[HN Gopher] Google to stop selling ads based on your specific we...
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Google to stop selling ads based on your specific web browsing
Author : ghshephard
Score : 446 points
Date : 2021-03-03 14:07 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| pluc wrote:
| You know privacy is trendy when Google starts advocating it.
| asdf333 wrote:
| the threat of regulation can be a powerful thing.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| I think this is it. This response shows that if anything we
| need to hasten regulation proceedings.
| haolez wrote:
| But then, governments will choose who the winners are (and
| will charge for this).
| gostsamo wrote:
| No, governments will decide the rules of the battle. In
| corrupt systems it will be choosing the winner, in a sane
| one it would make who wins inconsequential.
| mfer wrote:
| If they aren't going to track us as individuals does this mean
| they will also not buy data on individuals?
| classified wrote:
| That has to mean they found a method that's even more invasive
| and more insidious. I'm curious to find out what it is. Will
| Zuck's face turn green with envy?
| herodotus wrote:
| >...a proliferation of individual user data across thousands of
| companies, typically gathered through third-party cookies.
|
| Is this really the main culprit? I get the impression that a lot
| of the tracking work has to do with server side data gathering
| based on ip addresses, matching web sites, shared login data,
| embedded pixels and probably all sorts of other clues. I would
| love to be wrong about this.
|
| If I am correct then "blocking third-party cookies" is mainly a
| feel-good marketing ploy.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| So, a company who's literal business is tracking you is claiming
| privacy-first? I'll believe it when I see it.
| naebother wrote:
| > Instead, Google says its ad-buying tools will use new
| technologies it has been developing with others in what it calls
| a "privacy sandbox" to target ads without collecting information
| about individuals from multiple websites. One such technology
| analyzes users' browsing habits on their own devices, and allows
| advertisers to target aggregated groups of users with similar
| interests, or "cohorts," rather than individual users.
|
| Oh, turns out you're in a cohort of 1. Privacy sandboxed.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Paul Graham on Twitter "What this news tells me is that Google
| has found a way to target ads just as effectively without using
| this data."
|
| https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1367118518592888834?s=20
| SquareWheel wrote:
| This seems like a pretty poor take by pg. It ignores the years
| of friction over targeted ads that have been leading up to this
| change. Apple and Mozilla have also shifted strategies in this
| area.
|
| It seems the right time for Google to pivot, if not a little
| too late.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Or if its less efficient it might increase ad spend - not to
| be to cynical
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Honestly, is that bad?
|
| I have no objection to targeted ads.
|
| I have a multitude of objections to systematic privacy invasion
| for profit.
|
| If they can somehow target ads while preserving my privacy, I'm
| all for it.
| hedora wrote:
| This proposal won't protect your privacy. It just helps
| cement their monopoly and provides a better signal. Pg's
| analysis is spot on.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| It's anonymized and the ad targeting algorithms are run
| client-side, with the relevant browsing data never leaving
| your device.
|
| How is that not a big improvement in privacy for ad
| targeting vs the current system?
| hedora wrote:
| As the EFF has pointed out, the cohorts the machine
| learning algorithm exposes are targeted enough to be used
| as an individual identifier.
|
| Also, this solution does nothing to prevent the abuses of
| the resulting user clustering that we've already seen
| (such as targeting addictive pharmaceuticals to addicts,
| or youtube promoting conspiracy theories).
|
| The article says they plan to embed the data collection
| into the operating system as well as web browser, so
| people on Android will have even more of their privacy
| stripped away for ad targeting.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Don't let perfect be the enemy of progress, I say.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > As the EFF has pointed out, the cohorts the machine
| learning algorithm exposes are targeted enough to be used
| as an individual identifier.
|
| Yup, deanonymization is a problem.
|
| That's better than _no_ anonymization now.
|
| But I agree, it's not perfect, and frankly, I don't think
| there is a perfect solution that prevents bad actors from
| deanonymizing users.
|
| The real solution to this issue is regulation and
| transparency.
|
| > Also, this solution does nothing to prevent the abuses
| of the resulting user clustering that we've already seen
| (such as targeting addictive pharmaceuticals to addicts,
| or youtube promoting conspiracy theories).
|
| This has nothing to do with the privacy implications of
| this technology.
|
| Personally, I think you (and the entire advertising
| industry) are massively overestimating the effectiveness
| of targeted advertising, but... _shrug_
|
| > The article says they plan to embed the data collection
| into the operating system as well as web browser, so
| people on Android will have even more of their privacy
| stripped away for ad targeting.
|
| They already do this!
|
| Again, this is still objectively an improvement.
|
| Does it fall short of eliminating targeted advertising
| entirely?
|
| Yes.
|
| Personally, I'm a realist and recognize that ain't
| happening, so we should welcome any movements that make
| the industry a little less invasive and destructive.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| Google's monopoly on ad tech is entirely orthogonal to the
| issue.
|
| As for PG's tweet, I think it's a bit much to call that
| single sentence an "analysis". At best it's an opinion, and
| not a very nuanced one at that.
|
| Please explain how this isn't potentially an objective
| improvement of end user privacy over things like third
| party cookies, browser fingerprinting, or other mechanisms
| of identity tracking.
| hedora wrote:
| How is this orthogonal to their monopoly? They're
| explicitly blocking direct competitors' tracking
| mechanisms in favor of one they control.
|
| I answered your other questions in a sibling comment.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| What does Google's monopoly have to do with the privacy
| implications of the method they're now favouring?
|
| Either it's a more privacy-preserving method than current
| techniques and technologies or it's not, irrespective of
| the competitive landscape of the ad tech industry.
|
| I think it's objectively the case that this is certainly
| better than assigning unique identifiers to every user
| and tracking those IDs + associated segmentation in third
| party databases that are ripe for abuse.
|
| Is it perfect? No. But I didn't realize we were just
| gonna go full nirvana fallacy, here. If that's your bar,
| nothing short of eliminating targeted advertising
| entirely will satisfy you, in which case, frankly, you're
| being unrealistic.
| vishnumohandas wrote:
| Stop "personalizing" my "experiences" and you'll have my trust.
| sly010 wrote:
| It looks like a paywall just prevented me from reading an article
| about the end of advertising as we know it[?]
| dmitriid wrote:
| "privacy-first" says the company which keeps releasing APIs
| developed by and for that same company and opposed by everyone
| else on privacy issues: https://webapicontroversy.com/
| jefftk wrote:
| Mozilla's disagreement about those APIs is primarily about
| security, not privacy. For example, here on WebUSB: "Because
| many USB devices are not designed to handle potentially-
| malicious interactions over the USB protocols and because those
| devices can have significant effects on the computer they're
| connected to, we believe that the security risks of exposing
| USB devices to the Web are too broad to risk exposing users to
| them or to explain properly to end users to obtain meaningful
| informed consent. It also poses risks that sites could use USB
| device identity or data stored on USB devices as tracking
| identifiers."
|
| Similarly, for Web Bluetooth: "This API provides access to the
| Generic Attribute Profile (GATT) of Bluetooth, which is not the
| lowest level of access that the specifications allow, but its
| generic nature makes it impossible to clearly evaluate. Like
| WebUSB there is significant uncertainty regarding how well
| prepared devices are to receive requests from arbitrary sites.
| The generic nature of the API means that this risk is difficult
| to manage. The Web Bluetooth CG has opted to only rely on user
| consent, which we believe is not sufficient protection. This
| proposal also uses a blocklist, which will require constant and
| active maintenance so that vulnerable devices aren't exploited.
| This model is unsustainable and presents a significant risk to
| users and their devices."
|
| My read of the disagreement is it it's about a core design
| trade-off: how important is it that a browser can do anything
| that an app can do? I think it's very important
| (https://www.jefftk.com/p/we-need-browsers-as-platforms) and
| I'm frustrated that Mozilla no longer does.
|
| (Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)
| xet7 wrote:
| Unfortunately:
|
| - Apple has been removing many PWA apps from their App Store.
|
| - For Google login and Play Store, Google often has new
| requirements, like adding more info about privacy to PWA
| website without replying to questions about more details with
| robot like answers.
|
| Because of those increasingly more strict requirements and
| always changing APIs, it seems that in future web is the
| platform, and not mobile apps.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Mozilla's disagreement about those APIs is primarily about
| security, not privacy.
|
| The better statement would be "security _and_ privacy ".
|
| > I think it's very important (https://www.jefftk.com/p/we-
| need-browsers-as-platforms) and I'm frustrated that Mozilla
| no longer does.
|
| I'm frustrated Google brushes aside any security and privacy
| concerns and just charges ahead and unleashes them onto the
| world. Mozilla may still think that browser-as-a-platform is
| important. However, they are clearly not willing to sacrifice
| security and privacy of users to achieve that goal.
|
| The only reason is that Google wants to own the web stack
| (see Ars Technica article I'm alluding to: [1]), and no
| objections to what they propose, and do, will stop them.
| Honestly, I'm surprised they still ask other browser vendors
| for their positions (see, e.g. [2]), as they clearly couldn't
| care less.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/09/owning-the-
| stack...
|
| [2] https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/336
| feralimal wrote:
| 'cos it would be too creepy if they did!
