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Comment by caseysoftware | Hacker News Reader

That was my first (very pleased!) read on it at first but this snippet towards the end:

> "When you visit a site, any cookies that are set can be used in a third-party context for twenty-four hours. During the first twenty-four hours the third-party cookies can be used to track the user, but afterward can only be used to login and not to track. This means that sites that you visit regularly are not significantly affected. The companies this will hit hardest are ad companies unconnected with any major publisher."

Since the average internet user (aka not us) visits Facebook constantly and Google regularly, will this really have an impact at all?

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The "unconnected with any major publisher." part is the major one. I would say this likely doesn't affect Google and Facebook much (it might affect Facebook greatly for me, since I use the site once every couple weeks). Who it does affect is shadier third party ad networks which have less well defined privacy policies. It also affects any fully legitimate and non-shady advertiser that doesn't have a web presence you want to visit regularly. So in that respect it punishes all the non-Google and non-Facebooks equally, which may or may not be a good thing.

Google and Facebook may know too much about you, but I'm not really worried about them selling that data, which is some small relief. They are the ferryman at the river, and they charge to take advertisers to their audiences. They aren't in the business of selling boats.

> Google and Facebook may know too much about you, but I'm not really worried about them selling that data, which is some small relief.

Why aren't you worried about that? How about in 15 years when they've gone downhill and are looking for ways to make some quick cash?

Like I said, a small relief. To clarify, I'm not worried about them selling the data now, and I have hopes that there will be some headway made on the issue legislatively prior to them running into problems. It's not a good situation, but it's better than joe-schmoe-adtech right now offering to target me for $X, and outright sell all that info for Y x $X because they need to raise some cash fast.

If we don't make headway on this issue legislatively and soon, I'm not sure it matters, as your profile information's privacy at all these sites has a shelf life in my eyes. Both sales and security breaches with exfiltration of data at random adtech companies will eventually lead to most this private profile data being publicly available anyway, so unless we put some strong limits on what can be collected, how it must be stored, notification of who is storing it, and the ability to review and remove items (and all of this at a minimum), I think it's a moot point who has it now, since everyone will eventually.

I would think the average user visits Facebook through the Facebook app, not through Safari, so that should very much affect them. Google is a different story...

Not on desktop, however. Safari for macOS is introducing the same functionality

Right, but isn't that the point that now they can't track you across sessions based on logins and things of that nature. If I use the app on my phone, they can't check my browser history against that and, on the Mac, they can keep my login information but they can't track me across sites. Seems like a win-win for users on both ends.

Right, no real effect for most users and ad publishers. Apple didn't really do much here.

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