FLOC stands for Federated Learning of Cohort.
Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
71–80 of 128 posts
Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
#72I 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…
> Whether it is this or constant aggressive writing, it seems that the goal of this blog post is to simply inspire anger and hate, while not furthering the discussion on the topic.
There isn't much to discuss, I would think. This is an extremely user-hostile feature to be implemented in the clients (browsers) which comes with a lot of downsides, and absolutely no benefit to the user. I don't know how detached people at Google must be to consider this okay, or to think that any of the privacy-focused browsers would join in on this.
Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
It cannot be true that you never saw a single ad because brave cannot block first party ads and the probability that you never ever visited a site that uses 1st party ads is basically zero.
Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
#74Use a different browser that’s not chrome. Problem solved. Disclaimer: I don’t use Brave because I don’t want to see more ads. In the 90s, there were little banner ads that ran on your pc in the same app that helped you connect to the internet. That’s essentially what Brave is, except I don’t NEED to see more ads, as I needed to pay for internet in the early days. Just us a browser that blocks cookies.
Wont work, the moment this lands in Chrome websites will check for it and if your non chrome browser doesn't implement it they will redirect you to an upgrade your browser page. Browsers that fake it will get the same treatment, do not track has already shown that advertisers will not respect any attempt to prevent tracking by the user.
Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
#75Use a different browser that’s not chrome. Problem solved. Disclaimer: I don’t use Brave because I don’t want to see more ads. In the 90s, there were little banner ads that ran on your pc in the same app that helped you connect to the internet. That’s essentially what Brave is, except I don’t NEED to see more ads, as I needed to pay for internet in the early days. Just us a browser that blocks cookies.
> In the 90s, there were little banner ads that ran on your pc in the same app that helped you connect to the internet. NetZero & Juno, the good ol’ days of free dialup!
NetZero was the best. When you created an account with their custom dialer it generated a username and password pair (that the user didn't know) for the local dial-up POP in your town. The credentials were stored in a text file using a substiution cipher, so you could extract them and create your own Windows Dialer profile to get free internet without having to use their dialer that showed ads on your screen.
Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
#76I would use Brave if they didn't use chrome as a backend. We need more diversity in rendering engines otherwise things like FLoC happen.
I believe Brave was initially (supposed to be?) based on Firefox but needed support for a feature that only Chromium supported and had go with that.
Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
#77I 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…
> 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.
The pejorative robbed is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Advertising is how users pay for free services. Making the form of payment more agreeable is a worthwhile goal.
As full disclosure I earn a living in the advertising ecosystem. Any feature that means stakeholders stop asking me to invent backdoor fingerprinting and correlate against data obtained from shady brokers is a welcome step in my opinion.
Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. The pejorative robbed is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Advertising is how users pay for free services. Making the form of payment more agreeable is a worthwhile goal. As full disclosure I earn a living in the advertising ecosystem. Any feature that means stakeholders stop as…
> pay for free services
If you pay for it, it's not a free service, so which is it? The whole model hinges on the fact that no kind of payment is advertised, not ads and especially not tracking. (If the GDPR prompts are good for anything then at least for making this bit more obvious)
If you treat this as payment, wouldn't you require an actual business relationship with those users?
Also by that logic, Google just unilaterally altered the contract without even so much as notifying its users about it (thanks to hidden, seamless auto-updates of Chrome)
In which other segment would you tolerate stuff like this as a customer?
Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
#79If Google succeeds in making the whole web Amp, they won't need FLoC anyway.
Re: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues
#80Earlier 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.
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