Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network
paramdeo.com
paramdeo.com
Does anyone else see FLoC as worse than the current state we're in?
"When third-party cookies are replaced by FLoC, Google will have a way to track consumers that isn’t available to other companies, which could give Google a steep advantage in the advertising business." [1]
According to the EFF, Google controls the algorithms, and will also be running its implementation and auditing its outputs, a task the EFF describes as "both orwellian and sisyphean". The EFF also notes that "Users and advocates must reject FLoC and other misguided attempts to reinvent behavioral targeting."
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/duckduckgo-solutio...
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-...
Is there a proof for this claim?
My understanding is that the cohort you belong to is available to any page. Is that not true?
Chrome is closed source, do you trust Google?
So yes, controlling how that number is calculated is infinitely more control than reading it.
It is utter ridiculous to think we need to be tracked from site to site and profiled to this degree.
It would, unfortunately advertising agencies have showcased advertisers that they can hijack focus of an average website visitor with rich graphics irrespective of the context e.g. Say toothpaste ad on a tech blog; And the toothpaste company doesn't care as long as they get a click(even if the conversion is abysmal).
Other side of the story is that the tech blog would find it very hard to get a proper referral link for PC parts they're covering for contextual advertising unless they're of considerable size. Where as getting a banner ad to display what ever it wants is just usually couple of clicks.
As a result, whole Internet is full of rich graphics built by and built for these advertisers making simple text based readable websites an endangered species; Further making the lives of those with accessibility needs miserable.
> For pages that haven't been excluded, a page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources.
Let me guess, “ads-related resources” are not defined, but in a court case in 5-10 years time it’ll be accidentally revealed that internally Google considers this to include “JavaScript, css, or HTML files”...
> During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources. (Ad Tagging in Chromium explains how Chrome's ad detection mechanism works.)
Ad tagging? https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/master/docs...
> Ad Tagging works by matching resource requests against a filter list (...) to determine if they’re ad requests. Any requests matching the filter are tagged as ads. Further, requests (and some DOM elements such as iframes) made on behalf of previously tagged scripts are also tagged as ads by the AdTracker. An iframe will be marked as an ad iframe if its url matches the filter list, if tagged script is involved in the creation of the iframe, or if its parent frame is an ad iframe. The main frame of a page will never be tagged as an ad. Any request made within an ad iframe is considered an ad resource request.
I can't find what is included in this filter list, I'm not sure it's open source.
(mandatory disclaimer: I work at Google, not on Chrome nor ads)
This list should be shared with UBlock Origin. Let the people decide what they want IMO.
It's derived from easylist, and (I think) scoped down based on things that actually show up in the top X websites.
I guess this topic is more of a political issue rather than an obvious compatiblity issue, so it's not as clear cut.
But adding special code to deal with buggy clients is something everyone has to do sooner or later.
Not an Apple fanboy, but Safari is a great example of software which has changed its default behavior to prevent creepy things from happening.
Different companies, different incentives
Anyone who runs a site and wants to opt in against a default block should have to take extra action to reduce their visitors privacy, and should be called out for their behavior. As others have noted, there are already plenty of workarounds in use for many reasons... this is a BETTER reason than most.
And when that does happen, Google is famously transparent in its actions and easy to contact to resolve such issues.
(You may detect a little touch of sarcasm above!)
Is it way to cynical to think that coming from the worlds largest advertising company that can’t mean anything except “monetizable web content”...
I am not defending Google behavior, I have no dog in this fight, just sharing. In fact, there was a weird behavior I detected inadvertently last year 2 employers ago where I couldn't load any .dev public internet sites due to preloaded rules that hadn't been updated since before the .dev gTLD was publicly available. Some would load, and others (web.dev in particular) wouldn't load. Anyways yeah this sucks, it seems that any new advancements in web related technologies that could enable new privacy measures are just side stepped by the dark wizards out of Mountain View...
Turns out webplatform.org was discontinued some time in 2015 and put up a notice pointing people at the MDN Web Docs. Then in 2017 Mozilla announced most of the key players (including Google) would now support the MDN Web Docs[0], which still seems to be true except they fired the entire MDN team in 2020[1]. It seems the advisory meetings are still happening and someone is maintaining MDN, but with Mozilla essentially only existing because Google continues to pay the bills, its future seems a lot less certain now.
