Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea

If I understand FloC correctly though, it sends your profile/tags/interesting topics from your owned client software. So this basically means that if you have a browser like Firefox, it could send a preset cohort set to server that doesn't build your tracking profile and gives you things you're interested in.

To me this seems like a win? It allows you as a person to control how your ad profile is built (and if it's sent at all) and doesn't send your data to servers anymore?

(Please correct me if I misunderstood the technology.)

If this doesn't get taken advantage of by google, this would be awesome.

I bet if a random open source project of the same kind were released, it would probably be pointed at as a reason why Google is evil ('see there are good alternatives!'). But because Google is doing it, people are (rightly) wary and (definitely not rightly) calling it evil without doing research.

> But because Google is doing it, people are (rightly) wary and (definitely not rightly) calling it evil without doing research.

That's what happens when no one trusts you. It's human nature, and logical arguments aren't going to change that.

If anything, it's a good thing for society if Google burns despite trying to do something genuinely good (not that FLoC is good), because it shows others that there are real consequences to betraying the trust of your customers.

We lose one untrustworthy company today, and gain many trustworthy companies in the future. That's a net positive for society!

Personally, what I'm interested in is not seeing ads. I think the notion that more relevant ads are somehow better for the user is mostly industry propaganda. Ad targeting is about finding people more susceptible to manipulation into spending money. User satisfaction is at best an epiphenomenon of the ad industry, and at worst is directly counter to their goals.

If you don't want to see ads, why not run an adblocker or avoid visiting sites that show ads? There's no good option right now, if you have a paywall people will complain and almost no one will visit your site, and if you have any ads at all people will complain about that too. (I remember an HN article about a guy who had a banner advertising his own product on his personal blog, absolutely no tracking, that got added to uBlock adblocking lists.)

If you want you can use duckduckgo with ads disabled in settings, visit HN and wikipedia and stackoverflow (although they have the #hireme thing), pay $10/month for youtube and spotify premium so you don't see ads there, etc. And then use ghostery to disable third-party cookies and things of that nature. What more do you want the industry to do?

What I want is them not to know anything about my profile or what I want and them not to send anything about me to anyone unless I ask them to. Which I'm not going to.

That would be an actual win. Not showing me ads at all would be an additional icing on the cake. I even don't want to see ads about things I'm interested in. Just nothing.

If they will not send data to their servers anymore, then they can easily regain trust by just introducing a contractual obligation to pay out a reasonable sum if they are found to be doing so that would disincentive them from doing so. Say 1 year of revenue or ~$100B? Since they have control over their own actions and there is no reason to send data to their servers anymore, then that would be pure upside with no risk if they are being truthful. However, until they make promises where success and failure can be evaluated by non-technical individuals and there is actual downside when failing to fulfill those promises, I see no reason for anyone to believe their claims if they will not put their money where their mouth is.

Seems like giving you control over what your client sends is a good way to achieve that. You're the one deciding what's being sent - as it should be.

Sounds like you're proposing GDPR. I supported it, it's s good step.

I think we forget the hidden cost of not being able to run well targeted ads. If we remove the ability to advertise this way, it increases the barriers to entry for new business. Right now, due to highly effective targeting any small startup (and big firm) can go pretty niche and launch a product with a small amount of budget.

If we rely on old pre digital tactics with no targeting, it's like going back 50 years and using a machine gun in the dark.

Combine the Google cookie depreciation, Apple's recent changes in 14.5 and the general mood around 3rd party data sharing which makes effective outbound lead gen more difficult. I think we are witnessing death by a thousand cuts in terms of increasing the barriers to entry for smaller business.

This, a million times.

People hate ads, but the alternative is so much worse.

Personally, I want the advertising industry to not exist. Moral question of for-profit manipulation aside, I think if you look at net societal benefits versus total cost, it's pretty easy to see that we could find better things to do with the ~$1 trillion that it consumes. That day won't come any sooner just by me running an ad blocker.

Not really. GDPR establishes specific rules around data protection and retention, but what I am proposing is having them establish a contractual obligation to abide by their claims with pre-defined damages in the event of a breach of contract to demonstrate a commitment to their claims. GDPR is about data protection, this model is about honesty/fulfilling obligations which just so happens to be about data protection in this case. If they want to gobble up all the data and they are completely honest and forward about it such that the average impacted individual properly understands the scope and degree of what is occurring, then I do not care too much about it since at least everybody is going in with open-ish eyes. It is doing so while lying about it or appealing to people's wishful thinking then blaming them for not reading the fine print that is truly evil.

If this is truly what you want, then what is your suggestion for financing the existence of sites that wish to stay afloat? Paywalls don't work.

To be fair in your last two comments you went from "I don't want to see ads" to "I don't want anyone to see ads."

That's a pretty big philosophical difference.

Wikipedia doesn't have ads or paywalls.

It absolutely has ads, for a few weeks every year, for itself.

Not having individually targeted ads doesnt mean no targeting it means less efficient targeting. There are also other avenues for promotion. There is no way to offset losing your privacy

people tautologically define ads as only that which they don't wish to see

Has anyone actually presented studies that show that targeting advertising using fingerprinting and other invasive and hidden identification works?

Sure, google/FB and others sell that to advertisers as an advantage, but has anyone proven it works?

Google's original use of Adwords was based on my current search, didn't use my history, and didn't use anything else to identify/classify me.

Then they started adding geo location, using things like IP addresses and other out-of-band information, then cookies which allowed them to track me outside of their own site.

I don't care whether outbound lead gen is more difficult. I have no incentive to care. I have no incentive to offer my details to anyone.

Advertising has always been a manipulative business, by definition, its aim is to manipulate people into wanting to consume the product or service being advertised.

But it was constrained by the inability to target more than large demographic groups and locations.

That "pretty niche" product can still target its niche. What it can't do without the current dark patterns and tracking is target individuals. That would be a good thing.

Pre-digital tactics is not going back 50 years, it's going back 20. It's pre-9/11, pre-government-general-surveillance. That government surveillance has given tacit permission to business to do the same thing. The "if you've got nothing to hide, why are you worried about the government?" argument is applied to business now.

In short, fuck Google and FB and Amazon's need to sell targeted audiences. Their business model is flawed and has caused greater social disturbance than the overall reward.

Only if you look at the first sentence. In the rest of my first comment, I am pretty clearly talking about the problems of the industry as a whole.

Paywalls don't work? Tell that to the WSJ, the NYT, Netflix, Disney, and so on. They all do just fine.

Those are solicitations for donations. Wikipedia isn’t selling anything.