[HN Gopher] The Vivaldi browser will not support Google's FLoC
___________________________________________________________________
The Vivaldi browser will not support Google's FLoC
Author : Fiveplus
Score : 210 points
Date : 2021-04-13 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vivaldi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (vivaldi.com)
| jereees wrote:
| I'm sure there has to be a better way to introduce the audience
| to FLoC. I'm over five paragraphs in and the article hasn't
| properly articulated what is FLoC and _why_ it is bad. Just that
| it is bad.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| I wonder if that's because there's no short way to describe
| FLoC in a way that makes it sound bad for users. They'd need
| one paragraph to introduce FLoC, then another three making
| nuanced arguments about how it's actually worse than the status
| quo, and only then could they get to the core post about not
| supporting it.
|
| Better to avoid that fire and just let the reader infer FLoC is
| bad, whatever it is.
| dleslie wrote:
| FLoC is a granular identifier that groups users into cohorts
| of a few dozen thousand based upon their recent browsing
| history, allowing advertisers to uniquely identify users with
| only a few additional bits of information _and_ more easily
| collaborate to identify a user's browsing history.
|
| That wasn't hard.
| crazypython wrote:
| I just don't like how FLoC was implemented. No opt-in or
| opt-out consent. Written completely by Google employees.
| Not approved by Privacy Interest Group, Web Technical
| Architecture Group, or WICG. No control over which cohort
| you are in, despite being able to add this feature.
|
| If it was complemented with a Privacy Budget API- each
| privacy-losing API call costs budget and there is a limit-
| to eliminate other factors for fingerprinting and IDing
| that you can combine with FLoC to unique track people- thus
| giving advertisers complete browsing history- then I'd
| reconsider.
|
| Another thing is webmasters can opt-out of FLoC through a
| header. But many webmasters don't control headers...
|
| And on top of the practical consequences of its
| implementation.... not good.
| izacus wrote:
| How exactly could it be implemented though? EFF and
| Firefox immediately started a session attacking anything
| similar to it and demanding that ALL targeting ads stop.
|
| There doesn't seem to be space for dialog or a common
| standard here, either Google does it or they fail and
| Firefox and privacy wins the world!
| kristofferR wrote:
| Please RTFA before commenting, they explain it very well
| further down. The subsection literally has the header "How does
| FloC work?", not exactly hard to find.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| This is honestly the best page I ever read that explains what
| floc is. Please finish reading the article. Your 1 paragraph
| was a bit further down.
| paxys wrote:
| There is enough preexsting content that introduces FLoC. That
| is not the purpose of this article.
| cglong wrote:
| The EFF article helped me:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-...
| 2T1Qka0rEiPr wrote:
| Really informative read, thanks!
| ramses0 wrote:
| I'll take a stab. Suppose your browser told every website you
| visited that you had the identifier "FAANG", and your friends
| web browser told every website they visited: "FAA_G" (b/c
| obviously they don't have netflix).
|
| Per the linked article, the browser is filling in the blanks
| "___N_" as you visit each website, but it's telling each
| website not _what_ site you visited, but that you are in the
| groups of "FAA_G" vs. "FAANG".
|
| The browser manufacturer is effectively seeing every user for
| what they are (all the letters of the alphabet, as it were),
| and each site is only seeing a hash/digest/cohort/group, but
| those group segregations are not coming from particular
| "networks of websites", but instead from the browser itself.
|
| The end result is that you can't trust the browser b/c it might
| be (ed: it is!) spying on you.
|
| Google started removing the URL bar and replacing it with the
| omni-box. Instead of https://google.com/ => ?q=guitar, you
| would simply type "guitar" into the URL bar.
|
| The lesson here is to reduce the number of intermediaries
| between you and your customer. Own the hardware, the screen,
| the operating system, the network, _everything_ between your
| CPU's and the user's eyeballs. (or in amazon's case, the
| manufacturer, the boxes, the website, the shipper, the TV,
| etc.). (or in netflix's case, the content, the edge-cache
| storage tank, the TV, the remote control, the pixels, etc.)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _but those group segregations are not coming from
| particular "networks of websites", but instead from the
| browser itself._
|
| Wait, I thought the whole point was that third parties could
| define what a "cohort" is, and the browser would handle
| determining whether or not you belong in them?
| sumtechguy wrote:
| If I am reading this right (and you seem to have read it the
| same way) it ends up creating a browser fingerprint. Visit 1
| FLoC and they have no real idea who you really are. But if
| you visit several they could easily tell. Which is similar to
| how they use your installed list of fonts to identify you.
| But more formalized?
| joshuamorton wrote:
| No, this isn't correct.
|
| You only ever belong to a single FloC. So let's for a
| second assume the non-adversarial use case. The advertiser
| _isn 't_ using any additional tools to track you. Then the
| only thing the advertiser has is your FloC. This doesn't
| identify you individually, but it might correlate with
| various interests.
|
| If your FloC changes, which it will periodically, the
| advertiser doesn't have any history, so the correlation
| changes and you're given different ads.