Meanwhile web.dev makes no mention of MDN and instead mixes discussion of Google's proprietary "experimental" features and Chrome-specific behavior with general advice on "building better websites", duplicating some of the content already covered by the MDN Web Docs' guides section (except this gives them opportunities to cross-market their own interests while also not discussing support of features in other browsers).
I don't think Google is hiding who's behind as the footer literally has the Google Developers logo in it. They are however not acknowledging anything other than Chrome even exists and heavily blurring the lines between Chrome or Google-specific features and stable web standards. Coupled with certain public Google developers continuously chanting "use the platform" while criticizing people for using other web frameworks instead of custom elements, this certainly creates an impression of deception and dishonesty.
[0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/10/18/mozilla-brings-micr...
[1]: https://www.fastcompany.com/90539632/mozilla-vows-mdn-isnt-g...
Tell them it's time for the government to step in and remove Google's ability to run a browser.
Google cannot be allowed to continue running Chrome. They've abused this position time and time again to the detriment of us all.
..and to improve a search engine empire that is arguably the basis for the majority of their ad business and which is already a factual monopoly.
If you successfully avoided giving Google your visitor traffic data so far (by passively avoiding Google analytics, fonts, maps, etc.) then from now on you will have to take active steps to keep their fingers out of your cookie jar.
How is "not using Chrome" not passive?
I run a website with no trackers, no ads, nothing at all to do with Google or any other company in any way. You come along, with Google Chrome, and visit my site. Google adds the fact that you visited my site to their massive dataset (as well as who-knows-what-else) And to opt out of something I have never been asked to be involved with in any way, I need to contact Google and ask them to please leave my site alone?
Am I understanding this shit correctly?
Whether I like it or not, my site, by proxy, is participating in Google's data mining?
If my guess is correct, how the actual fuck is this not illegal?
Edit: Ok, I guess I'm off the mark here with my assumptions so I'll put my pitchfork down.
Google are just using your Chrome browsing data, matching it with site id's (or hashes?) and then analysing the shit out of it for their gain.
As a website owner, nothing has changed other than I can tell them not to use my site as part of their analysis... that sound about right?
Then your site will not be included in FLoC: "A page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources." -- https://web.dev/floc/
(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
I don't exactly trust this opt-out header. The spec makes it sound like it's not so much a request to the user agent not to use cohorts in general. Rather it's a security-in-depth measure to prevent third-party scripts or injected spyware from exploiting certain functions. So those functions are disabled for resources loaded from that domain. Chrome, meanwhile, can still do whatever it likes.
It's the other way around: it's saying that normally "a page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page" but to support this specific origin trial it will also include pages "if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources". This is needed to avoid the chicken and egg problem that you would otherwise have in a proof-of-concept experiment.
While I don't like ads, and so by association I blindly don't like FLoC or cookies, I've been following your comments via RSS out of interest and I'd like to say thanks for always popping up in these threads to untangle some of the misconceptions (from your point of view).
That doesn't necessarily mean that I, or others, trust what Google, as a business, might do tomorrow compared to what it says today but given how little the wider world tends to hear from Google (that isn't editorialised in some sense), it's nice to see Google employees engaging on Hacker News :)
No idea how I managed to get it so far off the mark there... :(
For anyone reading this, downvote my original comment up the top please to get it off the top as it's inaccurate: I know it's cool to bash Google on here but my original assumption was waaaaaay off.
how does it make this decision?
I'm 100% against this whole FLoC thing but I really cannot understand this conclusion.
If I drive through a McDonald's drivethrough, and Android/iOS/Fitbit/Tesla/whomever records my journey via GPS, they know I ate a McDonald's but McDonald's the company has not directly "participated" in any tracking of any kind.
It seems that the content of your website may be used to identify the users interest.
It isn't illegal because the browser is allowed to do whatever you want with your website. This is really no different than an extension that can access your website content to recommend other pages you may be interested in.
