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Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea

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604 points wyldfire | 10 comments | 04 Mar 21 15:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.511s | source | bottom
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dleslie ◴[04 Mar 21 16:49 UTC] No.26344736[source]▶
This captures my feelings on the issue:

> That framing is based on a false premise that we have to choose between “old tracking” and “new tracking.” It’s not either-or. Instead of re-inventing the tracking wheel, we should imagine a better world without the myriad problems of targeted ads.

I don't want to be tracked. I never have wanted to be tracked. I shouldn't have to aggressively opt-out of tracking; it should be a service one must opt-in to receive. And it's not something we can trust industry to correct properly. This is precisely the role that privacy-protecting legislation should be undertaking.

Stop spying on us, please.

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freebuju ◴[04 Mar 21 18:00 UTC] No.26345714[source]▶
Can you go a day without the Internet? How about two days?

Sadly without this tracking, the engines of the ad economy come to a stop. We have royally ducked up the ecosystem to the point where there's no fixing it. Ever. Even laws such as GDRP won't cut it, Facebook & co. are happy to flout the rules since paying the fines is worth the cost of breaking the rules.

In the case of Google ad money vs Content marketing economy, it really is a case where the chicken came before the egg.

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1. kibwen ◴[04 Mar 21 18:32 UTC] No.26346232[source]▶
This seems to imply that without ad revenue, the internet would not exist. But plenty of sites existed and still exist without the support of ad revenue. The price to host a static site is lower than it's ever been (and for sites that provide free hosting, the cost of providing that service is lower than it's ever been). If something like YouTube couldn't exist without ads, then so be it: let them move to a subscription model. There is nothing that says that we must be forced to tolerate ads in exchange for the internet, let alone ads that intentionally obliterate the human right to privacy.
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2. freebuju ◴[04 Mar 21 18:45 UTC] No.26346404[source]▶
Okay. Allow me to rephrase it. Knowing what you know about these products, can you live without Google, Youtube, Gmail for a day? This is what I refer to above when I say 'the Internet'. I reckon most people can't go a week.
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3. vvillena ◴[04 Mar 21 18:47 UTC] No.26346436[source]▶
Ads also existed before user tracking. Google and Facebook both seem to conveniently forget this fact.
4. freebuju ◴[04 Mar 21 19:12 UTC] No.26346769[source]▶
Large parts of what you know today as the Internet are ad-funded as opposed to user/donation funded. Without this ad revenue being available to the web, not so many websites and applications would have been born.

Youtube did not even think of charging premium so many years after launching as a free service.

Do you think they would have been that successfully were it not for the user base aka free eye-balls?

> There is nothing that says that we must be forced to tolerate ads in exchange for the internet

While true but this is the way the game and the field has been setup. Same thing that explains why you see ads on even on paid devices. Why be content with 5$, when you know you can shake 6$ from a customer?

I am for privacy. Believe me. But this battle is not winnable when you make up 5% of the sober group and the rest are happy and drunk in love with Clubhouse or whatever new social media drug that is the rage.

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5. matkoniecz ◴[04 Mar 21 19:13 UTC] No.26346782[source]▶
> can you live without Google, Youtube, Gmail for a day?

Without bug problems. Migrating away from Gmail would allow me to de it indefinitely.

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6. freebuju ◴[04 Mar 21 19:26 UTC] No.26346967{3}[source]▶
I'm also locked in Gmail, among a couple other useful not so easily replaceable products from Google.
7. robin_reala ◴[04 Mar 21 20:21 UTC] No.26347720[source]▶
Absolutely? I know I’m atypical for an internet user, but apart from YouTube I rarely use Google products, and YouTube is a nice-to-have, not a necessity.
8. dleslie ◴[04 Mar 21 20:23 UTC] No.26347733[source]▶
Vimeo was working the paid angle around the time that Youtube launched, and it wasn't under water. Youtube was successful because they _purposefully_ (and so, criminally) refused to take down copyrighted content because they were aiming to grow fast enough and large enough to be purchased by Google.

It's not just Youtube/Vimeo; for instance, Flickr was a premium paid service around the time that Facebook launched, and it wasn't under water, either.

These "freemium" services were able to act as _hideously unprofitable_ loss leaders for the large advertisement firms, and so take down the non-advertisement-funded competition.

It was predatorial monopolistic practices that gave us the current web.

9. a1369209993 ◴[04 Mar 21 22:56 UTC] No.26349698[source]▶
> can you live without Google, Youtube, Gmail for a day?

The only one of those I ever interact with on purpose is Youtube, only via youtube-dl, and only because other people refuse to use reasonable means of distributing video content (eg bittorrent).

10. AshWolfy ◴[05 Mar 21 05:18 UTC] No.26353037[source]▶
The only reason i cant is because my work email is gmail