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Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

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Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#51

Post by bayindirh »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #47
bayindirh wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, and I'm actually happy that Amazon is blocking Google on this front. Amazon is always protective its customer data though. Their e-mails don't have details or invoices either.

I find this behavior pretty hostile. Every other online order I can track right from my email except for Amazon's. Facebook also does something similar with its 'so-and-so made a post's emails.

Actually, I'm on the other end of the spectrum. Google letting itself to parse everything, and doing it without my active consent is borderline creepy from my perspective. At least it can say "Hey, I've found a package, shall I track?".

Instead I use an application called FindMyParcels which I register my packages and get push notifications for them. It's a one man operation and works pretty well for me, so I didn't get bothered by Amazon's decisions.

Neither of these two companies are angels, but when they compete instead of forming a bigger eye-of-sauron, it's a win in my book.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#53

Post by lupire »

dylan604 wrote: post #6
arkitaip wrote: post #2

Stupid Google spying on Amazon's customers when that's Amazon's job and gold mine.

Actually, it is. If I choose to browse Amazon's site, and they do first party tracking of what I'm doing on their site, then that's actually okay with me. How else are they going to offer me my browsing history, "Recommended by your browsing history", "Recommended by your previous purchases", etc. That goldmine is literally none of Google's business and all of Amazon's.

Why such loyalty to one piece of legal fiction but not another?

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#54

Post by gentleman11 »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #32
dylan604 wrote: post #25

Why do we believe the Googs will actually honor this flag? If it's just an HTTP header, the browser can be made to just act like it's not there. All of these "flags" are essentially honor policy level things (just like robots.txt), but if the thing is not even told to look for the flag, there's nothing stopping from doing exaclty what is being asked not to do.

They've been respecting robots.txt and tracking opt-outs for years, right? Just one whistleblower and it's over. Why risk it? Also: Afaik it's opt-in after it leaves Origin Trial phase [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/Log3overLog2/status/1384337637763387394?...

So they respect “do not track” headers?

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#55

Post by thatguy0900 »

dylan604 wrote: post #25

Why do we believe the Googs will actually honor this flag? If it's just an HTTP header, the browser can be made to just act like it's not there. All of these "flags" are essentially honor policy level things (just like robots.txt), but if the thing is not even told to look for the flag, there's nothing stopping from doing exaclty what is being asked not to do.

Google does a lot of shady stuff but they're a pretty sue-able entity, not some fly by night unknown data broker. If they say they will respect robots.txt and floc headers they probably will. They are surely collecting whatever data they want in other ways anyway.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#56

Post by gentleman11 »

Mizza wrote: post #48
c0nfused wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking FLoC is as easy as adding this header to the HTTP response: Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=() Source: https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3209628

What else goes in this field? Can we all collude to flood Google's spybox with garbage data?

You might enjoy this project. Its a browser plug-in that submits random search queries over time to ruin the accuracy of companies tracking https://trackmenot.io/

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#57

Post by gentleman11 »

dylan604 wrote: post #21
roody15 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

curious as well? How to block Floc?

We should make a darkUI along the lines of prohibitive cookie policy modals that detect Chrome, and forces the FLoC in user's faces. It'll get ignored and be as useful as the cookie policy windows, but it'll be funny. Maybe add to the window "Don't like this message? Try Firefox instead!"

What is the easy way to implement this? Just looking at user agent isn’t ideal. Does your server just look for floc data being sent to you?

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#59

Post by gpm »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #42
c0nfused wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking FLoC is as easy as adding this header to the HTTP response: Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=() Source: https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3209628

So, wait. We add this into the headers, and just expect Chrome to respect it?

The website is really a third party here, the browser is choosing to track users browser history and report a summary statistic on it to anyone who asks, there's nothing the website can do about that.

Chrome has promised to listen if websites say they don't want to be included in the browser history they calculate that statistic on, but it's all client side, there is nothing the website can actually do but request that they aren't included.

Re: Amazon is blocking Google’s FLoC

#60

Post by blauditore »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #50
yesbabyyes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We believe it because Google submitted the permissions-policy header / attribute (which allows a site owner to control the permissions for a lot of things apart from interest cohorts, such as geolocation, fullscreen etc) and because we have no choice. The organization controlling "the thing" is the entity that asked for the feature, so we believe the thing will both know about it and honor it.

Counterpoint: Google makes billions of dollars from tracking and collating behavior across sites. If this impacts revenues more than they would like, the bet's off. There's a breakpoint here, and it's probably lower than people outside the company would expect.

Are you working at Google and have more insights into this?
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