Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea

I think they're going to need to state their case in a way that allows Google to still make money and be competitive in the market place. It's not a simple matter of doing it and not doing it. It's a matter of doing it, and making more money or not doing it and making less. Google seems willing to move in the direction of privacy, but it's not going to do so in a way that sabotages the bottom line. It's unrealistic to expect any entity to voluntarily sacrifice its own values for the values of another.

Google has started ramping up their subscription products - googleone in particular.

> I think they're going to need to state their case in a way that allows Google to still make money and be competitive in the market place.

I'm sorry but Google has no any competition. If you don't want to limit oneself to, say, Facebook users, you pretty much have to buy Google's ad services.

If their intent is to convince Google, then I agree. If the intent is to convince the public and policy makers, I don't think they need to re-frame it. I am okay letting a company (even a complete industry) fail if society has decided that the industry or business practices are parasitic.

Privacy is a freedom which has many parasites (state and private entity driven) attacking it and I welcome changes to perception, regulation, and law which places safeguards around it.

This is the transition that needs to happen. People just need to get used to the idea of paying for software. Software providers can then focus on making their products better rather than finding streams to tangentially monetise their offerings by invading user’s privacy.

And do you consider a complete ban of 100B+ advertising industry and complete ban of tracking (happily used by governments) a likely outcome?

Even the mighty Apple still tracks analytics data and separates that into a separate switch from the ones limiting non-Apple tracking.

Nobody will pay for every small blog, recipe/repair tutorial/gardening tips website/YouTube channel. How much value do they bring to you ? How much would you pay for them? How would you know they're worth it without using them first, and why would they allow you to use them for free, when most users would be one-shot?

Please support Web Monetization.

Not how opinions and politics stand now, but that is part of the reason why articles like this are important. There is quite a distance to travel between writing an article criticizing tracking + the technology that enables it and arriving at legislation.

I might be traitor to the cause, but I feel like giving the industry an "out" might be easier to achieve and significantly faster to implement - e.g. instead of complete ban on targeted advertising, standardize on a clientside API that can send a list of topics/themes that are interesting to the person. In a way that's not owned by a single corporation.

This way I feel there will be less legislative and lobbying pushback while still achieving major privacy wins.

I remember back when people put stuff on the internet for free because it was fun and they enjoyed sharing. I suppose the need for compensation has truly destroyed every good thing.

Exactly. Old web was the bees knees.

There was also significantly less stuff because hosting and hardware cost money.

Even with significantly less stuff there was more stuff than you could ever consume. In addition, the cost and barriers to hosting static content have fallen quite a bit since then, and the percentage of the human population that has access to the internet (and can thus participate in creation) has risen dramatically. An ad-free internet would not be starved for content.

With OnlyFans, Patreon and Twitters super follow we’re slowly finding ways to make the consumer/creator interaction more direct. It’s only a matter of time before something close to microtransactions pops out of these.

It’s interesting that influencer promotion is already out-of-band from general internet advertising. They are paid directly to promote products to people who have proactively followed/engaged with the influencer already.

This is not about banning ads or analytics.