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| So one of the biggest privacy invaders on the planet is charting
| a course towards "privacy first"?
|
| If you believe this, maybe you would like to buy a bridge?
| drewcoo wrote:
| Oh no, no, no. It's "more privacy first." And that may not be
| "privacy first" at all.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| "Privacy first" is Google-speak meaning "the first thing we
| do is eliminate your privacy".
| hobofan wrote:
| - Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it
|
| - It also doesn't seem too unlikely, given more and more talk
| of the possibility that "targeted" ads don't actually work that
| much better than non-targeted ones, and Google are in the best
| position to verify that. Switching to ad models that are not
| based on exact user tracking, as long as they have the monopoly
| position might be the best way to ensure future profitability
| before they lose their users due to privacy concerns. All the
| AI and other technical and other monoplistic (AMP, Maps, etc.)
| advantages might be good enough to beat any tracking-based
| competitiors.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _... possibility that "targeted" ads don't actually work that
| much better than non-targeted ones_
|
| They don't and here is why --- if you search but don't
| purchase through a Google ad, you're likely to still see ads
| for the item following you all across the internet for months
| _after_ you made a purchase elsewhere.
|
| This does nothing but annoy the user.
| choppaface wrote:
| Is this even possible? Won't their ML ad models still have seen
| data from when they DID track people across sites? And even if
| they stop using those models, won't the structure and tuning of
| those models have been derived from cross-site-tracked data? This
| sounds a lot like a computer vision company saying "we have
| stopped using imagenet in our model training!". Did you really
| re-train from scratch? Ok, even if you did, now did you also
| happen to re-derive your network architecture from your own data?
| supermatt wrote:
| Id say the title is incorrect, as its still selling ads based on
| your browsing - its just they arent directly capturing the
| addresses - instead using some ML for cohort analysis via their
| "Privacy Sandbox".
|
| It seems to me that this is actually giving them more reach, as
| now it wont just be websites using google analytics, etc - but
| EVERY website you visit, unless the site owner specifically opts
| out - a google-made blackbox that sees EVERY site you visit and
| labels you accordingly
|
| Few questions for the knowledgeable: - Is it be
| possible to disable? - Will they be releasing the datasets
| for how these ML models are constructed? - Do sites in
| "incogito mode" contribute to analysis?
| jefftk wrote:
| See https://github.com/WICG/floc
|
| _> Is it be possible to disable?_
|
| "A site should be able to declare that it does not want to be
| included in the user's list of sites for cohort calculation.
| This can be accomplished via a new interest-cohort permissions
| policy." For a per-user opt out, a browser extension could
| easily block it.
|
| _> Will they be releasing the datasets for how these ML models
| are constructed?_
|
| "The browser uses machine learning algorithms to develop a
| cohort based on the sites that an individual visits. The
| algorithms might be based on the URLs of the visited sites, on
| the content of those pages, or other factors. The central idea
| is that these input features to the algorithm, including the
| web history, are kept local on the browser and are not uploaded
| elsewhere -- the browser only exposes the generated cohort."
|
| This code will be in the browser, which is open source.
|
| _> Do sites in "incogito mode" contribute to analysis?_
|
| "All sites with publicly routable IP addresses that the user
| visits when not in incognito mode will be included in the POC
| cohort calculation."
|
| (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
| lawwantsin17 wrote:
| All this says is, we have enough information on you to stop
| tracking you now.
| kyrra wrote:
| mirror: https://archive.is/iPM0A
| kogus wrote:
| This article is full of basic self-contradictions.
|
| The very first sentence: It's difficult to
| conceive of the internet we know today --with information
| on every topic, in every language, at the fingertips of
| billions of people -- without advertising as its economic
| foundation.
|
| He literally describes Wikipedia, which is _not_ based on
| advertising as its economic foundation.
|
| Immediately after that, he says: 72% of people
| feel that almost all of what they do online is being
| tracked by advertisers, technology firms or other companies, and
| 81% say that the potential risks they face because of data
| collection outweigh the benefits
|
| If that's true, then we are already far past the point where
| everyone just expects intrusive spying to be a normal part of web
| use. If that feeling were going to disrupt the advertising
| business, then it would already have done so. Therefore, his next
| comment is categorically false (though I wish it were true):
| If digital advertising doesn't evolve to address the growing
| concerns people have about their privacy and how their
| personal identity is being used, we risk the future of the
| free and open web.
|
| I think another comment here by user samschooler nails it -
| Google wants to block intrusions by its competitors under the
| guise of protecting privacy, while opening up new doors to
| tracking that only it can take advantage of.
|
| The right way to respect user privacy in advertising is much
| simpler: just use what they voluntarily gave you (i.e., the words
| in their search terms) to present relevant advertisements. That
| may not provide as great of a "benefit of relevant advertising",
| as he puts it, but that's fine with me.
| passivate wrote:
| Will there come a time when an OS ships with a built-in ad-
| blocker, similar to a built-in firewall, but for privacy?
| kall wrote:
| I mean "Prevent Cross Site Tracking" is enabled by default in
| Safari. It doesn't block the display of ads, but it's basically
| a real tracker blocker like ghostery.
| superkuh wrote:
| Privacy first, freedom a distant third or fourth. As everything
| becomes HTTPS _only_ due to cargo-culting by people applying
| business practices outside of context the re-centralization of
| the web will be complete. A handful of single points of failure
| (the TLS cert authorities that everyone groups up in) will exist
| for governments /public to pressure, for accidents to happen, and
| for money to corrupt.
| rakhodorkovsky wrote:
| Could you expand on your concerns? How should we go about
| addressing them?
| superkuh wrote:
| If you're the person deciding weather or not to serve
| HTTP+HTTPS or just HTTPS, chose to serve HTTP+HTTPS. When
| chosing a TLS cert authority, consider using sometime other
| than LetsEncrypt even though they're awesome. _Everyone_
| using them is not awesome.
| [deleted]
| b0tzzzzzzman wrote:
| I wonder how this will be a shield from the increasing
| Congressional probes on technology companies. I see how this will
| continue moving the narratives. Its hard to explain mainstream
| technical issues without damaging reductism.
|
| Not looking forward to those discussions in the future.
| getpost wrote:
| Even though Google is being investigated or sued in several
| jurisdictions regarding its data collection practices, I think
| this change is down to Apple. Google can fight governments using
| the legal system indefinitely, but Apple can and did just decide
| that better disclosures were required. YouTube was recently
| updated on the app store, but gmail etc have not been updated in
| months.
| srhngpr wrote:
| The Axios version [0] of this is so much more palatable, to the
| point and not behind a paywall. Can we maybe consider swapping to
| this instead?
|
| https://www.axios.com/google-goodbye-individual-user-trackin...
| CivBase wrote:
| "Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust"
|
| That's quite the oxymoron of a title.
|
| Regarding the article, it seems like Google is just doing the
| bare minimum to keep up with the rest of the industry when it
| comes to privacy. Every step they make comes shortly after others
| in the market have already taken a similar step[0]. Google is on
| top and they want to keep it that way. And they know they can so
| long as they keep pace just enough so as not to anger their users
| enough for them to switch away from the Google platforms they're
| comfortable with.
|
| [0] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/02/23/latest-firefox-
| rele...
|
| > Today, we're making explicit that once third-party cookies are
| phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track
| individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them
| in our products.
|
| Google is in a position where they don't _need_ to track
| individuals across the web. Most people have become dependent on
| Google 's products and services. Even third-party websites are
| often dependent on Google services which feed them data in one
| form or another (Google Analytics, Google Sign-In, ReCaptcha,
| Google Cloud, etc). If anything, this move is beneficial to
| Google because they only have to make a small sacrifice to
| handicap their competition.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| > That's quite the oxymoron of a title.
|
| Not necessarily true if you've seen how much Google bends over
| backwards to protect privacy inside the company. Data is a
| liability, after all.
| itsbits wrote:
| I see most of you guys are saying that Google is doing foulplay
| to be unicorn of advertising. Just wanted to understand what else
| current technologies can replace third-party cookies? Like third-
| party localStorage is possible?
| beshrkayali wrote:
| Google charting a course towards a privacy-first web is like the
| tobacco industry "charting a course" towards healthier people.
| eternalny1 wrote:
| This is not true, they say they are switching from third-party
| cookies to FLoC.
|
| The EFF calls FLoC "bad for privacy". More information here:
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/dont-play-googles-priv...
| h0nd wrote:
| Sometime I dont get the full article, so here for those with the
| same issue:
|
| Google plans to stop selling ads based on individuals' browsing
| across multiple websites, a change that could hasten upheaval in
| the digital advertising industry.
|
| The Alphabet Inc. company said Wednesday that it plans next year
| to stop using or investing in tracking technologies that uniquely
| identify web users as they move from site to site across the
| internet.
|
| The decision, coming from the world's biggest digital-advertising
| company, could help push the industry away from the use of such
| individualized tracking, which has come under increasing
| criticism from privacy advocates and faces scrutiny from
| regulators. Google's heft means that its move is also likely to
| stoke a backlash from some competitors in the digital ad
| business, where many companies rely on tracking individuals to
| target their ads, measure their effectiveness and stop fraud.
| Google accounted for 52% of last year's global digital ad
| spending of $292 billion, according to Jounce Media, a digital-ad
| consultancy. "If digital advertising doesn't evolve to address
| the growing concerns people have about their privacy and how
| their personal identity is being used, we risk the future of the
| free and open web," David Temkin, the Google product manager
| leading the change, said in a blog post Wednesday. Google had
| already announced last year that it would remove the most widely
| used such tracking technology, called third-party cookies, in
| 2022. But now the company is saying it won't build alternative
| tracking technologies, or use those being developed by other
| entities, to replace third-party cookies for its own ad-buying
| tools. Instead, Google says its ad-buying tools will use new
| technologies it has been developing with others in what it calls
| a "privacy sandbox" to target ads without collecting information
| about individuals from multiple websites. One such technology
| analyzes users' browsing habits on their own devices, and allows
| advertisers to target aggregated groups of users with similar
| interests, or "cohorts," rather than individual users. Google
| said in January that it plans to begin open testing of buying
| using that technology in the second quarter. Google's abandonment
| of individualized tracking across multiple sites has the
| potential to reshape the industry, given the market power of its
| ad-buying tools. About 40% of the money that flows from
| advertisers to publishers on the open internet--meaning the part
| of digital advertising outside of closed systems such as Google
| Search, YouTube or Facebook --goes through Google's ad-buying
| tools, according to Jounce. Google says its announcement on
| Wednesday doesn't cover its ad tools and unique identifiers for
| mobile apps, just for websites. But its plan is the latest sign
| that the tide might be turning on user tracking more broadly.
