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Comment by bozhark | Hacker News Reader

Why is this a chrome thing? Wouldn’t it be all search?

The browser, which doesn't need to be Chrome although that's the only implementation I've heard of, does local tracking. It then exposes APIs to ad networks to allow them to target based on that tracking. As far as I understand the "tracking" never leaves the device, and the "targeting" is fairly wide based on topics like "cars" or "holidays".

For ad click attribution Safari has their own API for this use case called PCM, private click measurement.

https://webkit.org/blog/11529/introducing-private-click-meas...

This is specifically for attribution, and seems to roughly mirror the native SKAdNetwork framework on iOS. Attribution is a distinct problem to targeting – also important, but as far as I can tell PCM/SKAdNetwork would not solve the same problem.

Why would it be okay to let advertisers know you have an interest in cars? Seeing personally targeted ads affects your autonomy.

I don't want to be influenced by ads on every website that are targeted by my socioeconomic status, such as the potential ability to afford a holiday outing or purchase a car inferred through interest in holidays and cars.

Being able to differentiate on interests such as 'holidays' and 'cars' as compared to 'fast food' enables advertisers to sell the same product at different prices to different socioeconomic groups. This is bad for society.

It requires cooperation from the browser to do generalized targeting.

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