In the same way it isn't clear to me why I would want to opt-out. I guess it is 1. Sending Google a signal and 2. Protecting users from themselves?
But if I want to protect users from themselves I'm probably better off showing a banner recommending Firefox. (And this also helps the open web at the same time)
Because Google has effectively embedded and interwoven itself so tightly into the fabric of the web, that simply having no association with them is impossible. Vint Cerf is their evangelist. The creator of The Internet is an evangelist for Google! Read more:
https://research.google/people/author32412/
> Vinton G. Cerf is vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google. He contributes to global policy development and continued spread of the Internet.
"Just"? Google should have absolutely no access to your non-Google browsing history whatsoever.
That alone is pitchfork-worthy.
Seems similar to the Google Street View issue. They took pictures of public places, and you had to manually request to have your face or identifying info removed, if they were revealed.
The website is public in the same way as it can be accessed by any browser and isn't blocking search robots.
The purpose of this permission is to prevent embedded third-party content from using FLoC. Besides that it’s a no-op.
FLoC does not track arbitrary websites, it tracks sites which retrieve the FLoC cohort via JS. So instead of dropping a unique third party cookie, and associating it with the data on the page, sites can now retrieve a k-anonymous cohort id and associate it with the data on the page. If you’re not doing that (or serving ads) there’s nothing you need to do.
That’s not to say that FLoC doesn’t deserve criticism just that most criticism I’ve encountered is not grounded in reality.
"The interest cohort API lives under the Document interface since the access permission is tied to the document scope, and the API is only available if the document is in secure context."
and
"The page can opt itself out of the interest cohort computation through the "interest-cohort" policy-controlled feature. [PERMISSIONS-POLICY]" [1]
[1] https://wicg.github.io/floc/
Edit for para reference.
> By default, a page is eligible for the interest cohort computation if the interestCohort() API is used in the page.
I'm certainly not defending FLoC, I've been using Firefox for 20 years. But creative editing isn't called for.
By default, the page is eligible if the API is used in the page, but the website owner can opt out of that using the header setting, and the user agent should offer a permission setting to disallow sites for inclusion by users. The second and third sentences would not exist or make any sense if the first sentence precluded them.
The full text of the paragraph is:
''' 7. Privacy considerations 7.1. Permission 7.1.1. Eligibility for a page to be included in the interest cohort computation
By default, a page is eligible for the interest cohort computation if the interestCohort() API is used in the page.
The page can opt itself out of the interest cohort computation through the "interest-cohort" policy-controlled feature. [PERMISSIONS-POLICY]
The user agent should offer a dedicated permission setting for the user to disallow sites from being included for interest cohort calculations. '''
There are multiple reasons why the API could be included in the page, but a website owner choose to opt out using the header, or a user disallow it. I agree it is confusingly phrased but it is a draft, and the meaning seems clear to me.
As written that quoted part gives a reason for inclusion, but not a requirement (ie the condition might be 'sufficient but not necessary').
>During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources.
Who's to say how this evolves in the future?
Chrome's & Android's entire existence is to ensure Google ads business survives. This until Google can find another business that produces the same returns or dies.
I wish there were more entities that would focus on developing tools for open web. Open web as we used to know is dying.
Android corrupted the ethos of FOSS, decimated all hopes for privacy, contributed to destroying the environment, stripped users of freedom of choice. I think it'll take a very special group of people to reverse the tide.
If android didn't exist then iOS might be the only major mobile OS, so in that sense at least it seems to be good that Android exists. It would be much better if it wasn't widely used as a carrier for Google's ecosystem and spyware, of course.
Ignoring the branding law of duality (that generally only 2 brands occupy the supermajority of a product category) and looking only at technical barriers, now looks to be better than ever for a third platform to possibly arise - especially given the rise of ARM SoCs.
Those are cost cutting choices that don’t automatically lead to porting to other platforms. Small players will still churn a single app for iOS based on their site’s react code, for instance.
Basically those who didn’t care for other platforms before still don’t care that much, but instead of being their 1298th priority in the list, it might have rosen to the 34th or 35th position.
