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Comment by encryptluks2 | Hacker News Reader

How does it benefit website owners to opt out?

Say you are running a page selling car parts, but aren't paying Google to run ads. Not opting out means that your customers now get targeted ads from your competition.

Unless your are paying Google large amounts of money to mainly show your ads not opting out seems like the wrong choice.

Presumably things that promote a healthy internet also benefit website owners since their sites exist on the internet.

Does Firefox sending URLs you visit to a an external service not constitute as unhealthy?

You can opt out of that (or is it opt in now), too.

You can opt out with Chromium too

"What about $otherthing?"

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.

No, I'm talking about their browser protection feature that is supposed to check for malware and unsafe domains.

Doesn't that use a bloom filter? So in reality it’s very few if any of the urls you visit are actually sent anywhere.

That sounds like people arguing that nuclear energy is a bad solution to climate change because it's not perfect and technically not renewable.

- 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

But even if it were so, what would be the problem if 95% of the internet wouldn't exist?

> FLoC is still far better than third party cookies

I don't care because my browser blocks third party cookies.

>95% of the internet wouldn't exist without it.

And that would properly be a good thing.

- FLoC is still far better than third party cookies I'd take issue with 'far' better, and it has the additional problem of turning the privacy issue in to a moving target. How long did it take to get the wider public and legislators moving on tracking cookies? Now it's a similar issue, just it's called FLoC and its code on your own machine doing the spying.

- 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.

Advertising without any sort of tracking just based purely on inbound search queries is still really good advertising and better than older ways. What most people don't want is a profile following you around everywhere.

For Google Search it is, that doesn't apply to the millions of websites that aren't search engines and require monetization to be profitable.

Your last point would more accurately be stated as "If we are going to have tracking, ..."

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.

On an individual level it doesn't. It takes time and makes such a small difference that it's pointless. Google knows this of course. The result is that they can claim people can opt out, while in practice they run a giant surveillance network.

It's tech that only benefits Google.

How does not opting out as a website owner benefit Google?

Please read TFA. It answers this question.

Doesn't it also benefit anyone who buys ads or anyone who displays ads?

No, it benefits google and google margins only. Ads have been on a downward trend for ad partners for years, you will never see a dime from giving google more data.

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.

It can harm them at least one way: they wouldn't be able to monetize Apple users.

...What the hell does Apple have to do with this?

Let me turn the question around: to what extent are website owners who do not opt out accomplices with Google in the privacy violations implicit in their creepy surveillance profiling tech?

accomplices invokes images of people “in” on the conspiracy. In my rough estimation based on nothing, I’d guess most website owners have no idea this is an issue that needs fixing. Your rhetoric is inflammatory, inaccurate, and does your side of the argument harm by making the whole argument look absurd.

Let's rephrase that... to what extent are website owners who do not opt accomplices with Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, etc. Please also note that Firefox enables multiple telemetry features by default, such as safe browsing lists that checks links you visit presumably also tracking your URLs in the process.

Please read about how safe browsing works in Firefox (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Safe_Browsing): it's using the privacy respecting update API described at https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4/

I often think of it as: As a website owner, will partnering with Google - a market leader in the advertisement space have a direct negative impact on me and my stakeholders?

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.

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