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| depend on each other. Photo illustration: Jaden Urbi Apple Inc.
| is pursuing its own plans to limit tracking of app usage by
| requiring developers to get opt-in permission from users before
| collecting an advertising identifier for iPhones. At the same
| time, European Union privacy regulators have fielded multiple
| complaints about the information that websites share with third
| parties about what content users are viewing as part of such
| tracking. One set of complaints comes from Brave Software Inc.,
| maker of a privacy-focused web browser, where Google's Mr. Temkin
| was chief product officer until last summer. Google says Mr.
| Temkin's involvement in its plan demonstrates its commitment to
| user privacy. Brave didn't immediately respond to a request for
| comment. Google's changes come as big tech companies face
| multiple antitrust investigations. Smaller digital-ad companies
| that use cross-site tracking have accused Apple and Google of
| using privacy as a pretext for changes that hurt competitors. And
| Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg in January said in
| an earnings call that "Apple has every incentive to use their
| dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and
| other apps work." In the U.K., the Competition and Markets
| Authority, the country's top antitrust regulator, last month
| opened a formal probe into Google's phasing out of third-party
| cookies from its Chrome browser. The probe stemmed from a
| complaint from a group of marketers that argued Google's plan
| would cement the company's heft in the online advertising space.
| A Google spokesman said the company has been briefing the U.K.'s
| CMA on its plan to end its own use of unique tracking across
| multiple websites. Google's announcement complicates advertising-
| industry efforts to come up with an alternative, more privacy-
| friendly technology for targeting individual consumers, such as
| the one being led by the Partnership for Responsible Addressable
| Media, a group of advertisers and advertising technology
| companies, that would rely on new identifiers, like strings of
| numbers and letters derived from users' email addresses. Without
| mentioning the partnership's effort directly, Mr. Temkin referred
| to identifiers "based on people's email addresses" as examples of
| tools Google won't use. Google acknowledged that other companies
| may push ahead with other ways to track users. Companies that use
| parts of Google's advertising infrastructure, such as its ad
| exchange, could potentially still sell ads that use their own
| unique identifiers, Google said. But the company said it won't
| use or invest in such tools for ads it sells. "We realize this
| means other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad
| tracking across the web that we will not," Mr. Temkin wrote in
| the blog post. "We don't believe these solutions will meet rising
| consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to
| rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions." There are exceptions
| to Google's plan. The company's limit on unique tracking
| identifiers doesn't extend to so-called first-party data--
| information a company gets directly from a customer. For
| instance, websites will be able to sell ads based on users'
| activity only on that specific site. It also means Google will
| continue to allow advertisers to aim ads on Google services like
| YouTube at specific clients for whom they already have contact
| information. But when the changes go into effect, Google will
| stop targeting such ads at those people when they are browsing
| other websites. Nestle SA, a large advertiser that Google had
| briefed on the changes, said it welcomed the initiative on
| privacy grounds. "We have long since recognized and advocated for
| the importance of first-party data, and it'll become even more
| vital in a privacy-first world," said Aude Gandon, Nestle's
| global chief marketing officer. Write to Sam Schechner at
| sam.schechner@wsj.com and Keach Hagey at keach.hagey@wsj.com
| wazoox wrote:
| "Mr. Fox : charting a course towards a better coop."
|
| Yeah, well. Not holding my breath on this one :)
| cutenewt wrote:
| > However, Google will still allow its advertising customers to
| target users across its range of services -- from YouTube, to
| Gmail, and Search -- if users are logged into their Google
| accounts, Digiday reported. The announcement also doesn't affect
| mobile apps and mobile-app trackers. Similarly, the announcement
| also doesn't prevent publishers from selling ads based on
| information about how a user behaved on their specific site.
|
| Looks like Google can still target users who are signed in. From
| this article: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-to-stop-
| tracking-indi...
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Once they've done this I wonder how hard it would be for Google
| to make an Apple like "do you want this website to track
| you/share data with these websites?" popup in Chrome. To reduce
| the efficiency of Facebooks data capturing/targeting and
| profitability of their advertising?
|
| Technically more challenging of course.
| samizdis wrote:
| There's an archived, no-paywall, version here:
|
| https://archive.is/qlvcE
| happyconcepts wrote:
| Perhaps it's as simple as google was previously paid for access
| to that data by government(s) but now it's no longer lucrative.
| [deleted]
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Hypothesis: the real motivation is that Google has determined the
| following:
|
| 1) we can sell all our ads for just as much money anyway, even
| without targeting based on web browsing, because the advertisers
| will take what we let them get
|
| 2) targeting based on browsing history is more complicated,
| requiring more developers and server capacity, which Google could
| certainly afford but it has plenty of other things to do that pay
| off better
|
| 3) it turns out that advertising based on what website you are
| currently on, works just as well anyway; to put it another way,
| all that "show a person who just bought a car an ad for another
| car" targeting was not really working.
|
| "We respect privacy" sounds better than "our targeting
| accomplished almost nothing and you'll buy the ads anyway."
| [deleted]
| izacus wrote:
| Well this is kinda obvious - and a good thing I guess? If
| Google can sell ads without tracking everyone, that seems like
| the best win? It protects our privacy and removes them from the
| fight for more tracking in pretty much the easiest way
| possible.
| tehlike wrote:
| Google doesn't work that way, and in general a corporation
| pretty much converges to a point where they will put resources
| on wherever there's dollar.
|
| You are underestimating the big picture, which is - google is
| really left between apple and regulations (gdpr, ccpa etc)
| pushing privacy front and google have no choice but to go in
| this area.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "...will put resources on wherever there's a dollar."
|
| Yes, but it may be that they've decided there's no dollar
| here. Or, to put it another way, they get that dollar whether
| they track your browser history or not, so why bother? It's
| more like cutting corners, which corporations are most
| certainly willing to do, but in this case we like it (but
| that is probably only incidentally of interest to top
| executives).
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > to put it another way, all that "show a person who just
| bought a car an ad for another car" targeting was not really
| working.
|
| Boy that sure is true for me and has been for a long time. I'm
| often bewildered not by how accurate my ads are, but rather by
| how braindead they seem to be. I'm not convinced algorithm-
| based ads work at all.
|
| In fact I would hypothesize that ads are often more effective
| when they are unexpected, for something the viewer has never
| considered buying before. A targeted system would hide such
| ads.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Excellent point which I had not considered before.
| wooptoo wrote:
| This is in line with Google announcing the availability of icon
| fonts today. Five years too late and everyone else is already
| doing it.
| crazypython wrote:
| In that case, will Google remove the "X-Client-Data" identifier,
| which is sent every time you visit any third-party site that uses
| any google resource, such as Google Fonts, Google Analytics, or
| DoubleClick? I doubt so. They and by extension the government
| will still track your specific web browsing- as in the title,
| they just won't sell ads based on it.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >>Google plans to stop selling ads based on individuals' browsing
| across multiple websites >> to target ads without collecting
| information about individuals from multiple websites
|
| Key words:
|
| Individual: They might still track persons by group, by placing
| people into pools of like-minded internet users and track the
| browsing trends of this group.
|
| Browsing: Geographic location, sleep cycles, or media
| streaming/viewing preferences are still on the table.
|
| Multiple: Tracking within one website is still a thing. YouTube
| habits are still a go.
|
| Websites: Apps, and everything we do with them, are not
| "websites".
|
| While I think this is a step in the right direction, I don't see
| this statement as very limiting. It only addresses a very narrow
| type of tracking.
| sbarre wrote:
| Yeah at which point does their sub-grouping effectively reduce
| us back down to identifiable individuals in everything but
| name?
| beshrkayali wrote:
| The other post (which was strangely marked as a duplicate of
| this) was towards https://blog.google/products/ads-
| commerce/a-more-privacy-fir....
| yur3i__ wrote:
| This may be my personal bias against google talking but I see the
| removal of third party cookies less as a privacy first move and
| more as a move to consolidate their monopoly on user data. If
| they can already identify people via the browser then they don't
| need cookies to do so like other organizations would.
| jMyles wrote:
| It's unfathomable that this has become such a complex ordeal,
| except insofar as that confusion has been a source of
| profitability for advertisers.
|
| The first principles are exceedingly simple:
|
| What I want: for small, insurgent, creative businesses who want
| to specifically get my attention to be able to do that through
| inexpensive, surgical messaging rather than mass advertising.
|
| What I don't want: for middlemen (or anyone) to facilitate this
| using information I didn't intend to make public and can't
| verifiably stop my browser (and other tech) from shedding.
| EasyTiger_ wrote:
| Find it difficult to believe anything they say.
| gumby wrote:
| I don't understand this prediction (emphasis mine):
|
| > Google's heft means that its move is also likely to _stoke a
| backlash_ from some competitors in the digital ad business, where
| many companies rely on tracking individuals to target their ads,
| measure their effectiveness and stop fraud.
|
| Isn't this just an opportunity for these guys to differentiate
| themselves from the 900 lb gorilla? And if that tracking really
| leads to ads with higher conversion rates then those competitors
| will do better than Google (until, if those ads really are
| better, the latter reverses its decision).
|
| BTW this is not in any way a defense of intrusive tracking, which
| I consider both a tragedy and a significant waste of money. My
| intuition is that this tracking adds little to no benefit. I
| suspect we're still in the at least "50% of advertising spend is
| wasted"* world; more like 70%-80%. This is another nut to be
| cracked, and one unlikely to be addressed by any incumbent.
|
| * Attributed to John Wanamaker (among others, though I feel he is
| the most likely source)
| voisin wrote:
| Will Facebook follow suit now, or continue to whine about Apple's
| impact to small businesses?
| nibsfive wrote:
| Google is by far the most privacy respecting data company on
| earth. Between this, not using Gmail, not operating in China for
| ethical reasons, it's not clear what more people could want.
| Don't use it if it doesn't work for you, but it's clearly being
| handled thoughtfully.
| newbie578 wrote:
| You are honestly right, but no one will admit it. Apple is imo
| the worst of the big tech, willingly working with CCP but you
| won't hear a bad word about them here, as long as the new Mac
| has a working keyboard which Apple themselves broke several
| iterations before...
| jMyles wrote:
| > what more people could want
|
| Open source audits of manipulative algorithms. It's really that
| simple.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Independent audits I could understand, but open-source?
| That's a big fraction of their "secret sauce". I don't know
| if that's a reasonable ask.
| jMyles wrote:
| Yes, I understand it will cost them money. But I urge that
| we look forward to a world where black-box algorithms don't
| decide which information we see, and on which basis.