Would you further entertain that the inability to perceive such realities and differences and manufacturers inability to navigate these preferences is a major determinant of success? (Microsoft failed here for instance and Amazon's fire is on life support. If piles of money were the primary cause we'd all be using Sharps, Psions, IBM Simons and AT&T Eo, there's something else to say, the failure of At&t hobbit, they had a solid monopoly position)
Capturing the consumer is tricky business and maemo simply wasn't the right it. Nor was Windows Mobile or FirefoxOS or WebOS or, ultimately, Palm or BlackBerry
Microsoft Explorer did the same earlier with Netscape. Simply bundle your own software with the OS and watch the competition flutter.
Your average consumer really doesn’t know the difference.
I question that common folklore and claim it uses anecdotal cherry picked non rigorous evidence. It's just a bad theory.
Of course monopolies try to leverage their position as IBM tried with their failed MCA bus and failed XGA standard and failed OS/2 product. As it turns out, monopoly thuggery can't seem to reliably zombie walk terrible products that nobody wants.
Instead, people have dramatically different concerns and if you read into each one of these cases you'll find that out. That's the real reliable truth here
Stop fighting realities you don't like. All of humanity isn't going to bend the ways you want it.
If you want to understand how humans relate to technology, writing such things off as irrelevant, simply because IE6 was technical swiss cheese, is foolish.
webOS in 2009-2010 was unironically better than Android's been over the last decade.
That is true to a large extent, but it doesn't preclude Google from creating a situation where new contenders are effectively locked out. No matter how good Android is, they're not entitled to that.
if we want different products to succeed we can't just close our eyes, cross our fingers, and hope that humanity acts the way we fantasize it ought to.
I miss my N9. One of the best smartphones I’ve used in the past 16 years
It's like the vintage synth people. Those are really popular products but most are not popular enough. The popular ones get reissues but most of the time the financials simply don't support a production run.
This response in the thread reminds me of what happened in the 1936 landon/fdr election. A magazine asked people to volunteer who they wanted to vote for. The landon voters were super passionate so they outnumbered the fdr voters who wrote in causing the magazine to falsely believe landon would win in a landslide. A guy named Gallop was watching this unfold, thought something was up, used statistical random sampling to guess what the magazine and general election would yield, got both right and changed polling forever. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/
The handful of people downvoting and passionately responding to me are the Landon voters here. HN is exactly where this small group congregates.
There's simply not enough to keep the platform afloat. That's why the reboots have all eventually failed
No.
I mean hahahahahah HELL NO not even close.
WebOS was great.
The only thing that made Android win was the brute force of Google, and the fact that Android was open source and WebOS was not (somehow, despite being Linux), and mismanagement by Palm.
"Weaker product offerings" isn't really an applicable idea for new entire ecosystems. He who can put up the most cash and marketing and special deals can create a new ecosystem from scratch that is by definition and necessity far weaker than others that have already existed for years, and still win by plain force.
When the iPhone came out, it had no 3rd party apps at all, while Palm and Windows devices existed for years. Particularly PalmOS had a massive rich diverse mature ecosystem of 3rd party apps.
I had a full screen, color, touch, grid icon home screen of 3rd party apps, internet connected, smartphone... In 2000, SEVEN YEARS before the first iPhone came out. I had a web browser, an ssh client, even a vnc client, Audible.com audio book player app, .. And every random app for every big and little purpose I coukdbthink of, from db apps to odd little things like a netmask calculator and resistor color code decoder, irc client, book reader, integrated contacts db phone dialer... Just like today, except better, no app store, and so no app store saying I can't have an app I want but Google or Apple doesn't. All this in 2000. 7 years before the "revolutionary" iPhone.
And even after the iPhone came out, not only were it's offerings weaker, they didn't exist at all. No 3rd party apps allowed at first.
Apple won because they are Apple. The phone hardware was a technical and design marvel, and Apple could afford to create a whole new world from scratch to displace an existing mature rich one thanks to plain money and size from years of iPod sales.
