengineer wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using Ungoogled Chromium. But let's don't kid ourselves, this is just a temporary solution. There will always be the point where it's impossible to maintain patches and keep up with the cat and mouse game upstream. Also all the other popular Browsers are either based on Chromium or based on Gecko, an engine that has no developers anymore since last year. When I wrote about sustainability, that's exactly what I wa…

You're confusing gecko and servo. Servo is an experimental web engine which was being developed by Mozilla to test experimental tech. Recently its dev team was laid off. Gecko is the production engine that Firefox is based on, and it's still under full steam ahead development by engineers employed by Mozilla.

The Mozilla Corporation receives nearly all of its revenue from Google. As their market share inevitably trends toward zero (iOS defaults to Safari, Windows to Edge, and Android to Chrome), their negotiating power with Google and other search engines will suffer.

The Gecko is drowning.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#293

Post by warlog »

travisgriggs wrote: post #255
guywhocodes wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that if you tax it the government becomes incentivized to increase attention selling. If the money isn't destroyed you will end up in smaller scale corruption. One example that comes to mind is HK zoning fees and the government's increasing dependency there of.

Maybe I'm being naive; I work with some peers who smoke habitually. They pay a hefty tax for their habit. I don't really see the government's incentive to keep them at it to collect more taxes happening. Is it super sneaky and I just don't see it?

Are you kidding? .gov made sure Phillip Morris could stay alive just to keep the taxes flowing.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#294

Post by varispeed »

kelnos wrote: post #205
varispeed wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why tracking is not being considered as mechanism helping companies to manipulate consumers into buying their stuff, essentially amounting to fraud? If you were going to track someone in real life and manipulating them into buying something, you would certainly end up in jail, so why is this allowed over the internet? Because consumers don't see companies who stalk them? In my opinion the whole tra…

Isn't advertising, by definition, manipulating customers into buying stuff?

Advertising is providing information about the product, so that consumer can make an informed decision whether to buy it or not. Creating messaging tailored specifically to an individual exploiting various vulnerabilities or their situation is not.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#295

Post by zo1 »

travisgriggs wrote: post #255
guywhocodes wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that if you tax it the government becomes incentivized to increase attention selling. If the money isn't destroyed you will end up in smaller scale corruption. One example that comes to mind is HK zoning fees and the government's increasing dependency there of.

Maybe I'm being naive; I work with some peers who smoke habitually. They pay a hefty tax for their habit. I don't really see the government's incentive to keep them at it to collect more taxes happening. Is it super sneaky and I just don't see it?

I think for certain "unpalatable" vice taxes, the increase in revenue is usually not worth the bad publicity. But one example I can think of regarding cigarette taxes is the increase in smuggling they cause, and as a consequence a lot of "government action" to prevent said smuggling. What ends up happening then is you get to see a glimpse of the thinking not being "lets keep people from smoking" but rather more in terms of "lost revenue" or "tax money stolen by smugglers".

On some level, if the tax is there to "discourage" people, then the fact that they're willing to buy "smuggled" goods to save a bit of money shows you that they're not discouraged enough and they're not your target audience.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#296

Post by jka »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #273
codezero wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a long, but low effort comment where my thesis was that I think it’s ok for companies to pay for your attention, but the problem is that they are paying Google. I ended up reaching the conclusion that we should ban paying money for your attention, but I haven’t thought of better alternatives for businesses to grow or expand online yet. USPS becomes vehicle for junk mail Telco becomes vehicle for robocalls Tel…

>I ended up reaching the conclusion that we should ban paying money for your attention I don't think that's either possible or desirable. Attention seeking would simply take on sneakier forms that are indistinguishable from legitimate distribution of information and protected free speech. Instead of somewhat independent ad funded publications, you would get publications that are owned by product companies (or politic…

Your reasoning is accurate; but doesn't most of what you're describing already occur _as well_?

Often progress is about eliminating one large negative externality, only to discover that there are others to handle too.

The 'submarine' type content you're referring to is somewhat addressed by trust networks, fact checking, link reputation, and various other techniques.

One large question is whether we're ready for all of the economically-motivated actors to start shifting into that space.