| sn_master wrote:
| Many modern ML algorithms aren't clear on how they make
| decisions even if you have the code generating the models
| themselves.
| qrbLPHiKpiux wrote:
| When am I able to downvote something?
| beshrkayali wrote:
| Why is this marked as a duplicate? What is it a duplicate of?
| salamander014 wrote:
| I am biased to think this was going to be just a bunch of hoopla
| coming from Google. They are the last company I'd expect to
| actually care about user privacy.
|
| "That's why last year Chrome announced its intent to remove
| support for _third-party cookies_ ," aka only Google's cookies
| are "safe". Sounds like Google is going to try and block it's
| competitors from being able to gain the information Google uses
| to make money (tracking information for ad revenue.)
|
| Also this was written like someone needed to fill in the article
| for a C-Level headline after the headline was already chosen.
| Disappointing that a company like this maintains it's
| stranglehold on a market and tool (now commodity) that regular
| people have no understanding of.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> remove support for third-party cookies, " aka only Google's
| cookies are "safe"_
|
| If you are on a site, first-party cookies are cookies for that
| site and third-party cookies are cookies for any other site. It
| is "third-party" from the perspective of the site, not the
| perspective of the browser.
|
| (Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself)
| stiray wrote:
| This is actually quite simple.
|
| If google analytics, recaptcha, tag manager,... are going to the
| graveyard or they becomes payable, there is something to it. If
| it stays, the google statement is a blatant lie.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I never thought I would mistrust Google as much as I already
| mistrust Facebook, but here we are.
|
| You can target ads based on the content of the webpage they are
| displayed on instead of constantly spying on everyone.
|
| How about we go back to that?
| manigandham wrote:
| 1) Google is switching to cohort-based analysis rather than
| individual data. It's not a complete shut off.
|
| 2) Google already has plenty of 1st-party data from search,
| gmail, maps, news, etc which is more than enough to sustain the
| same targeting abilities.
| hughw wrote:
| "Keeping the internet open and accessible for everyone requires
| all of us to do more to protect privacy -- and that means an end
| to not only third-party cookies, but also any technology used for
| tracking individual people as they browse the web."
| Havoc wrote:
| Out of the goodness of their hearts no doubt
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Suddenly Facebook becomes a more valuable company than Google.
| People willingly give Facebook all kinds of juicy data that they
| have no problem selling ads for. Unless there is some kind of
| heavy penalty for this behavior (that can't become a "cost of
| doing business" and passed onto other businesses), all of these
| changes will just make Facebook more profitable.
| drxzcl wrote:
| Maybe, but the ads I get on Facebook are a horror show of not
| really interesting almost garbage offerings. For all the data
| they have, they do a piss poor job of presenting me with
| enticing opportunities.
|
| I'll take context/search relevant ads on google and Adsense
| every day.
| skinkestek wrote:
| Seems we get different ads:
|
| From 2006 until about last summer Google only served me
| useless ads.
|
| Facebook on the other hand managed to pick a number of ads
| that were in fact interesting. I have bought through them a
| couple of times which is quite amazing given that I think I
| _easily_ spend 100 times more on Google properties or web
| properties with Google ads.
| rblatz wrote:
| Somehow Facebook got the idea that I would be into non
| alcoholic drink mixers. They showed me so many ads for this
| class of product that I would absolutely never buy. It was
| like half a year of those irrelevant ads. Facebook
| advertising is a dumpster fire from my perspective.
| sn_master wrote:
| FB and Instagram are infested with dropshipping scams.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| What's a drop shipping scam? I googled but I still don't get.
| sn_master wrote:
| https://youtu.be/pBqLKZRDtqs
| nerdjon wrote:
| I am a little curious why Google did not just announce that they
| were getting behind the system that Mozilla and Apple started
| talking about a year or 2 ago? (Or at least that they were
| working with them on something)
|
| Otherwise like many others this makes me think that Google is
| still doing something fishy here and I don't trust it.
|
| Edit: For anyone curious what I am talking about
| https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...
| [deleted]
| Nagyman wrote:
| Maybe they see the writing on the wall and they are conceding
| that they don't _need_ website visit tracking at the individual
| level. Instead, just mapping individuals into _categories_ is
| sufficient for targeting.
|
| They'll categorize websites (as they already do) and put you
| into that category, but forego tracking exactly which
| website/page put you there. The specific page is probably more
| granularity and privacy invading than they need to continue
| printing money. Think Netflix movie categorization; who cares
| which movie I watched put me into the Norwegian-Horror-Romance-
| Action category, as long as my preferences are known, targeting
| will continue working.
|
| While it's great for debugging how someone got into a bucket,
| all that's really needed is the bucket, not the raindrop. I'm
| certain they'd like to continue knowing those buckets though,
| so getting ahead of that is critical to their business.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| The systems could be identical down to the last byte, and
| Google would never join. Google is in no world going to hand
| over control of their prime revenue-generating stream to TWO of
| their arch-rivals.
| nerdjon wrote:
| What Mozilla and Apple announced was meant to be a standard
| that worked across all browsers (if accepted).
|
| It is in Google's best interest that whatever system they use
| works regardless of browser.
|
| Largely I agree but Google's relationship with Mozilla and
| Apple is a little more complicated than "arch-rivals".
| sagivo wrote:
| It's a good time to pivot. Google is one ad-block away from
| loosing 70% of their revenue [1]. They should adopt the model
| that DuckDuckGo uses [2] and offer ads based on search query vs
| user data tracking.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266471/distribution-
| of-g...
|
| [2] https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-revenue-model/
| api wrote:
| They should also offer a paid search engine with more advanced
| features and better results. I would pay for that if the cost
| were reasonable.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| You mean one where SEO-driven garbage content didn't flood
| the ten first pages of results? Isn't that a lost battle, ie,
| wouldn't the same guerilla army of SEO marketers who've
| driven things to where they are right now find ways to
| pollute that too?
| petepete wrote:
| I'd pay for the old Google Image Search and the ability to
| blacklist Pinterest.
| skinkestek wrote:
| I used to keep a txt file containing something like:
|
| -site:highrankingspamsite1.com
| -site:highrankingspamsite2.com etc
|
| And then I would paste that in at the end of each query.
|
| Today they've removed that kind of spam so I don't need
| that.
|
| Today my problem is that they fuzz my queries to include
| useless results. Not a spam problem rather than a problem
| of Google not realizing that I only want relevant results.
|
| But of course, removing results that doesn't contain what I
| search for is easy and not an interesting machine learning
| problem so why should anyone care to fix that?
|
| (That said: lately things have improved, so maybe I should
| just shut up and hope nobody at Google notices and puts
| back the insane fuzzing.)
| oblio wrote:
| > Today they've removed that kind of spam so I don't need
| that.
|
| Try looking for images and see how many results in the
| first "pages" are not from Pinterest.
| [deleted]
| eek04_ wrote:
| If you want to avoid the term expansion, just put double
| quotes around the words you want to hard require.
|
| As for including "useless" results - that's never a goal,
| the goal is always to rank the results in the best
| possible way. What's the best possible way varies
| depending on the user, and relatively large term
| expansion is useful for certain users in certain cases.
| girvo wrote:
| Which is fine, except even that seems to be ignored
| sometimes.
| skinkestek wrote:
| > If you want to avoid the term expansion, just put
| double quotes around the words you want to hard require.
|
| Lucky you if that consequently works for you. It is
| getting better lately, but from 2009 to 2019 they've more
| or less consequently ignored both dpuble quotes and their
| own verbatim option.
|
| BTW: the way you write make it sound like you work in
| search. Is that correct?
| topkeks wrote:
| No they haven't. Quotes have always worked like the
| previous poster described.
| api wrote:
| A paid search engine could have advanced features like
| "exclude this site from future results" or "don't show me
| content like this" that used semantic AI profiling. It
| could leverage more CPU-intensive and data-intensive AI
| features because you are paying for it so the economics
| work.
|
| Free search incentivizes the cheapest (in CPU and other
| resource terms) search possible and monetizing in ways that
| add the least actual value.
| s3tz wrote:
| A drag and drop filter builder alone and I'd fork over a
| subscription.
| kennyadam wrote:
| I pay for Google One and would love it if they included no
| ads in with that. I bet a lot more people would take it up
| too.
| [deleted]
| rafaelturk wrote:
| This is a good sign, however I can't read any actual concreate,
| real, effective, actions here..
| blackbear_ wrote:
| They are referring to the chromium privacy sandbox:
| https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb...
| rafaelturk wrote:
| Yes.. something that Safari and Firefox are years ahead. My
| point is: From Title `Charting a course towards a more
| privacy-first web` expectation is for a real shift in Google
| policies and actions.
| rafaelturk wrote:
| `... we've been working with.. ` Emphasis in the `gerund` terms
| used and vague promisses made: We will be thinking about doing
| something..
| hedora wrote:
| I briefly hoped this meant they were giving up on ad targeting.
|
| However, my reading of this is that they've given up on embedding
| trackers in websites, and instead will embed trackers at the
| operating system level, where they can gather even more
| information.
|
| The stuff about cohorts describes standard clustering algorithms
| that have been used for ad targeting for decades.
|
| This doesn't sound like a win for privacy. It sounds like
| greenwashing of a massively expanded surveillance infrastructure.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I remember a small story, decades ago, about a company/univeristy
| which was left holding the bag when the government cancelled
| their contract. They were constructing a lens system to go into a
| satellite which could purportedly read the issue date on a dime
| lying on the sidewalk. It was something like $15M. The
| implication was that the government had found something even
| better, and gone with that instead. If Google is publicly giving
| up on a particular, unpopular technology to buy some PR, I
| strongly suspect that they've already figured out something which
| will work "better" behind the scenes.
|
| There's a lot of confusion over what this story is actually
| saying, and, given the obscurity with which Google deals with
| it's tech, I don't think this is going to get cleared up, leaving
| room for a lot of speculation. But one thing is absolutely
| certain: There's no possible way that Google is going to make a
| change to their biggest money maker that would make them LESS
| money. Maybe that just means that they consider their duopoly
| enough of a barrier that advertisers will be forced to accept
| less-targeted marketing, but I doubt it...
