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Comment by jefftk | Hacker News Reader

> I run a website with no trackers, no ads, nothing at all to do with Google or any other company in any way.

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)

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That "During the current FLoC origin trial" bit scares me though. Why should I assume the scope of implicit inclusion in FLoC won't be expanded in the future?

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.

> That "During the current FLoC origin trial" bit scares me though. Why should I assume the scope of implicit inclusion in FLoC won't be expanded in the future?

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.

Hi Jeff,

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 :)

Thanks!

Thanks for the clarification. It appears I can't edit my original comment to add in a mea culpa!

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.

Thanks. I hate FLoC, but accurate facts need to get to the top.

> if Chrome detects that the page load ads or ads-related resources

how does it make this decision?

It uses a filter based on EasyList: https://github.com/chromium/chromium-ads-detection/blob/mast...

Accurate, but not set in stone. Google owns Chrome, so they could decide to make it opt-out in the future.

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