Hacker News Reader

Comment by MaxBarraclough | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't offer a very good summary of Google FLoC, but I'm sure we'll be hearing much more about it in future.

> FLoC uses your browsing history to assign you to interest-based cohorts, the end result is akin to a super-tracker that is present on even more websites than Google Analytics

If they plan on using a new JavaScript API for this, as they apparently do, [0] do they really expect other browsers to implement it? I can't imagine Mozilla or Apple doing anything like this in a million years. If anything they're more likely to build countermeasures into their browsers.

> Google’s plan is to target ads against people’s general interests

I have to wonder if the double meaning here was intentional.

[0] https://github.com/WICG/floc

View on HN

If Firefox and Safari implement this API but set it to return a hardcoded generic set of "interests" for everyone, that seems like a pretty good outcome to me. Chrome users can "enjoy" personalized ads and everyone else gets better privacy.

I don't object to seeing adverts, I do object to having all my personal data hoovered up by ad-brokers.

> set it to return a hardcoded generic set of "interests" for everyone

That wouldn't improve privacy over simply not supporting the protocol at all.

It would if it means advertisers use that protocol instead of devising a zillion underhanded workarounds (html5 canvas fingerprinting, proxying third-party cookies as first-party, etc.)

What if, we will have a new form of “this site works better on chrome”?

By this I mean, check if protocol returns something, else, “this site only works on chrome”.

This would effectively force, Firefox at least, to implement this protocol.

A version of this protocol with randomly generated data might be better for the user.

Thankfully, major websites know that 'Chrome only' isn't an option. Alienating all Safari users isn't something they'd be willing to consider.

> implement this API but set it to return a hardcoded generic set of "interests" for everyone

Or just let people select their own interests. There's quite a few (particularly news / media) sites I'd be fine in disabling an ad-blocker on if the ads I was served were in any way useful to me rather than bottom-of-the-barrel "one weird trick"s

Better, they could return interests that maximize revenue for the sites you visit.

I imagine a distributed machine learning algorithm could probe floc with random categories, and hill climb using the results of auctions.

sounds like a future violation of terms of service..

I don’t agree to their non-consensual tracking TOS.

Ooh, that sounds like fun! How about returning some kind of randomized set of interests, or one of various curated sets, or even adversarial ones. You could even select from several personas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com