| notatoad wrote:
| it's important to remember that google's goal isn't to track
| you, it's to make money. So finding something that works better
| isn't necessarily a better way to track you, just a better way
| to make money.
|
| tracking, including the costs of collecting and storing all
| that data as well as the PR cost of people being creeped out by
| all that data you store, is expensive. Given how accurately i'm
| targeted by most advertising (not very) it seems perfectly
| reasonable to assume that ads will be just as effective and
| just as revenue-generating if their tracking becomes a bit less
| granular.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > their biggest money maker
|
| Correction: if you go by the profit reports from Alphabet,
| Google Display Ads is not their biggest money maker by a long
| shot. That's still Search Ads
| ppod wrote:
| Point of information: that's a point of information.
| jedimastert wrote:
| You right
| oxfordmale wrote:
| It is known that personally yargeted advertisements are
| relatively ineffective compared to advertising targeted at a
| group. For example, advertising for luggage on a travel website
| tends to lead to higher click through rates rather than showing
| a personalised advertisement. Personalized ads often try to
| market products you just have bought.
| sn_master wrote:
| That's true for the B1 bomber. During the presidential
| campaign, when Reagan complained about the jobs lost due to its
| cancellation, Carter arranged for security clearance for him to
| know about the F-117 and stealth technology which rendered the
| B1 obsolete. Later on, Reagan restarted the B1 production
| anyway.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| heavy bombers reached their ceiling, i think with the b-52.
| developing new bombers, as far as i can see, is a criminal
| waste of resources, post Cold War.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The B-52 can be detected with COTS equipment by anyone who
| can solder and watch a Youtube video. The B-2 could not be
| detected by the most advanced radar equipment available to
| the time of its launch, and even today most equipment not
| fielded by or funded by Russia or the US could not detect
| it. Your mailbox key literally has a larger RCS than the
| B-2.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| russia doesn't need bombing anymore. The stealth bomber
| has had the rug pulled out from beneath its feet. It was
| effectively obsolete from day one.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance, but I'm probably not the only one
| who is wondering what COTS and RCS mean here?
| joshyeager wrote:
| Commercial Off The Shelf
|
| Radar Cross Section
| cjhockey wrote:
| COTS: Commercial off the shelf, stuff you can buy easily.
|
| RCS: Radar Cross Section - how big of a reflection an
| object makes at radar wavelengths.
| KMag wrote:
| COTS -> Commercial off-the-shelf
|
| RCS -> Radar cross section
| whiw wrote:
| "Customer Off The Shelf" and "Radar Cross Section"
| bee_rider wrote:
| COTS = Commercial off the shelf (stuff you could pick up
| in a Radioshack before they became mini-Bestbuys,
| basically).
|
| RCS = Radar Cross-section (a bit more field-specific,
| more or less how "big" the thing looks on radar, but it
| is a bit jargony -- it depends on things like the
| material and radar wavelength).
| cturner wrote:
| There is some overlap, but the planes serve different
| purposes. The B1 is still in service.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Having a system that's almost as good but less offensive to
| some people (the Privacy Sandbox) seems like a reasonable
| enough justification to change tactics.
|
| Keep in mind that advertisers really don't care what your name
| is or where you live. They care that you are into action movies
| and buy fancy shampoos. The other stuff just creates trouble.
| insert_coin wrote:
| > Keep in mind that advertisers really don't care what your
| name is or where you live. They care that you are into action
| movies and buy fancy shampoos. The other stuff just creates
| trouble.
|
| Google cares on their own.
|
| And current advertisers may not care but who knows what kind
| of technology they may come up with in the future where that
| data might be valuable, having extra data has never been a
| problem for google.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Spot on. They're not going to abandon their core, their bread &
| butter, their monopoly without a new & improved Plan A.
|
| Full disclosure: I'm reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
| and I get more skeptical (and fearful) with each page turn.
|
| https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/living-und...
| btown wrote:
| Yep - without having read the article due to paywall, they're
| likely referring to FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts)
| https://github.com/google/ads-privacy/blob/master/proposals/...
|
| https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/a-more-privacy-fir...
|
| Make no mistake - as far as I can tell, this preserves Google's
| ability to track that you are, say, a new parent because you've
| searched for baby clothes. What it won't know is _which_ new
| parent you are. The system is designed to give probabilistic
| assurances of k-anonymity. But Google will no doubt tune those
| "cohort" memberships, and the value of "k," to capture the vast
| majority of current advertiser needs, while still being able to
| communicate to antitrust inquiries and the public that they are
| not giving people _unique_ identifiers. If anything, it hurts
| their competition more than it would hurt them, because it
| allows them to thread the needle in a privacy-conscious world.
| phkahler wrote:
| Would that method benefit from Googles existing people
| database? I'm thinking it would, and maybe disabling current
| tracking will kick the ladder out from potential competitors!
|
| Still probably a step in the right direction.
| kens wrote:
| Am I the only person who prefers well-targeted ads? If I see
| a targeted ad for a power supply IC on a random website,
| sometimes that's interesting and useful. On the other hand,
| Twitter is terrible at targeting and the ads are just
| annoying. Half are ads for random "as-seen-on-TV" quality
| products and the other half inexplicably think I am an
| oncologist.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Even if they stay with cohorts, I assume people will be
| members of a variety of them.
|
| New parent. Lives in Springfield. Works at a power plant.
| Drives a car. Owns house. Horrible credit rating. Married
| with 2+ kids. Voted in last election. Ex military. Ex
| astronaut. Once purchased an effective baldness cure. How
| many seemingly large cohorts does it take before you are
| really talking about one clearly identifiable person?
| laurent92 wrote:
| > How many large cohorts does it take before identifying a
| person
|
| It takes 33 "perfect" yes/no questions to identify uniquely
| anyone on earth. It is seemingly large since each question
| splits the world in two.
|
| Of course this is in a perfect world, but I remember seeing
| quizzes which would guess any object given a few yes/no
| question. Or perhaps it was people.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guess_Who%3F
|
| "Each player starts the game with a board that includes
| cartoon image of 24 people [...] Players alternate asking
| various yes or no questions to eliminate candidates."
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Does your person have glasses? Is your person male? Does
| he have facial hair?
|
| At that point the kids usually go for broke and ask me if
| my player is Susan.
| retzkek wrote:
| > Of course this is in a perfect world, but I remember
| seeing quizzes which would guess any object given a few
| yes/no question. Or perhaps it was people.
|
| https://en.akinator.com/
| oblio wrote:
| It doesn't load the CSS for me, Android/Firefox :-(
| laurent92 wrote:
| This game is incredible. The question always seem to be
| unrelated to the person to guess, and suddenly it guessed
| perfectly.
| williamscales wrote:
| On the other hand, I tried to get it to guess Mia Dolan
| and it took 36 questions, two of which involved Five
| Nights at Freddies
| [deleted]
| vineyardmike wrote:
| While I completely agree with your point, and the number
| required is probably pretty low, the point of FLOC is that
| no one will need to identify a real person for any "proper"
| reason.
|
| Advertising rarely is about targeting "John doe" but
| usually about targeting "[men] && [in Springfield] &&
| [searching for a baldness cures]".
|
| (I still will do everything in my technical power to
| disable floc, and still will never trust google). But I do
| think the implementation removes most of the advertising
| incentive to track on an individual person level.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Legitimate advertising. What about the other stuff? What
| about advertisers who want to swing very specific voters?
| What about nefarious people who want to put a malware
| link in front of a specific person. [active
| military]&&[over 55]&&[lives beside base X]&&[awake
| before 6am]&&[college education]&&[searched for
| "retirement planning"] will probably get you the most
| senior officer at a base/unit. Same too with senior
| politicians.
| [deleted]
| jefftk wrote:
| _> Even if they stay with cohorts, I assume people will be
| members of a variety of them._
|
| No, users are only in a single cohort: "cohort = await
| document.interestCohort()" -- https://github.com/WICG/floc
|
| (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for
| myself)
| sjs382 wrote:
| > without having read the article due to paywall,
|
| https://archive.vn/qlvcE
| josefx wrote:
| > that they are not giving people unique identifiers
|
| How far can this data be reversed? If I have a group of ten
| people can google tell with high reliability that probably
| three of them are homosexual, two have Alzheimer's and none
| are pregnant?
| darren_ wrote:
| > Make no mistake - as far as I can tell, this preserves
| Google's ability to track that you are, say, a new parent
| because you've searched for baby clothes. What it won't know
| is which new parent you are.
|
| If you've searched for baby clothes in Google there's
| absolutely nothing in the FLoC proposal that stops Google
| from inferring that you're a parent from that search and,
| idk, storing a bit in your profile or something.
|
| This proposal is about allowing ad targeting to interests or
| whatever without tracking your visits across the web - your
| browser generates the cohorts clientside (idk how the cohort
| assignment algorithms get standardised on, I guess that's
| where the 'tuning' would go). And yes, you could just tell
| your browser not to do that, or have it only use the most
| recent n days' data, or randomize your cohort, or freeze your
| cohort in time, or blocklist certain sites from ever entering
| your cohort, and so on.
|
| Where this ties into tracking if you're a parent is that
| while it doesn't prevent tracking that, it does lessen the
| incentive - if you're a parent, you're likely going to wind
| up in a parent-y cohort. Is the signal from the original
| search still going to be useful enough to warrant keeping
| around?
|
| (obligatory: googler, but nothing to do with ads)
| tomjen3 wrote:
| If the browser is supposed to send the information, what
| are they going to do with those of US who do not use
| Chrome? Are there plans to force firefox to follow the
| plan, and how will they prevent others from, say, making an
| extension to mess with the cohort numbers?
| contravariant wrote:
| Presumably people would just block the ads instead?
|
| Either way I reckon it's the same thing stopping people
| from just sending random data over google-analytics. So,
| not a whole lot, other than whatever anti-spam mechanisms
| google bothered to put in place.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> just sending random data over google-analytics.
|
| Back when I was in the security field, I heard
| discussions about this sort of thing as a form of attack.