PS: You make a good point about transparency. It's nice that (at least the most honest) adverts are identified clearly as such.

Could we have similar transparency in content? ("I wrote this because I'd been thinking about it after reading an article by X about Y yesterday, and here is the source)

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#297

Post by jka »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #210
jka wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a more concise repost of a previous comment that I posted too hastily. It's fair to believe that ads are 'ok' - it's also possible that people in general don't want them. Hosting low-traffic websites on a smartphone with cellular data is just-about-feasible now. Rather than inventing very technically clever ways to continue on our existing path, as Apple and Google are doing, I think it'd be pleasant to simpl…

I don’t know that’s the whole question, though: I know that I, personally, would be unwilling to pay a subscription fee for every site I’ve gotten information from. I wonder how many people would choose advertising if the choice is posed as ads or content subscriptions/micropayments.

This assumes that most of the content would require much funding to operate.

Could we make it cheap enough to host a personal blog and/or wiki on a smartphone for, say, $10 a year?

The economics would be very different as sites scale up their traffic (compare with, for example, The New York Times).

I think the (relatively) small number of high-traffic sites would be able to find revenue streams to support their hosting - perhaps those would be where subscriptions would be effective.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#298

Post by zo1 »

bawolff wrote: post #287
yholio wrote: post #173

Instead of more palatable user tracking, how about we tell advertisers and internet companies: fuck off, we don't want any tracking? How about we hunt down and eliminate all features that allow cross-site information sharing? How about we treat attacks on user privacy as security problems of the web standards, à la Tor, and build technology that aggressively hides any user signature in any layer, from rotating IP and…

Because you can't both trust and not trust websites at the same time. The web is built around the model that websites can create a session with remembered state (well ever since cookies were invented). You can't have that feature without also trusting the website with that shared state. At least not with the level 9f interactivity expected. Maybe lynx could manage it, but you'll never get all the side channels out of…

I think we should disable local-storage entirely, all of it. 99% of the websites out there don't need cookies. And for the 1% that do need it, how about we build tech around a central authority issuing "cookie issuing" licenses that the browsers respect. Have it become a process and trust-chain similar to certificates so that we can block/ban root certs that allow tracking en-masse.

But until then, please developers stop putting the damn shopping cart in cookies and local-state, just persist it on your damn DB and only allow me to have a cart after creating an account with you. That is your damn consent for you to track me, not your stupid GDPR popup that you spam me and every other visitor to your site.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#299

Post by bawolff »

zo1 wrote: post #298
bawolff wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't both trust and not trust websites at the same time. The web is built around the model that websites can create a session with remembered state (well ever since cookies were invented). You can't have that feature without also trusting the website with that shared state. At least not with the level 9f interactivity expected. Maybe lynx could manage it, but you'll never get all the side channels out of…

I think we should disable local-storage entirely, all of it. 99% of the websites out there don't need cookies. And for the 1% that do need it, how about we build tech around a central authority issuing "cookie issuing" licenses that the browsers respect. Have it become a process and trust-chain similar to certificates so that we can block/ban root certs that allow tracking en-masse. But until then, please developers…

You want to kill cookies but still have accounts? How's that going to work?

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#300

Post by zo1 »

bawolff wrote: post #299
zo1 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should disable local-storage entirely, all of it. 99% of the websites out there don't need cookies. And for the 1% that do need it, how about we build tech around a central authority issuing "cookie issuing" licenses that the browsers respect. Have it become a process and trust-chain similar to certificates so that we can block/ban root certs that allow tracking en-masse. But until then, please developers…

You want to kill cookies but still have accounts? How's that going to work?

That would fall under the 1%. They get a cert or whitelisted or something such that browsers would "allow" them to request the browser to store cookies. Perhaps the type of data to be stored is also restricted in the certificate itself so the site can't deviate from the storage they've been granted.

I don't know, it's just a random thought and not fully fleshed out. I'm sure there are millions of much smarter individuals than me that could figure out the details and nuance. Point is that we need to think outside the box if we are to fix the web. But doing it incrementally with "input" from ad-companies such as google is not going to work.

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