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Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea

(www.eff.org)
604 points wyldfire | 2 comments | 04 Mar 21 15:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.432s | source
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kall ◴[04 Mar 21 17:34 UTC] No.26345311[source]▶
If this actually goes anywhere, I'm kind of excited about it from the perspective of a product developer.

Being able to do content recommendation for fresh visitors without any tracking effort of your own would be pretty cool. It will probably come with a dialog, so users will likely opt out often for ads or on page load, but not if they just clicked "show me movie recommendations" in your app.

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coffeefirst ◴[05 Mar 21 01:20 UTC] No.26351150[source]▶
Won't work.

The proposed designs never expose segments (err, cohorts, whatever) to the page. This machine works for managing targeted advertising in Chrome, and... that's it.

replies(2): >>26351199 #>>26352238 #
kall ◴[05 Mar 21 03:29 UTC] No.26352238[source]▶
No, they explicitly do.

> cohort = await document.interestCohort()

I mean it‘s a proposal. I‘ll believe it when I can use it, but maybe actually look at the proposal.

replies(1): >>26352579 #
1. coffeefirst ◴[05 Mar 21 04:10 UTC] No.26352579[source]▶
Oh yeah, sorry, I should have clarified: there are a LOT of followup documents that build on it. The reason I think it won't be an option comes from one of those. (I think FLEDGE, but don't have time to check.)

But like you said, we'll see what they actually ship.

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2. kall ◴[05 Mar 21 11:41 UTC] No.26355735[source]▶
Oh that‘s disapointing, if not surprising. Thanks for the clarification. It seems strange that they are willing to give such a boost to small competitors.