Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

brave.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 128 posts

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#61

Post by darinf »

the_duke wrote: post #56
colordrops wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brave-hate meme is self perpetuating at this point. Brave is privacy-oriented out of the box. You have to opt in for the ads and crypto. Isn't that what everyone has been asking for? opt-in instead of opt-out? I'm convinced that Google is behind a smear campaign against Brave. If Brave got real traction it could be a serious threat to their business.

Google is often dismissively called an ad company. Why is that? Because most of their revenue is from ads. How does Brave make money? With ads. Privacy-centric positioning makes sense to capture a part of the market. But the mis-aligned incentives are there for Brave just as much as they are for Google. Are they better right now than Google? Probably. Is it smart to trust a company that only makes money with ads with…

Check out Neeva. Ad free search. We have an iOS browser at the moment and desktop browser extensions. Both apply tracking protections.

Disclaimer: I work for Neeva :)

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#62

Post by xg15 »

adamsvystun wrote: post #53

I hate tracking as much as the next guy, but this article is so disingenuous that it's painful to read. If you literally look up the most upvoted HN article about FLoC [1], it specifies two main issues with FLoC in BOLD: Fingerprinting and Cross-context exposure. Which if I understand correctly the Topics API fixes. But the article implies that these are minor problems that we never really cared that much about. Whet…

In some sense you are right - the article hasn't much useful criticism of Topics in comparison to FLoC (and the Brave plug at the end makes it read like an advertisement).

However I think the article is right in the sense that we shouldn't miss the forest for the trees. Image you were robbed and the robber suddenly asked if your issue with him could be solved if he only took half of what's in your wallet. Surely that would be an improvement but it doesn't solve the root issue of him robbing you in the first place.

In the same sense, I think pulling attention back to the fact that Google is building third-party tracking right into the browser - and also aggressively protecting the whole concept of tracking as some sort of fundamental necessity of the web - is justified.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#63

Post by hackerfromthefu »

adamsvystun wrote: post #53

I hate tracking as much as the next guy, but this article is so disingenuous that it's painful to read. If you literally look up the most upvoted HN article about FLoC [1], it specifies two main issues with FLoC in BOLD: Fingerprinting and Cross-context exposure. Which if I understand correctly the Topics API fixes. But the article implies that these are minor problems that we never really cared that much about. Whet…

Nonsense, as an individual that values my privacy I don't want to be distracted by Googles PR - Google is clearly a stalker, and users want it to stop!

The blog post makes sensible points identifying Google's PR based response. Thus your ad hominem attack on the blog instead of the content makes me wonder if you have conflicts of interest regarding this topic?

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#64

Post by xg15 »

petre wrote: post #34
kittywav wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://about.google/intl/ALL_us/locations/?region=europe If you don't want to follow the rules (against anti-competitive practices) of a certain set of countries, perhaps you shouldn't have offices in that set of countries? Just an idea...

Okay, so they spin off a bunch of shell companies holding all these offices and stop displaying them on the Google website in order to address the EU requests. But the mothership still gets to remain a single company.

Maybe a better way to think about it is that the EU can effectively demonitize them. At the worst, the EU regulators could (theoretically) block them from doing business with EU citizens. They can offer their browser for download here alright, but they can't sell any ads or any other products here.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#65

Post by hackerfromthefu »

newscracker wrote: post #22

This is Google extending an invite to the EU and other regulators to bring their war hammers and forever ban browser makers from pushing targeted ads and enabling profiling of people. Maybe break Google up and make the Google Chrome team a separate company with restrictions on how much it can work hand-in-hand with Google? Anyone in the EU who can file complaints about these abuses of market power? Tell the people yo…

This is the answer - forever ban targeted ads.

Ads should be a display only HTML tag that just allows limited read only display WITH NO JAVASCRIPT. This would remove tracking and malware and force ads to be targeted on the content page not on the user.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#66

Post by xg15 »

colordrops wrote: post #27
GeorgeWBasic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't forcing it on you. It's opt-in. Google's trying to force things on all their users: manifest V3, this, et cetera.

The brave-hate meme is self perpetuating at this point. Brave is privacy-oriented out of the box. You have to opt in for the ads and crypto. Isn't that what everyone has been asking for? opt-in instead of opt-out? I'm convinced that Google is behind a smear campaign against Brave. If Brave got real traction it could be a serious threat to their business.

I'm still skeptical how that could reasonably work on an opt-in basis.

Being annoyed daily by ads in exchange for some obscure crypto currency which might be worth something in the far future doesn't seem like a proposal to me that could convince a lot of people.

So I wonder, how many Brave users actually do opt-in? More than five?

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#67

Post by xg15 »

darinf wrote: post #61
the_duke wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is often dismissively called an ad company. Why is that? Because most of their revenue is from ads. How does Brave make money? With ads. Privacy-centric positioning makes sense to capture a part of the market. But the mis-aligned incentives are there for Brave just as much as they are for Google. Are they better right now than Google? Probably. Is it smart to trust a company that only makes money with ads with…

Check out Neeva. Ad free search. We have an iOS browser at the moment and desktop browser extensions. Both apply tracking protections. Disclaimer: I work for Neeva :)

So what is your business model?

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#68

Post by hackerfromthefu »

pkulak wrote: post #44
colordrops wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The brave-hate meme is self perpetuating at this point. Brave is privacy-oriented out of the box. You have to opt in for the ads and crypto. Isn't that what everyone has been asking for? opt-in instead of opt-out? I'm convinced that Google is behind a smear campaign against Brave. If Brave got real traction it could be a serious threat to their business.

Brave hate is a meme because any time anyone wants to talk about anything internet, 100 accounts come out of the woodwork to tell us some Chromium wrapper is the second coming of Christ. The rest of us are sick of all the promotion and get chippy in response. If you’ve been around long enough, you know they’re at least paying YouTubers to use and promote the browser without any disclosure. Who knows how far past that…

Ad hominems and smear tactic, seems the usual form of the 50c army or zealots that pops up to attack brave.

Sources please?

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#69

Post by hyperbovine »

bfung wrote: post #57
omneity wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t, I’ve never used Brave. In this case your entire comment is pure FUD and a cheap shot at Brave. I’ve been using Brave for 2 years, never saw a single ad.

> never saw a single ad That cannot be true; brave cannot block first party ads. I’m saying something very simple: 1. Brave is a browser like any other, in fact, built on top of chromium. 2. The ad blocking can be achieved with ad blockers using normal browsers. There’s ways to block cookies too. 3. Brave has presets for 1&2. Additionally, Brave adds on top more opt-in ads using BAT as an incentive. Hence, use a norm…

> That cannot be true; brave cannot block first party ads.

Do all sites on the internet employ first party ads? No? Then it can be true.

Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues

#70

Post by JoiDegn »

xg15 wrote: post #67
darinf wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Neeva. Ad free search. We have an iOS browser at the moment and desktop browser extensions. Both apply tracking protections. Disclaimer: I work for Neeva :)

So what is your business model?

Senator, they take a subscription fee.
Post reply on HN