| The question was whether a computer that sent false or
| incorrect information was either engaging in a DOS attack
| or was violating the CFAA in that it was using false
| information to access a service. The DOS attack would be
| on the tracking system rather than a website resource,
| false information to degrade the effectiveness of the
| tracking system overall. The CFAA angle would be that
| participation in ads/tacking was part of the contract for
| accessing the 'free' service, that by blocking ads or
| sending false info the user is using a false credential
| to access the service. At the time, many thought that by
| using an ad-blocker that users were failing to pay,
| passively stealing website content. Those who sent false
| information were engaged in active theft.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| This is approximately the time when you go from passively
| not agreeing to be tracked or have your attention stolen
| or your computer compromised by ad networks to
| collaborating with your fellow citizens to destroy the
| business of the ad networks by making it difficult to
| impossible to operate. In truth if every free ad
| supported service ceased to exist the internet would go
| on none the less.
| contravariant wrote:
| I'll grant that sending fake data is more active than
| merely not loading ads, but I personally consider not
| loading ads about as malicious as failing to read a
| billboard, or failing to subscribe when a webpage says
| 'Subscribe now'.
|
| I don't think I'll ever quite understand the idea that
| the user is under any obligation to do whatever. Just
| because their user-agent might have some default
| behaviour doesn't mean that the user-agent should be
| expected to act in the interest of the server.
|
| Though there's an argument to be made that sending lots
| of false data in response to a request to post personal
| information to google-analytics is a bit like
| manipulating a public survey by sending in silly answers.
| I'm not sure to what extent that is illegal but I'll
| grant that it's not exactly ethically correct.
| darren_ wrote:
| I think the expectation is other browsers will implement
| by default - the intention incidentally is that FLoC
| isn't a google specific tech, it enables private
| targeting by any ad vendor. The proposal seems to mostly
| to be by googlers but the association is with WICG which
| seems to have people from all over.
|
| As I noted in my original message - yes, its client side,
| you can do whatever. ('Whether the browser sends a real
| FLoC or a random one is user controllable'
| https://github.com/WICG/floc)
| curryst wrote:
| The user controllability is genius, that neatly ties up
| their problem. They have a legitimate option to get out
| of being targeted, which they know almost no one will
| ever use. They could probably even add a setup prompt on
| install that says something like "Let us know which of
| these categories apply to you, so we can tailor your
| browsing to your interests" and get people to fill out
| half of it for them so they don't have to guess.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > "Let us know which of these categories apply to you, so
| we can tailor your browsing to your interests"
|
| This prompt will never happen. The last thing Google
| wants is any additional association between their brand
| and advertising.
|
| Google's mode of operation has always been to sneak in
| the back door and count how many boxes of cereal you have
| while you are looking at underwear. Knocking on the front
| door and to ask if they can come in would likely never
| occur to them.
|
| There is no mention of Chrome being an ad supported
| product anywhere when you install it. They want that
| association completely out of people's heads.
| prox wrote:
| This would hopefully kill the endless cookie questioning
| toxik wrote:
| Cookie popups are now part of our superstitions, our
| Internet rites. A decent web page, it doesn't just track
| you and molest your integrity -- it asks first!
|
| I don't think we'll get away from the cookie popups,
| ever. It's just like the "I agree to the TOS / EULA"
| checkboxes. Legally toothless, but you'd better have one,
| just in case.
| btown wrote:
| And cookie popups are now part of any corporate general
| counsel's requirements if you're even running first-party
| cookies and/or any kind of analytics, regardless of
| third-party-cookie changes. They're not going anywhere.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > If the browser is supposed to send the information,
| what are they going to do with those of US who do not use
| Chrome?
|
| What would stop them from implementing FLoC in the cloud
| for non-Chrome users? Fundamentally, where the data is
| stored is meaningless. So long as they are pushing
| everything through this same "FLoC" model, they are
| claiming they won't be tracking individuals.
|
| So on Chrome, FLoC is local --your own browser working
| against you--for Safari and FireFox, FLoC is cloud based.
|
| So long as the web sites in question are running Google
| Analytics, they still have the software on your system on
| a huge number of sites.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> for Safari and FireFox, FLoC is cloud based_
|
| This would require being to identify a user when they are
| on many different sites (cross-site tracking), which all
| the major browsers intend to prevent.
|
| (Disclosure: I work at Google, speaking only for myself)
| ogre_codes wrote:
| First, you have to understand that Google as a company
| has lost all credibility in much of the community. There
| have been too many issues like this one where Google
| gives you the impression they are turning off tracking...
| but doesn't actually stop tracking you.
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
| tech/ne...
|
| There was also the Do not Track setting, which Google
| ignored. So in my book (and I'm not alone here), anything
| coming from Google is taken with a huge grain of salt.
|
| For some time, there has been a sort of cat and mouse
| game between advertisers and browser makers. Do you
| _know_ Google isn't using fingerprinting to identify us?
| Or just IP or some other means?
| jefftk wrote:
| _> Google as a company has lost all credibility in much
| of the community_
|
| What I'm saying is Safari [1], Firefox [2], and Chrome
| [3] are planning technical mitigations that would prevent
| anyone from implementing a cloud-based FLoC. Even if you
| don't believe Chrome, it wouldn't be possible in Safari
| or Firefox.
|
| _> Do you know Google isn't using fingerprinting to
| identify us? Or just IP or some other means?_
|
| https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/a-more-privacy-
| fir... has "once third-party cookies are phased out, we
| will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals
| as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in
| our products" and "our web products will be powered by
| privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking
| while still delivering results for advertisers and
| publishers" which seem pretty clear to me? Additionally,
| I work in client-side ads infra, and I'm pretty sure I
| would know if Google were fingerprinting users to target
| ads.
|
| [1] https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/
|
| [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Anti_tracking_polic
| y#1._Cr...
|
| [3] https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-
| privacy/privacy-sandb...
| toxik wrote:
| I think an important question with the FLOC stuff is sort of
| brushed aside.
|
| So, you have millions of users, and you make it
| "k-anonymous", or "anonymous if you squint real good". Is it
| really possible to find k such that privacy is meaningfully
| preserved, given the heaps of other information you have?
|
| Say I belong to some cohort, and you know my IP address. I
| think this would be enough to fingerprint me reliably, never
| mind OS version, browser, plugins, etc.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> and you know my IP address_
|
| https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-
| sandb... links to https://github.com/bslassey/ip-blindness
| for how they intend to handle this.
|
| (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for
| myself)
| somedude895 wrote:
| > There's no possible way that Google is going to make a change
| to their biggest money maker
|
| To be fair, Google's biggest money maker is their SEA, which
| doesn't rely on your behavioral data, since user intent is
| given through a search query.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Google owns the operating system running on half of all
| Americans' phones (and an even larger share overseas). On top
| of that, Chrome OS is continuing to gain market share.
|
| I think this is your answer right there.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Yep, third-party cookies must be very inefficient by now, as
| well as the js GA script that enables tracking. This is
| probably the first two things ad-blockers block.
|
| Of course they move away from this, the must have brainstormed
| and tested new ways for years. OTOH, it is stunning that we've
| invented tech that is stable even when an ad-blocker interferes
| with the webpage, cookies, js, requests, etc. Try that with
| binaries! (which is probably where they plan to move the code)
| amelius wrote:
| > a satellite which could purportedly read the issue date on a
| dime lying on the sidewalk.
|
| In the future, you don't have to rely on serendipity to find
| money on the street. You just use a satellite to find it for
| you.
| vmception wrote:
| this legend is decades old actually
|
| the US hegemony relies on a perception of omnipotence, so
| there will always be a lot of boisterous claims
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Two-service veteran here. In my observation, most people
| also "learn" about the military from Hollywood, which is
| almost always comically bad at portraying the kinds of
| people, cultures, technology, tactics, etc. actually in the
| military/government. What would _24_ have been without
| Chloe 's ability to hack the video camera on a 1980s alarm
| clock by logging into a GPS satellite?
| vmception wrote:
| Yeah, I feel like there were technological surprises by
| the federal government up to the 1980s but not really
| since then, but perception has been riding off of that
|
| Even the NSA presentations and code leaks this century
| didnt really have surprises more just angst about their
| lack of accountability
| ChristianGeek wrote:
| Some of us already use them to find Tupperware in the woods!
| 0_____0 wrote:
| not to rain on the parade here but reading the date on a dime
| puts you well into sub-milliarcsecond territory, well past what
| is possible to resolve with even a diffraction limited optical
| light telescope of any kind from space.
|
| Bigger telescope systems can resolve smaller objects, but even
| if you were to yeet an enormous, optically perfect, 10m
| telescope into the very lowest earth orbit possible (not
| maintainable due to atmospheric drag) you would still be a
| couple orders of magnitude away from being able to read the
| date on a dime.
| bb123 wrote:
| What does"sub-milliarcsecond territory" mean? I know nothing
| of satellite tech.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| it's an angular measurement. applied here it means the
| angular resolution of an optical system.
|
| a degree of arc is divided into minutes of arc (MoA)(1/60
| degree each), and there are 60 arcseconds in a minute of
| arc.
|
| Two points that are 1 milliarcsecond apart, projected on a
| flat surface 200km away, are about 1mm apart on that
| surface.
|
| edit: (can plug "tan(0.001 arcseconds) * 200km in mm" into
| google to check this out for yourself)
| burnte wrote:
| I believe his intent, especially with the word "purportedly",
| was so infer that the proposed system had amazing abilities,
| less than it was intended to be a perfectly accurate
| description.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I agree that it wasn't intended to be literal fact, just
| figured I'd take the opportunity to flex my mediocre
| optical systems knowledge. :p
| jerzmacow wrote:
| Could you describe what size of optical telescope you'd
| need to put in space to read the date on a dime? I'm very
| curious
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Check out this chart.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-
| limited_system#/me...
|
| I would guess that you'd need 0.25mm resolution, which at
| 200km would require 250microarcseconds angular res, which
| doesn't even register on that graph at any wavelength or
| size of telescope lol
|
| edit: this is a very 'spherical cow' analysis. i'm pretty
| sure that atmospheric effects will kill your ability to
| image stuff like this well before angular resolution
| will.