Google didn't have a stunning new device that blew away anything that came before, but they did have the money and the ability to make deals with carriers, and the open source angle. (I don't mean that consumers cared about that, I mean that letting everyone and their dog make a phone for free was an effective way to match Apple's deep with a Google wide.)
Android frankly sucked balls compared to WebOS for quite a while, both the os itself and the "offerings". But, Google. Palm. Come on.
I would agree that in the contest between Windows phone and either Android or IOS, MS had the size and resources to compete, and failed because they failed, not because there was no possible contest once someone that big decides to get in your game.
A few months later, an unofficial Android ROM was created, and it was a huge upgrade, even though it was only Android 2.2.
Until people can really understand what I said above, and clearly they still can't, this kind of stuff will always happen
The biggest players in the industry released failed handheld platforms for 20 years before Android.
That theory does not explain the failure of all the other prior attempts by other monopolies
All these years later, I still wish I could have sat in on those meetings and told Palm management just how badly they were screwing themselves.
It made me realize that there is indeed (of course) software engineers (meaning: people) working on this who actually write that code. Does a high salary justify working on such features, or are modern day software engineers more like factory workers? I think not because most software engineers have a choice.
Been thinking about this a lot afterwards.
Time to look outside of tech bubble perhaps?
There is a problem with that statement and I will try to highlight it by creating a couple more of the same:
- There are people working to build software to allow people to share child porn without getting caught (about Moxie and anyone working to bring e2e-encryption to the masses)
- there were people working in factories that created hammers that were used to crush peoples skulls in Cambodia
See where I am going?
However not all technology/engineering is neutral even compared to other technology.
For example I made the decision years ago that there are some lines I won't cross for software development - one of them been gambling systems (even though they are quite lucrative) - (Note: I'm not saying they should be banned (that is not for me to say)) because morally I can't see an acceptable use that outweighs the bad.
Same with weapons systems (though of course one mans freedom fighter is anothers terrorist).
Weapons stopped Hitler. Weapons stopped USSR. Weapons stop US. Weapons stop todays Russia.
Weapons are tools too. Mostly to scare away an attacker before they strike but sadly sometimes also to strike back.
Double sadly they also come with the possibility to strike first.
But in the choice of us being armed and Russia and China and the middle East being armed or everyone being armed except us I take the first option. Every time.
Edit to add: modern weapons are actually about reducing the chance the skin is melting of children.
It is fully possible to think that your country should have access to the best conventional weapons possibly while still voting for politicians that want us to stop weapons sales to madmen.
That's just a rephrasing of the same old "good guy with a gun" meme.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Think: if you try to remove all guns overnight the ones you get is the ones from the good guys. If you make guns illegal only criminals will have guns.
Also: the biggest crimes against humanity have typically been made by the local rulers: Hitler can be discussed, Stalin, Pol Pot and a number of others cannot.
Good guy with a gun tends to hit a bystander, or cause dangerous escalation in situations that don't warrant it, or have their gun stolen.
> If you make guns illegal only criminals will have guns.
That's one way to look at the very short term. But then since "criminal" is not an immutable quality of a person, millions of people that weren't criminals that then commit a crime will have no gun.
Trying to sort people into "good guys" and "bad guys" is a terrible idea in general.
And the police are going to need some weapons whether or not you have gun control.
So sure, some groups are more willing to give up guns than others. And we should perform a cost/benefit analysis while keeping that in mind. Plans don't have to meet some standard of ideological purity before we can evaluate them.
There are literally millions of people that deliberately do jobs that knowingly hurt people (and are built AROUND hurting and scamming people) and asking yourself "why would anyone try to improve on an ads tracking system while keeping ads around?" just really really comes out as horribly naive and oblivious. Not to mention that there are even millions more of jobs where significantly more harm is done as a side effect that doesn't come close to showing a damn ad based on their amazon purchase.
You can do ads without profiling users and violating their privacy.
Also link to that source code mentioned: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:c...
Why would anyone care about that, as opposed to, you know, reducing the amount of tracking?
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
When one of those cohorts is narrow enough to reveal something specific and highly private (like a specific disease / medical / legal / societally high interest issue) - what then? Sites get to learn that you are associated with that very private concern.
