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Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

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Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#321

Post by hoophoop »

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…

> there is nothing wrong with advertising per se, it's a natural part of a free market economy.

There is plenty wrong. Even Adam Smith's purely theoretical concept of "free market" requires buyers and sellers to be purely rational actors and be fully and correctly informed.

Advertising has one goal: making customers less rational and more biased towards a given product.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#322

Post by dleslie »

ekimekim wrote: post #272
dleslie wrote: post #160

Too many folks commenting here seem to think that FLoC doesn't compromise privacy, when it is yet another bit of differentiation that can be used to fingerprint a browser. It's a particularly granular one, as well, placing users into manageable cohorts of only a few dozen thousands in size, or so is claimed. Combine FLoC with a handful of other fingerprint bits and you can track an individual.

Browser fingerprinting is besides the point here. The whole reason they want to fingerprint you is to build up an advertising profile. FLoC cuts out the middleman by giving every single site you visit access to the proceeds of the cross-site tracking. It's like saying "There's too many cameras pointed at my house, so instead I'm going to start publically streaming my life 24/7".

There's a third option: we outlaw surveillance, or we smash the cameras.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#323

Post by prepend »

tssva wrote: post #75
prepend wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see irrelevant ads anyway. I’d rather block all this and use Brave and/or an ad blocker. A choice of least worst is not necessary.

Brave is a protection racket, crypto scam, privacy violating always with an excuse after company. Why the hell would I trust them?

The reason I trust them is that I can monitor what info is sent from my pc from the brave app. So that’s a good thing. They aren’t tracking and reporting all my browsing so that’s good.

I’ve never done anything with the crypto part. I just use them as a clean, ad-free browsing experience. There’s ad blockers for other browsers but brave is the easiest for me to use.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#324

Post by prepend »

tssva wrote: post #99
chrisco255 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave is a free open source product that you don't have to pay for or use. It's a browser with an integrated ad blocker. I opted into Brave, no one forced me to. I asserted my right as a user to run software on my machine how I see fit when I browse the web. The ad model of the web is exploitative, monopolistic, privacy invasive, abusive to everyone, and makes the whole open web ecosystem bow down to the whims of Fac…

I have opted into using Chrome, no one forced me to. I have asserted my right as a user to run software on my machine how I see fit when I browse the web. The ad model of the web allows me to freely browse the web while providing a source of income to those who work hard to provide the services and information I seek on the web.

> who work hard

You have no idea how hard people work. Ad browsing pays the same no matter how hard people are working.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#325

Post by prepend »

ripdog wrote: post #284
midnitewarrior wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've earned over $600 worth of BAT from using Brave in the past 18 months. Can keep it or pay content creators with it, definitely not a scam.

Can you cash it out? Considering how few web creators even accept BAT, I can't see it having any value of you couldn't...

Of course, you can pretty easily see it traded on exchanges. [0]

There’s over a million web creators accepting bat just from brave [1] and while that’s not everyone or even a big percentage it’s not “few web creators.” If you don’t want to give to web creators you’re free to cash out and donate cash to charities. So that’s a plus that’s not possible with other browsers.

Note, I don’t use the crypto feature in brave, I’m just annoyed by people spreading FUD about stuff.

[0] https://www.coinbase.com/price/basic-attention-token [1] https://batgrowth.com/

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#326

Post by yholio »

hoophoop wrote: post #321
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…

> there is nothing wrong with advertising per se, it's a natural part of a free market economy. There is plenty wrong. Even Adam Smith's purely theoretical concept of "free market" requires buyers and sellers to be purely rational actors and be fully and correctly informed. Advertising has one goal: making customers less rational and more biased towards a given product.

While that is true to some degree, the primary motivation of advertising is to close the information gap, to make sure customers know about your product.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#327

Post by ece »

TravisLS wrote: post #317
danielheath wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming tracking works (I have my doubts it boosts conversion), there has to be an equilibrium price, right? That is, advertising camping gear on a camping review site (without tracking) still has some nonzero commercial value even if facebook tracking exists and works.

Tracking definitely works, at least in my experience. That's why Google and Facebook have completely taken over the entire digital ad ecosystem. They just have much better data, and your spend is an order of magnitude more effective than buying directly from publishers. Take the camping example. If I sell camping equipment, I can try to reach out to blogs directly, but I will have to place hundreds of campaigns for $…

There is nothing stopping Google or Facebook from offering content-based advertising to advertisers, publishers and users--sidestepping any issues with multiple small ad deals. A regulator could demand it if they wanted, and together publishers and advertisers could too. Individual users just don't have the same power, and resort to adblockers--which is pretty much their only option if they don't want to be tracked when a site doesn't have a subscription option.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#328

Post by Izkata »

jefftk wrote: post #197
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> document.interestCohort

If that's an actual way to access it, "undefined" will have to be acceptable due to browsers that don't support it.

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#329

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

jka wrote: post #297
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hosti…

It’s not just that, removing ads as a funding source make the barrier to entry higher for someone who wants to launch a competitor to the platforms: medium, substack, NYT, etc.

This may of may not be good, but I’m a bit concerned that destroying the adtech industry may have ripple effects that end up being worse than some middle way like FLoC

Re: Brave disables Chromium FLoC features

#330

Post by jefftk »

Izkata wrote: post #328
jefftk wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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)

> document.interestCohort If that's an actual way to access it, "undefined" will have to be acceptable due to browsers that don't support it.

Yup! Or a Promise that never resolves (since it's async)
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