| usrusr wrote:
| Or it could mean that they have data showing that all that
| tracker targeting isn't actually providing the value to
| advertisers that they claim it provides and want to move on
| before that becomes common knowledge.
|
| I'd love to see my scenario be true, but I'm afraid that it's
| much less likely than yours.
| danielrhodes wrote:
| There are probably a few things going on:
|
| * Google sees the writing on the wall: people are becoming more
| privacy conscious, but more importantly governments in many
| countries are making motions to suggest this sort of tracking
| could be regulated in the future. They need to stay ahead of
| the curve.
|
| * The value of tracking people in this way may be less than
| everybody seems to think - not all data about a person's
| activities is equally monetizable. Just because you read an
| article about Julius Caesar and then looked at some clickbait
| article about Britney Spears doesn't mean an advertiser can
| sell you a chariot.
|
| * Google in making the first move can create an advantage for
| itself in the market
|
| * Much of Google's revenue comes from their own properties --
| in the case of search, they are already well positioned to show
| you relevant ads because you have shown intent. No need for
| cookies there.
|
| * Google has a dominant position with Chrome and the article
| suggests they want to do fingerprinting of a person's browsing
| behavior and put people into different cohorts without sending
| the raw data to Google. This is similar to how Apple does
| machine learning on device. If Google has exclusive access to
| these cohorts, they have a strong incentive to move to a
| cookie-less model because it puts other ad networks at a
| disadvantage.
| SilverRed wrote:
| It seems like you could get most of the benefits by just
| doing content aware adverts? Is the advert showing on a page
| about guitars? Show an advert about guitars and music
| accessories. We don't need that advert to follow us around
| for the next month.
|
| It also completely eliminates the creep factor and
| conspiracies around adverts. "How did they know I was
| interested in this, are they listening to my phone?" goes
| away when its the same as the content you are looking at
| currently.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Maybe that just means that they consider their duopoly enough
| of a barrier that advertisers will be forced to accept less-
| targeted marketing, but I doubt it...
|
| My guess is that they smell a change in the regulatory wind (EU
| and possibly US as well) and anticipate that if they get out
| ahead of it, those regulations will serve as a competitive moat
| against other advertisers.
|
| That, or their A/B testing has confirmed ad quality isn't
| remarkably improved over the combination of search-tuned ads,
| adsense topic ads tuned to the site the user is browsing, and
| display ads tuned by data the site owner vends to Google about
| the user to fine-tune ad selection for them. They have enough
| data to know one way or another, and if it turns out there's
| not enough value-add to justify retaining all that user
| browsing state, dropping collation and storage of it can free
| up room for dozens of new projects.
|
| It's easy to forget that one of the major constraints on what
| Google can do, at their scale, is storage and processing;
| they're so big that from most people's vantage points, those
| resources seem limitless, but inside Google, they know exactly
| how much they aren't doing because the machines and networking
| they already own are already pushing petabytes of data around
| and are already near max peak capacity for their mission-
| critical applications. Sometimes, the cheapest way to get more
| space for a new bet or an existing mission-critical task is to
| just stop doing something else.
| CarelessExpert wrote:
| > There's no possible way that Google is going to make a change
| to their biggest money maker that would make them LESS money.
|
| I know this sounds laughable given how toothless regulators
| have been thus far, but let's not forget that a) fines under
| GDPR have been growing and are likely to continue to do so,
| with ad tech in a particularly awkward spot, and b) both the EU
| and US governments and regulators have started nosing around
| big tech on a variety of fronts, including privacy and
| antitrust concerns.
|
| Given that, the cost-benefit analysis becomes pretty
| complicated. They may feel a shift to a scheme which lowers
| revenues while avoiding regulatory scrutiny now makes sense.
| JadoJodo wrote:
| I think the kicker here is what this post is NOT titled: "Google
| to Stop _Showing_ Ads Based on Your Specific Web Browsing"
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| > It's difficult to conceive of the internet we know today --
| with information on every topic, in every language, at the
| fingertips of billions of people -- without advertising as its
| economic foundation
|
| What's difficult to conceive is how the currently bloated and
| monetization heavy internet could survive without advertising. An
| internet composed of relevant and useful information stored as
| light weight documents could easily (and used to) exist without
| advertising. Without ads we probably wouldn't have millions of
| identical recipe sites with infuriating backstories, pop ups,
| share buttons, in-line promotions, etc. but we would still have
| people sharing their grandmother's apple pie recipe on personal
| sites along with a few paid services that add real value instead
| of SEO garbage and social fluff.
| sawmurai wrote:
| Yes, nothing more frustrating than quickly looking up a recipe
| detail whilst in the middle of cooking it and having to scroll
| deep, deeep, deeeeep down the useless SEO text only to scroll
| past that one tiny detail. My wife and I are creating our own
| cooking book as a PWA. Only bullet points, no fluff. Short:
| useful.
| dageshi wrote:
| Nostalgia is a hell of a drug
| oblio wrote:
| > What's difficult to conceive is how the currently bloated and
| monetization heavy internet could survive without advertising.
|
| The no-monetization web ship sailed circa 1995. The internet is
| about a lot of money and it will be about even more money. If
| it's not monetized through ads, it will be monetized in other
| ways (probably regular sales but most likely subscriptions).
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| I should have specified ad monetization or product placement,
| brand promotion and things in that vein. I'm not against
| commercializing of the internet but I am against the ad
| revenue model that heavily distorts the content and
| presentation. I don't know what the winning model looks like,
| lots have been suggested like micropayments, subscriptions,
| donations, and others more far fetched but none of that can
| take root until we remove the toxic ad industry.
| folkrav wrote:
| I'm still kind of surprised to see people think of the
| internet as this static information library it was originally
| thought as. It hasn't been this way for decades.
| folkrav wrote:
| > An internet composed of relevant and useful information
| stored as light weight documents could easily (and used to)
| exist without advertising.
|
| Any concrete traffic measurements between those sites then and
| now? I'd be extremely surprised if traffic didn't shoot up by
| orders of magnitude.
|
| That's also assuming that no ads means we'd go back to the
| mid-90s internet. Pretty sure there are still companies that
| would like to do business online, even without targeted ads.
| The tactics would change, that's it.
|
| > Without ads we probably wouldn't have millions of identical
| recipe sites with infuriating backstories, pop ups, share
| buttons, in-line promotions, etc.
|
| True for pop-ups, in-line promotions or ads. But SEO will be a
| thing as long as we have search engines. Hell, earlier search
| engines were getting gamed with keyword stacking all the damn
| time. Bringing you on the page and showing you ads wouldn't be
| enough to make money, but I don't see how you'd even get rid of
| sites wanting traffic. Unless you're really advocating for
| getting rid of commercially motivated sites - which I'll assume
| you're not, as it is kind of delusional, IMHO.
|
| > we would still have people sharing their grandmother's apple
| pie recipe on personal sites along with a few paid services
| that add real value instead of SEO garbage and social fluff
|
| That's a whole lot of extrapolation, and a rather subjective
| judgement call. Hell, one could definitely call this very site
| "social fluff".
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It is also a flat out lie because the "information on every
| topic, in every language, at the fingertips of billions of
| people" is not funded by ads, ads fund google, which keeps a
| 70% cut for themselves. Information is basically impossible to
| monetize these days unless people charge. Google does not
| create information, it copies/steals it.
|
| It is difficult to conceive Google without advertising as its
| economic foudnation.
| tehlike wrote:
| How did you come up with "google keeps 70% to themselves"
| fact?
|
| Google revenue cut is around 30%, not the other way around.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| https://mediatel.co.uk/news/2016/10/04/where-did-the-
| money-g...
| op03 wrote:
| Whats odd about the recipe story is my folks have accumulated
| quite a collection of cookbooks over the years, yet for
| mysterious reasons both prefer to endlessly scroll through the
| ad infested nightmare on every cooking site recommended by the
| Google app. Some of these sites have an Ad after every
| sentence.
| eek04_ wrote:
| As somebody that has quite a few shelf-meters (shelf-yards)
| of cookbooks: If I'm looking for a specific recipe, it's
| still faster to go through the online recipes than getting
| out the cookbooks and going through the index and finding it.
| My phone is also more practical to lug around than a
| cookbook.
| op03 wrote:
| Thats true.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| This is _not_ a major change from their previous stance.
|
| > investing in tracking technologies that uniquely identify web
| users as they move from site to site across the internet.
|
| Fundamentally they are still tracking people and still using your
| information to sell you advertising. They are just relying on
| hardware you buy and your own software to do it.
|
| One thing I've been curious about this whole time as they've been
| talking up "FLOC" is what they are doing with regards to other
| browsers. Are they simply giving up on the ability to track non
| Chrome users and rely on market share?
|
| The other piece this doesn't mention is it very specifically says
| "Web Browsing", not tracking in general, for example across
| applications on mobile devices or via integration into Android.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| > _" Instead, Google says its ad-buying tools will use new
| technologies it has been developing with others in what it calls
| a "privacy sandbox" to target ads without collecting information
| about individuals from multiple websites. One such technology
| analyzes users' browsing habits on their own devices, and allows
| advertisers to target aggregated groups of users with similar
| interests, or "cohorts," rather than individual users."_
|
| I'm having a hard time parsing this out, and seeing what's
| actually changed. How do they determine an individual's
| "cohort(s)", without collecting information about that individual
| across multiple websites?
|
| Is it simply that the data is collected and processed client-
| side, rather than server-side? Would using a non-Chrome browser
| effectively opt-out altogether, then? I find this difficult to
| believe.
| kuu wrote:
| This is probably related to the "ban" of third party cookies
| [1] and most likely they just found a way without using cookies
| but other technologies - most likely biometric features +
| Chrome data in case you're using Chrome
|
| [1] https://www.cookiebot.com/en/google-third-party-cookies/
|
| Edit: I did not have time to read it, but here is the paper and
| probably something like the algorithm they want to use:
| https://github.com/google/ads-privacy/blob/master/proposals/...
| cjg wrote:
| The idea is that they group you with N other similar people
| where N is large enough to anonymise you enough to stop the
| worst complaints but small enough that advertisers still find
| it useful.
|
| Some sort of principal component analysis to determine your
| "cohort".
|
| An advertiser isn't that interested that you are you. They care
| that you are, for example, 55 with an interest in gardening and
| have been looking at lawnmower review sites.
| derekp7 wrote:
| So if I look up the specs on a pair of Bose QC-35's, I won't
| get internet-stalked with ads for that specific pair of
| headphones for the next 3 weeks whenever I pull up a weather
| report? But in stead I may see an uptick in general
| audiophile ads if I'm constantly reading articles about new
| gear that comes out? At least that sounds like a partial win
| in my book -- the first case was too creepy because it was so
| blatant. The second one may be worse because it is more
| subtle, but it creeps me out less for some reason. Kind of
| like how 2-3 decades ago when computer magazines were a
| thing, I kind of expected ads for computer parts in those
| magazines.
|
| Edit: Actually, come to think about it, I wonder how people
| would have felt in the 80's if they got one of several
| editions of a newspaper based on magazines that they also
| subscribed to. Households that subscribed to fitness
| magazines would get a newspaper with more gym membership and
| weightlifting gear ads, and households that received
| woodworking magazines would have more Craftsman ads in their
| newspaper. Would people appreciate the customization of the
| paper, or would they see it as an invasion of privacy?
