Nobody is joining Google's FLoC

"It seems like many consider the alternative to FLoC to be an anonymous web where content can be accessed without login."

I consider the alternative to FLoC as no FLoC. I consider the alternative to 3rd party cookies as no cookies. I can read HN just fine without 3rd party cookies. Or FLoC.

Developers, paid from advertising budgets, may be eager to comment and share their opinions on these matters but, let's be honest, they themselves are making such comments via a website (HN) that has no requirement for 3rd party cookies. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.^1

If cookies must be enabled to make a purchase or login, then I will enable cookies and accept a cookie, but only from that website and only for that purpose. However the requirement for cookies in these specific situations^2 has been taken as license for "modern" browser authors to make "cookies enabled" a default setting. This has been abused to no end.

1. I am commenting as an end user. I do not rely on the existence of online advertising to make a living.

2. It seems to me that the real problem here, the one which we should be trying to solve, is that web developers have no available solution for "shopping carts" and logins other than to use cookies. (Maybe the web was not designed for commerce.) Instead, Google is proposing a "solution" that makes business better for Google and its customers (advertisers, not end users), while making business more difficult for any company hoping to gain insight into end user browsing habits, except Google of course.

"... an anonymous web where content can be accessed without login."

It is always interesting how comenters make the jump from one company's software (e.g., Google Chrome) or website (e.g., Instagram) to "the web".

The web is more than a handful of "tech" company monopolies that rely on advertising to exist. It is a medium, not a set of commercialised content. I starting using the web before Google or Facebook existed. Before user contributed content was usurped by "tech" companies to sell online advertising services.

Today, I still get nearly 100% of content from the web without ever logging in to any website. Without Javascript, and without cookies.

If one takes comments like the parent at face value, then this should be impossible.

How do you think web rings worked exactly? Before SEO, you'd land on some person with a niche interest's page who'd generally know of someone else in that niche space. Those two would link to one another, effectively syndicating each other.

It wasn't until everyone started fighting SEO-wise that you ran into the issue of fraud pages of nothing but links and sketchy ads that were the byproduct of reverse engineering Google's PageRank algorithm of the time. In fact, before SEO, there really wasn't that much of a niche for "Social Media" proper. A creator's web page and web ring were basically the social networks of the time, and arguably much less addictive or prone to scraping in the sense most back and forth was BBS/IRC/Email/Forum.

I remember the first time I overheard someone pitching SEO while eating lunch with the lunch pool from the office. If I were more the type to barge in at that time I'd have called them out as the fool they were being for corrupting a seachable index. Little was I expecting at the time that engineering indexes was the New Big Business and that the Web I knew was in the process of being obliterated and replaced with the shark infested botnet and data hoard-i-tron we have today.

Imagine a world without ubiquitous IP geolocation. One without rampant browser fingerprinting. Without everyone and their brother wanting you to subscribe for a recurring revenue stream. Without widespread collusion amongst industry actors to embed DRM circuitry or backdoors into every General Purpose piece of hardware under the sun.

It was a completely different world and tone to computing. It was your tool, and it was there to empower you; not to shovel crap through your bloody hardware whether you wanted it or not.

Because the intent is the complete opposite, to add, not remove the bug... what else are they going to add, how many more headers are we going to end up with, what if the other browsers join in... this is not sustainable, but it's not supposed to be - they are betting on the fact that 99% of website owners will not even be aware of this issue let alone know how to configure their web server or be bothered to - it's purely for the purpose of saying "we allow you to opt out".

Saying "oh but we can thwart them with a header" is just naive, Google would like you to believe that. Look at the bigger picture.

The thing is that I could actually see this working, because advertisers and publishers would have to incentivize people for turning the feature on. If it became widespread known that turning targeting on resulted in seeing relevant 10% discount ads a lot of people would give up privacy for that, probably for less.

You can see this behaviour in the success of browser extensions like Honey which are privacy nightmares to people like us, but totally acceptable to most people.

I never said I was practical. Or in that case apparently paying as much attention as I should have been. Happy Friday everybody!