No. I am against any and every form of personalized AND aggregated categorization, because until the associations created are no longer used as criteria by others, no form of tracking is neutral.
Cookies AND FLoC and any other replacement all need to stop.
And those who want to characterize others need to stop, because the information WILL be abused.
Additionally, combined with just IP address its probably a 99+% precise user identifier.
How so? A user's cohort is shared by many other users, and for any individual site you have visited it is very likely there will be another user with an identical cohort who has not visited that site. This means you cannot tell exactly which sites any individual has visited.
> combined with just IP address its probably a 99+% precise user identifier.
IP address alone is already a massive fingerprinting leak, and needs to be addressed if browsers are to prevent cross-site tracking. Chrome is also working on this: https://github.com/bslassey/ip-blindness
most people care more about their own interests than the interests of society in general. Only when collectively devising laws would society take the interest of society over individuals.
Therefore, software engineers are fully justified at making software that is deemed unethical, but still take the stance that it is unethical. You might call it hypcracy but i say it's practicality.
Legislation should be introduced to perform the function of ensuring ethical standards, not altruism on the part of the individual.
I'm sick of having to add yet another config option every time some Web giant decides it is OK to abuse my website and my visitors.
Unless I’m misunderstanding, which is likely (and I hope I am)
Who would opt in if it was?
What benefit would there be to opting in?
Unless Google make it a benefit in search rankings in which case some (possibly many) will for SEO purposes, bit still not enough I'd wager (and the balance would be such that lower quality sites, that prioritise SEO over actually useful content, would be the majority of those that went for it).
This feels a bit like way-back-when, when BT and a couple of other UK ISPs toyed with a system that would insert ads into web content, sometimes replacing existing ads, simultaneously bothering their users (to make money out of them on top of existing subscription payments), screwing site runners (being associated with ads they had no control or even knowledgeless knowledge of, and potentially losing ad revenue), and screwing other advert providers.
I imagine google analytics scripts would find a way to opt people in.
Having to explicitly opt out regardless of what you do is terrible. So now you're telling me that I have consciously disable it every time I create a new website/page? How do we force Google to stop this?
It has to be a regulatory decision imposed on Google, much like when Microsoft was forced to do something about Internet Explorer long time ago.
`permissions-policy: interest-cohort=()`
It's only deployed on a test set of Chrome browsers so far, and it does create a warning message on browsers that don't support it. [1]
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66997942/error-with-perm...
Edit to note support for blocking this!
People will add it in their configs and anecdotally perceive that it has an impact in their rankings. It would likely become a must for SEO.
This a reflection of how incredibly genius the original PageRank was. It’s what makes Google the business it is. It’s almost like a small model of free market behavior. Except that in this case Adam Smith’s invisible hand is Google. That’s what makes Google so powerful and scary.
If the electrical utility company said that they'd supply more (or better/stable) power to your premise because you were willing to buy a certain brand of electrical appliance, then it'd be grounds for anti-consumer action from the DoJ.
SEO is 100% pure speculation, as there is no way to validate why Google ranks things the way they do. The only people who do know for sure are closely monitored Google employees who value their bonuses.
The very notion that users need to be tracked and fingerprinted/profiled from site to site is asinine.
Advertising worked before the concept of tracking on the web. Companies simply paid for contextual ads based on the site. For example visit a site that covers college basketball and advertisers would pay to put ads here for sports gear, sports equipment etc, Go to a site that covers how to keep a nice lawn and advertisers would pay to place ads for mowers, fertilizers, etc.
The very idea that it is normal to have a specific adverting profile assigned to you to track you all over the web is disturbing.
A page visit will be included in the browser's FLoC calculation if document.interestCohort() is used on the page. During the current FLoC origin trial, a page will also be included in the calculation if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources. -- https://web.dev/floc/
Detecting "ads or ads-related resources" uses a filter derived from EasyList: https://github.com/chromium/chromium-ads-detection/blob/mast...
(Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
Here is adecent article: https://geekflare.com/block-unwanted-requests/
There is a nice thing in there, banning a google browser on a google product ;)
1- CSS "supports" feature to identify Mozilla Firefox[2]
2- A simple JS script to identify Brave[3]
[1]: https://crooked.ink
[2]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12625876/how-to-detect-c...