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Or you can just use an effective ad blocker (I use uBlock
| Origin) and not see ads at all. IDK why everyone doesn't do
| this.
| izacus wrote:
| "Owners of QC-35s" can easily be a cohort, especially since
| there's a lot of people in that group and it's easy hit the
| anonymization score required.
| amelius wrote:
| It's still bad. If you are in the X cohort and buy Y, the
| seller will know that you are in the X cohort if the seller
| targeted X, even if Y has nothing to do with X. This is the
| fundamental breach of privacy that Google can't get around.
| cjg wrote:
| Unfortunately if enough people have been looking at Bose
| QC-35s then there's no reason why that couldn't be a fact
| about your cohort.
| mfer wrote:
| You may still be stalked about the Bose QC-35's. It really
| depends on how they create the "cohorts". The new design
| doesn't tell us their intent here. People who are
| interested in Bose QC-35's could be a "cohort" you are put
| into.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| To me, ads following you around the internet about a
| specific thing that you browsed is just an example of how
| the targeting ad system is broken. A better ad system would
| see that you were interested in specific item and then
| advertise other items that mesh nicely with the use of the
| specific item. If you bought A, then there's better chances
| you's be willing to spend money on B too.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> if I look up the specs on a pair of Bose QC-35 's, I
| won't get internet-stalked with ads for that specific pair
| of headphones for the next 3 weeks whenever I pull up a
| weather report_
|
| The WSJ seems to be describing
| https://github.com/WICG/floc, but the kind of remarketing
| you're describing is what
| https://github.com/WICG/turtledove is intended to support.
| Advertisers would still be able to run that kind of
| personalized ad, but the browser API would not allow them
| to learn your browsing history in the process.
|
| (Disclosure: I work on ads and Google, speaking only for
| myself)
| Graffur wrote:
| I thought this was how it already worked..
| marlowe221 wrote:
| A non-Chrome browser is always a good idea.
| jefftk wrote:
| Here's Chrome's technical page for Privacy Sandbox:
| https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-privacy/privacy-sandb...
|
| The bit you're quoting sounds like the WSJ trying to describe
| https://github.com/WICG/floc. That depends on the browser
| choosing to support the API, yes.
|
| (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
| mfer wrote:
| This feels like some slight of hand targeting the current
| political and legal efforts looking into Google.
|
| For example, if they aren't collecting information on you than
| how do they have enough information to create cohorts? Is it
| that they are deeming information processed on your local
| computer running their software something that isn't them
| collecting? This seems like a form of misdirection.
|
| Without knowing the technical details (which one never knows
| with Google), it leave me the impression that they have moved
| some of their categorization software client side (Chrome, web
| workers, etc) and are saying that they aren't collecting the
| data in that case.
|
| Is it Google using remote devices as edge devices to do a bunch
| of work they'd been doing server side?
| samschooler wrote:
| I feel like the phrase "tracking individual people" is how Google
| is going to keep tracking you as well as they did before.
|
| With the announcement of federated learning of cohorts [0], it
| allows Google to use their massive amount of information they
| have on you already, as well as their dominance in AI to cut out
| the easy way of tracking people, and make it harder for anyone
| else to personalize ads.
|
| Don't get me wrong it's a good thing that we are removing third-
| party cookies, but the idea that Google is confident they can
| track you without them makes me worried for the future of
| advertising. This move is undoubtedly going to cement google as
| the best ad tracking company for some time into the future.
|
| [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/24/google-extremely-
| confident-a...
| rektide wrote:
| > With the announcement of federated learning of cohorts [0],
| it allows Google to use their massive amount of information
| they have on you already, as well as their dominance in AI to
| cut out the easy way of tracking people, and make it harder for
| anyone else to personalize ads.
|
| yes, yes yes yes. This proposal is that:
|
| * the web have no individual tracking
|
| * the browser, instead uploads our every activity across all
| sites into the cloud
|
| * the cloud/browser-operators (google, firefox, microsoft,
| opera, brave) take these troves of big data & apply machine
| learning to generate cohorts
|
| * the browser then places us into these cohorts
|
| this would, as parent post suggested, absolutely "cement google
| as the best ad tracking company". it also makes it radically
| harder to create a new browser. Brave would have to become not
| just browsing software you run on your computer, but a cloud-
| service, gathering reams of data like Google, generating
| cohorts out new big data systems. how is Lynx/elinks supposed
| to become compliant with this new proposal? how is anyone other
| than the already existing giants of the world supposed to do
| this?
|
| bold bold bold plan organize & own all the worlds data here.
| privacy on the web, but none in the web browser: brave new
| world Google. you madmen.
| qyph wrote:
| In floc no personal data or web history is uploaded to the
| cloud. This is the essence of "federated learning" - your
| browser does the big ml computation, then just uploads the
| result.
| rektide wrote:
| Where does the data to compute on come from?
|
| Personal information will attempted to be scrubbed, but it
| very much is an upload of one's detailed web history to the
| cloud. Google alleges they wont know it's my tracks, but
| these federated learning systems are all powered by endless
| reams of data gathered from us.
|
| That the decision of which cohort we are in can be done
| locally does not change the fact that that data has to come
| from somewhere, is gathered, en-mass, via huge bulk
| collections, of very specific, detailed data. It is only
| weasel words that it is called "not personal data"; our
| individuality is being harvested, tracked, modelled via
| these systems. That the information is free of personal
| identifiers does not make me feel much better about this
| all.
|
| And it is something few other enterprises will ever have
| the capability to repeat or compete with. It mandates the
| web browser be powered by clouds & big data.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Yeah what is the cohort size and how many cohorts can a person
| be part of? This sounds like an underhanded way Google can say
| they don't track individuals while in practice it is almost the
| same.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> what is the cohort size?_
|
| "The browser ensures that cohorts are well distributed, so
| that each represents thousands of people."
|
| _> how many cohorts can a person be part of?_
|
| It's just: cohort = await
| document.interestCohort();
|
| See https://github.com/WICG/floc
|
| (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for
| myself.)
| krick wrote:
| Absolutely, and I'm not even sure it's a good thing that we are
| removing third-party cookies. I mean, if we take a step back:
| why should I even hate them? Yes, there are problems with them,
| there have been exploits using them and all that, but I'm
| pretty confident there will be similar problems with pretty
| much anything, because there's always a clever way to abuse
| some technology that was created with the best intentions in
| mind. And cookies, at least in theory, mean that you are
| putting me in charge of whatever tracking token you assigned to
| me: I can open my browser settings and clear it at any time.
| It's a good thing.
|
| Of course, there are reasons why they aren't such a good thing
| as I make them sound to be. And the fact that you don't feel in
| charge of them should rather emphasize, than negate my point:
| if such a simple thing turns out to be something you learn to
| hate, don't you ever dream of something more complicated and
| less transparent to be your salvation.
|
| And ever since federated learning became "the next big thing" I
| was arguing here on HN (rather unsuccessfully, I feel) that
| this doesn't mean that there's suddenly "no tracking", buying
| into that is just naive. I'm not directly commenting on FLoC
| API, both because I don't know it well and because it's usually
| about making a stronger point anyway: that performing learning
| client-side and then submitting some sort of "depersonalized
| data" means better privacy and essentially is having your cake
| and eating it too. But I think it's just misleading to describe
| things this way. The idea that "sensitive data" is your
| document id, your name/surname and such is hopelessly outdated.
| In fact, it's funny that anyone even believes that, because if
| you are not a complete bureaucrat, it should be clear that you
| are not your name or some other sort of ID number, you are your
| behaviour. It's just that people are used to the idea, that Big
| Brother needs that simple ID number to keep you in line. But
| perhaps he doesn't anymore.
|
| What I'm saying is essentially that sending "depersonalized
| data" is just obfuscating which personal & sensitive data is
| actually exchanged. And (again, not in the context of FLoC API,
| but more generally) it can be any data: I think we all remember
| funny stories how completely impartial GPT-3 learns someone's
| phone number and such.
|
| So, this, and all of what you already said about the
| monopolization of people-tracking market.
| VSerge wrote:
| With regards to the existing footprint of Google, it's useful
| to keep in mind that Google and Facebook combined are already
| catching 74% of advertising dollars spent online, as per the
| bloomberg article shared here today:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26325950
|
| It's also worth noting that other groups have proposed systems
| that would not result in Google creating another monopolistic
| product line. Google did not seem very interested in such
| alternatives.
| mfer wrote:
| Google has a long history of misdirection and slight of hand so
| this should be looked at through their history.
|
| Would Google do something that causes them to make a lot less
| money? Likely not.
|
| I wonder if Google is treating our computers as edge nodes
| running their software (i.e. chrome, js workers, etc). Because
| it's tracking us on our computers they don't consider it Google
| tracking us. Then they phone home with calculated cohorts and
| cohorts are always changing. It's still tracking us but in a
| different way.
| jellicle wrote:
| They don't have to track you at the destination if they can track
| you at the source.
|
| Everything you type into your Android search bar is part of your
| Google profile of you.
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