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Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea

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604 points wyldfire | 2 comments | 04 Mar 21 15:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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mycologos ◴[04 Mar 21 23:35 UTC] No.26350071[source]▶
One of my pet meta-theories about Hacker News is that the frustration expressed over several apparently different stories really has a single source: Hacker News likes the internet of 10-20 years ago a lot more than the average person.

One place this shows up is a frequently-expressed sentiment that the internet is a less magical, less weird, and more corporate place than it was 10-20 years ago. Part of this may be because SEO has diluted the voices of individual creators. But part of it is also because way more average, everyday, tech-unsavvy people are on the internet now.

Another example is the periodic highlighting of somewhat garish HTML-based websites. I like these too! My own personal website falls in this category! But as far as I know, the generic internet user likes the generic slick-graphics-and-whitespace style, and so go the websites that want to attract them.

More relevant to the topic at hand, many comments in this thread argue that targeted ads are unnecessary for a functional internet, since the internet of 20 years ago seemed to work just fine without targeted ads. But, again, it's less clear to me that general internet users -- that is, mostly people who never experienced the internet of 20 years ago -- have the same preference.

It's funny, because I'm to a large extent on HN's side on this one. But my enthusiasm is tempered by my sneaking suspicion that the other side is a lot bigger, and my side is actually powered by more elitism and nostalgia than I thought.

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40four ◴[05 Mar 21 02:56 UTC] No.26351982[source]▶
I don’t understand the line of logic here. What does nostalgia for the internet of twenty years ago have anything to do with the way big advertising takes advantage of us now?

They use underhanded, arguably immoral, technological tricks that most general internet users might not even be aware of, much less understand how to defend themselves. It has nothing to do with the fact they never experienced the ‘old’ internet, they just don’t understand how or why they are being taken advantage of.

The HN crowd isn’t mad about obscene privacy practices because of nostalgia. They’re mad about it because they understand the actual technological mechanisms behind it, and how they work. And why the way big advertising exploits those mechanisms is so f’ed up.

Edit: Sorry, maybe I’m getting too angry. I think I see what you were going for, about many HN frequenters pining for the days of old. But I don’t agree with the idea that general internet users who weren’t online back then are okay with the current state of big advertising tracking technology. I think they just have no idea how or why it works.

I think many people are confused and frustrated that seemingly every random site or social media app they use seems to be aware of everything they do and look at online.

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1. mycologos ◴[05 Mar 21 14:05 UTC] No.26356956[source]▶
> I think I see what you were going for, about many HN frequenters pining for the days of old. But I don’t agree with the idea that general internet users who weren’t online back then are okay with the current state of big advertising tracking technology.

Yeah, my original post is not very clear about this. I'm not trying to argue that general modern internet users like the targeted advertising ecosystem. Instead, reading through some of the discussions here -- and past discussions of similar topics -- many of them at some point feature one user saying "tbh, i think it's fine if getting rid of targeted ads means losing a lot of revenue, because the old internet did just fine without all that revenue". But "how appealing is the old internet to modern internet users?" is a different question. And it's one where, I think, HN users overestimate the number of people that agree with them. My overall suggestion is that it's good to check whether or not this assumption is getting made somewhere along the way in these kinds of arguments, because I think for a lot of HN users, it is getting made.

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2. 40four ◴[06 Mar 21 03:54 UTC] No.26365036[source]▶
The question of “How appealing is the old internet to modern modern internet users?” certainly is a totally different question. And one completely unrelated the the topic of the article. Which is the difference between 3rd party tracking cookies versus Google’s new proposal of FLoC.

I suspect you might be right. Modern internet users probably do prefer the ‘new’ web to the ‘old’ web.

As someone who experienced the ‘old’ web and the ‘new’ web I wouldn’t disagree. The old web mostly sucked. Everything looked like shit, and I certainly much prefer the more advanced, more pleasing looking websites of modern times.

But we don’t all have nostalgia for the old web because it looked good. It’s because it was new, and exciting, and we were all using dial-up modems. It was the ‘wild west’.

But that’s all unrelated to the topic at hand, general internet users being target and exploited, against their will. I need to look into FLoC more, as the concept is still new to me. On the surface it at least sounds marginally better. But only if it is easy to deny sites access to my local sandboxed data. If every website presents me with a pop up to ‘allow’ or ‘deny’ access to my FLoC data, similar to the GDPR cookie pop ups we’ve become accustomed to, I’d probably accept that as a small ‘win’.

But as it stands now, most of my friends and family when I ask them, are frightened and confused as to how every freaking place they go on the web, somehow knows about the stuff they searched on Google last week. The feeling of some obscure, all knowing power, tracking their every move online is stressful.

I try to instruct them on ways they can protect themselves. They are mostly easy, and have negligible downsides, but they are not immediately obvious to people outside the HN crowd.

The main things I recommend are A) Use Firefox B) Use 1.1.1.1 (free) or similar VPN service C) Do most of your search’s in DuckDuckGo.

That’s not a foolproof strategy, but it’s one that is super easy, and only takes the effort of downloading a few new apps. These steps alone will cause any user to very quickly to regain a huge amount of privacy, stop seeing targeted ads, and their overall internet experience will be virtually indistinguishable.