[3]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36523448/how-do-i-tell-i...
I think browser diversity is important to ensure that web platform features are thoroughly planned. While FLoC shows that chromium-based browser will oppose the worst features that Google attempts to push through Google has already been know to implement web features that all other browsers have expressed no interest in implementing, often due to privacy concerns. So while I think many other Chromium based browsers are better than Chrome giving market share to an alternate browser engine is a huge benefit for the open web.
An example where Firefox felt that the privacy concerns of a feature were not sufficiently addressed is https://chromestatus.com/feature/4733392803332096. There are many more examples, especially around many of the APIs to expose local devices.
Another option is Safari which I consider a better option than Chrome but they also seem to prefer pushing native apps over the open web and Safari seems to purposely lag behind on implementing some critical web features (especially on mobile).
if (document.interestCohort) {...
We thought we were looking for something but actually we were constantly searched.
You are the product in Google's grand scheme. The ad buyers are their customers.
Nice website you have here. Would be a shame if no one can find it?
I miss the days when you'd click on sites inside the Yahoo! directory just because they had a cool or funny domain name. Search probably saved us several years worth of time, but at the same time made it almost impossible to randomly come across sites in your category that are bizarre or unconventional.
In general a good idea to just be on top on what headers your web site actually sends and generally know what you are doing with things like cookies, etc. on behalf of your users.
That's already something you need to do and be on top off for legal reasons. Just because lots of website maintainers are kind of indifferent/hands off/sloppy/ignorant on this front does not mean it's OK for you to be that way. This is just another thing to take a conscious decision about and pay attention to. Things that you are in any case supposed to know and pay attention to. Comes with the job of running a website. Your content, your problem to deal with. Or not. Normal due diligence. Should be business as usual.
Unless your are paying Google large amounts of money to mainly show your ads not opting out seems like the wrong choice.
- FLoC is still far better than third party cookies
- As much as we'd love to live in a world without advertising, 95% of the internet wouldn't exist without it.
- If we are going to have advertising, I'd much rather have FLoC than third party cookies
I don't care because my browser blocks third party cookies.
To which I say, let's not have tracking at all, instead of choosing between crappy cookies and even more potentially crappy FLoC.
Reverting to advertising without tracking is entirely possible, it just disenfranchises a whole host of greedy manipulative jerks who will do anything for a buck.
And that would properly be a good thing.
- A world without advertising Super disagree that this at all an issue. Most of the revenue that gets eliminated is for stuff that people wont pay for anyway, and I question its value if that's the case. Personally I think all advertising is an utter blight, and couldn't care less if it goes away forever and takes its revenue with it. It will be a struggle for a while, and many small sites will fall. The stuff that will be left is stuff that's hopefully worth the money people pay for it, or run as a passion project.
Neither is good, but that doesn't necessarily make the topic you're attempting to pivot to relevant in this situation.
Also, Cloudflare (provider of the external service you mention, assuming you're talking about DNS-over-HTTPS) definitely isn't Google. At least not yet.
This FLoC network should be opt in and it should be revenue sharing for all partners that participate.
We need to stop giving google all our work for free.
If not, it has been observed that there's very little incentive to communicate that change through.
As much as I'd like to believe that altruism will win in the end, it has been established that ultimately the capacity to gain materialistic advantages can often triumph over individual's judgements.
if all it takes to block is adding header `permissions-policy: interest-cohort=()
1. Github has all those bots that suggest security improvements to your code - maybe they should also suggest privacy improvements to your code.
2. Governmental sites should be changed to always require this.
3. How about a plugin that when it gets a site without the header informs user via colored tab or similar solution. I suppose Google would try to remove it from add-ons, but then that would be fuel for the inevitable lawsuits complaining this whole thing was anti-competitive and monopolistic behavior on Google's part.
How many of you actually brought something just because a machine/stranger recommended it to you? For me, it's almost never.
