So the topics are broader, human curated, and user editable. That seems to address most of the complaints raised by Mozilla and the EFF. This does also seem like a less over-engineered approach,...
So the topics are broader, human curated, and user editable. That seems to address most of the complaints raised by Mozilla and the EFF.
... I do feel that FloC is over-engineered though. The complexity makes it difficult to educate about, and the "AI magic" makes it a bit of a black box. It's also not exactly clear how it will avoid sensitive topics other than manual curation.
Mozilla and Facebook have been working on their own proposal called IPA, or Interoperable Private Attribution. Seems to serve most of the same goals as FLoC (now "Topics")....
Mozilla and Facebook have been working on their own proposal called IPA, or Interoperable Private Attribution. Seems to serve most of the same goals as FLoC (now "Topics").
From the article: Here is the technical explanation. (It seems odd that this repo is in an individual’s github account rather than under google.)
From the article:
FLoC worked by grouping people with similar browsing histories together into a "cohort" and would make assumptions about that group for advertising purposes. One of the concerns was that these groups could be small enough to individually track users, which is what third-party cookies do today. Google says that Topics should be broad enough to ensure that users are not individually tracked and to further reduce fingerprinting. Google says that "5 [percent] of the time, a random topic (chosen from the full set of topics) is provided."
A full list of initial topics is available here; it includes categories such as "Football," "Politics," and "Software." Google says topics will be public, human-curated, and scoped to avoid sensitive areas like ethnicity or sexual orientation. Behind the scenes, the system will work by mapping website hostnames to various topics, and as you browse the web, your browser will build a local list of your topics. When an advertiser asks for a list of topics, the browser will serve up one topic from each of the past three weeks of usage. Google is proposing that advertisers will "only receive topics they've observed" from other sites. So if you visit a knitting website and it has Google ads, only other sites with Google ads would know about your knitting habits.
"Will need to be addressed". God forbid not serving ads based on browser profiles.
With the upcoming removal of third-party cookies on the web, key use cases that browsers want to support will need to be addressed with new APIs. One of those use cases is interest-based advertising.
"Will need to be addressed". God forbid not serving ads based on browser profiles.
Well yes. Of course it needs addressing. If I have to see ads - and I do choose to because the internet isn't free - I'd much rather see vaguely relevant ones, and be able to block entire topics...
Well yes. Of course it needs addressing. If I have to see ads - and I do choose to because the internet isn't free - I'd much rather see vaguely relevant ones, and be able to block entire topics (such as alcohol). So yeah, as a user I'd rather this were addressed than not.
Also, and I don't work in the field any more, but when I was involved in marketing/advertising it's very helpful to be able to target stuff. Not just because you get better conversions that way, but also because you don't annoy people by showing them stuff they don't care about.
As and when the world's governments decide to make internet hosting a public good and therefore free for everyone, I will celebrate the end of online advertising along with everyone else. But until then it is what's propping up the vast majority of the internet so it does need to work.
It's my understanding that Google is only allowed to operate in China as long as they cooperate with Chinese censors. I used to go on Chinese SOCKS proxies as a kid and repeated google "Tienanmen...
It's my understanding that Google is only allowed to operate in China as long as they cooperate with Chinese censors. I used to go on Chinese SOCKS proxies as a kid and repeated google "Tienanmen square tank man", "communism sucks", "I love democracy". The image results were wildly different than what you see on American search results. And it might have just been a shoddy proxy, but I distinctly remember one of them going offline after a number of anti-CCP search queries.
Chinese censorship has gotten a lot worse since then. From what I've read Google (and Facebook and Twitter) are blocked entirely now, unless you find a VPN that works and they are increasingly...
Chinese censorship has gotten a lot worse since then. From what I've read Google (and Facebook and Twitter) are blocked entirely now, unless you find a VPN that works and they are increasingly difficult to find.
Even at the time, Google wasn't exactly cooperating with Chinese law, which would require them to do self-censorship. They were running servers in Hong Kong and the censors were doing a man-in-the-middle attack.
So the topics are broader, human curated, and user editable. That seems to address most of the complaints raised by Mozilla and the EFF.
This does also seem like a less over-engineered approach, which was my biggest concern last year.
Mozilla and Facebook have been working on their own proposal called IPA, or Interoperable Private Attribution. Seems to serve most of the same goals as FLoC (now "Topics").
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/privacy-preserving-attribution-for-advertising/
From the article:
Here is the technical explanation.
(It seems odd that this repo is in an individual’s github account rather than under google.)
"Will need to be addressed". God forbid not serving ads based on browser profiles.
Well yes. Of course it needs addressing. If I have to see ads - and I do choose to because the internet isn't free - I'd much rather see vaguely relevant ones, and be able to block entire topics (such as alcohol). So yeah, as a user I'd rather this were addressed than not.
Also, and I don't work in the field any more, but when I was involved in marketing/advertising it's very helpful to be able to target stuff. Not just because you get better conversions that way, but also because you don't annoy people by showing them stuff they don't care about.
As and when the world's governments decide to make internet hosting a public good and therefore free for everyone, I will celebrate the end of online advertising along with everyone else. But until then it is what's propping up the vast majority of the internet so it does need to work.
Related maybe? Chinese regulators wanted toggleable tags
I don't think Google is doing anything in China? They are certainly not cooperating with Chinese censors.
It's my understanding that Google is only allowed to operate in China as long as they cooperate with Chinese censors. I used to go on Chinese SOCKS proxies as a kid and repeated google "Tienanmen square tank man", "communism sucks", "I love democracy". The image results were wildly different than what you see on American search results. And it might have just been a shoddy proxy, but I distinctly remember one of them going offline after a number of anti-CCP search queries.
Chinese censorship has gotten a lot worse since then. From what I've read Google (and Facebook and Twitter) are blocked entirely now, unless you find a VPN that works and they are increasingly difficult to find.
Even at the time, Google wasn't exactly cooperating with Chinese law, which would require them to do self-censorship. They were running servers in Hong Kong and the censors were doing a man-in-the-middle attack.