I watch YouTube a lot, as a free tier user, of course. When a video starts to play, all my focus is automatically dead-locked on the "Skip Ad" button, and sometimes "Skip trial". It's a game for me now to see how fast I can tap the "Skip". As for the content of the Ad, well, usually I ignored it all together.
Sometimes, when I'm away from the phone and suddenly a some 50 hours long Ad starts to play, I'll just continue finishing what's on hand first, and then go to my phone to tap "Skip" or switch to Twitter or Telegram to see whats fun over there -- all without notice what the Ad was saying.
Yes, sometime, some annoying Ad got into my head anyway, but ... why should I buy something that annoys me?
For me, the most effective Ad are those what I'm actively looking for. For example, if I'm looking for a running shoes, I'll click the Ad on the search page and/or listings page to see if there is a good product/deal. And I'll stop click those as soon as I made the purchase.
So personally, I don't really understand the idea of Tracking Your Every Move So We Can Sell You Stuff. How it even works?
Now if you remember this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14879204
Yesterday on Reddit, I saw a meme with a picture of a dish rack sitting atop a sink, with a funny caption about the kind of stuff you get excited about in your 30s.
For me, I did get excited, as such a contraption would save a ton of counter space in my small apartment. I ended up searching for it on [big ecomm store] and almost bought one. Still looking for one that's designed for use over a single sink.
For example, there was an ad about some gangster/mafia game, the ad itself was absolute ridicules for my taste, however, the game itself received ~4.3 stars rating on Google Play, which is completely contrary to my expectation -- other people think it's not a bad game, it's just me not understanding it well enough.
Look, I live a simple life, the world in my eyes is narrow, which is bad for me as a (self entitled LOL) developer. So if getting harassed for 5 seconds is what it takes to widen my view a bit, I think I'll take it :D
Of course I never downloaded the game, so it's still an ineffective advertisement for them.
And I don't mean opting out. Asking them nicely and hoping they respect that is not good enough.
Using and promoting the use of Firefox is better/complementary advice.
1. Another alternative is to run the proxy locally. I run a web proxy bound to the loopback.
However, I would guess switching browsers is extremely unlikely for a great number of users. Google must know that. That is why they can do something like FLoC. They must know that not many users are going to switch browsers.
This does not work, `http-equiv` does not work for `Permissions-Policy`.[1]
* * *
[1] https://github.com/WICG/floc/pull/47#issuecomment-786966847
<meta http-equiv="Permissions-Policy" content="interest-cohort=()" />Better stick to the actual recommendation of adding the header in the server configuration.
And whilst in Firefox parsing of the element is more spread out, they accept a very wide number of headers that aren't documented, and you'll find examples on MDN for any number of headers using http-equiv which aren't specified in the standard or on their docs for http-equiv itself [2] (For example, X-DNS-Prefetch-Control [1]).
[0] https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/master:o...
[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/X-...
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/me...
``` Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=()
```
somewhere, but they all seemed to assume that everyone knew where that where was (nginx config? webserver config? index.html? ??? ??????
Foo: things
This will generally be a HTTP Header. How you add that depends on your server/framework. (And will be well documented).
If you've only got a static site, then you can always fallback and use HTML to achieve the same thing with http-equiv, which gets added to the head element:
<meta http-equiv="Foo" content="things" />
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="3; /foo" />
Hopefully that can help you in your future endeavours.
what does that even do?
Would have been a more satisfying change to make.
Thanks for your help
Antoine
Now I just see it as being asocial. If Google didn't monetize search with ads how would you discover new products? Without ads websites would not be able to deliver premium content and we would all still be stuck in the early 90s. The internet would work like some broken socialist version of wikipedia.
I have ad free YouTube and sometimes I consider turning it off just to see what kinds of ads are out there that I've missed.
I'd love to see an internet of individual directory sites, some of which could be 'pay for placement', some of which would be hand curated, others could be algorithmically built...
So much better than Web == Google homepage == "What's a search? I type in where I want to go and click on the first thing I see"
Nah, this isn't enough.
Redirect chrome User-Agents to stop-using-google-chrome.com
Will you lose users? Yeah. But don't worry, you'll lose them anyways when Google decides to unperson your website like they did with Parler.