|
| Now let's assume that they have some additional
| information, like an IP address. Then they can say ah you
| had this FloC on this date, and this different FloC later.
| Its not more identifying (they already have your IP, which
| we assume is identifying enough). The FloC might let them
| infer things about your interests on other sites, so they
| have precise information on your browsing interests on this
| site, but only partial information on other sites.
|
| As opposed to today, where 3rd party trackers mean they
| have full information on the other sites too.
| alerighi wrote:
| It's not the same as third party cookies! Third party
| cookies works only if:
|
| a) every site you visit loads some
| Google/Facebook/whatever JavaScript to track you. That
| are not all sites.
|
| b) you didn't disable these scripts with extensions like
| UBlock (that to me is essentials these days) or use a
| browser that value your privacy (like Firefox) that
| blocks them by default.
|
| This system not only is deeply integrated in the browser
| and thus impossible to block with extensions (without
| modifying the source code of the browser, that in case of
| a proprietary browser like Google Chrome you can't), but
| also track all your browsing history, meaning that they
| catch even sites that doesn't include Google trackers
| inside.
|
| Another bad thing about this system is that is integrated
| inside the browser, meaning that for a closed source
| browser like Chrome only Google knows how it works and
| what exactly it does. While classical tracker scripts
| that uses third party cookies are implemented in
| JavaScript, minified and obfuscated, but still you can in
| theory read the source code and understand what they do.
|
| This is far worse for privacy than how things are now!
| munk-a wrote:
| That compromise would require knowing who someone actually
| is between site and site - you could collect the full list
| of cohorts but you'd need additional information to be able
| to marry all that data together - let's say something like
| facebook injecting JS into every page on the internet to
| harvest cohort information and then gleefully reselling
| that information.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| Of tangential note, you may be able to better make your point
| by assuming that User 2 doesn't use Apple products rather
| than Netflix.
| whydoineedthis wrote:
| I thought the same thing, you indeed have to scroll a ways
| down, but it is there. There is a better explanation here
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/30/22358287/privacy-ads-goog...
| lmkg wrote:
| The primary intended audience for this article is people
| Googling either "does vivaldi use floc" or "what browsers don't
| have floc." The secondary audience is giving Vivaldi fans an
| easy way to answer when someone asks those same questions on
| social media. So it's mostly targeted at people who have at
| least a vague idea already what FLoC is. And for that audience,
| the content flow is ideal: the article leads with a direct at
| straightforward answer to the question at hand.
| neogodless wrote:
| The article links to FLoC[0] but the site gives me a 404. I used
| Google, a popular web search engine, to discover what FLoC stands
| for[1].
|
| > Federated Learning of Cohorts
|
| > a new way to make your browser do the profiling that third-
| party trackers used to do themselves: in this case, boiling down
| your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then
| sharing it with websites and advertisers
|
| [0] https://blog.google/products/ad
|
| [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-
| terrible-...
| Natfan wrote:
| Don't take this the wrong way, but did you really need to
| explain what Google (Search) is?
| neogodless wrote:
| I can't answer for anyone else, but I suspect they already
| knew. It was a bit tongue-in-cheek, putting a spin on what
| Google really is (a monopolistic internet advertising empire,
| profiting off detailed information about as many internet
| users as possible.)
| Chlorus wrote:
| > Such adverts may be seen as a way to make money but can be used
| to influence user behaviour and control people in large numbers
|
| FLoC & ad-tracking sucks but can we dial back the hysteria?
| nimih wrote:
| Isn't efficient advertising, the stated goal of FLoC, precisely
| the practice of influencing and controlling behavior on a large
| scale?
| tantalor wrote:
| Efficient advertising is the goal of markets. Are we trying
| to dismantle basic economics here?
| 1_person wrote:
| Price discovery is the goal of markets.
|
| The difference between efficient price discovery and
| advertising is roughly equivalent to the difference between
| efficient sexual reproduction and rape.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Advertising is a kind of persuasive technology. I use
| "persuasive technology" as a neutral term to include both its
| weak form (advertising) and its strong form (mind control).
| rufugee wrote:
| Anyone using Vivaldi full-time? As a Firefox user, I find I have
| to install a number of third-party extensions to get some basic
| functionality that Vivaldi has out of the box (ad-blocking, note
| taking). Anyone made the switch, and, if so, can you share your
| experience?
| armagon wrote:
| I use Vivaldi as my daily browser.
|
| Two main reasons: - it is able to debug the web
| application I work on developing. (Trying to make it easier to
| debug under Firefox is on my todo list). - it has mouse
| gestures, and they work everywhere (even on blank tabs).
| approxim8ion wrote:
| Vivaldi is very feature-rich and smooth, but I cannot in good
| conscience use a proprietary browser as long as good open-
| source alternatives exist. Also, I'm just used to my custom
| firefox setup, I guess. I find it worth the initial time outlay
| to set it up, and of course there is the option of just
| carrying over your profiles to the new device.
| cturtle wrote:
| I jump between Vivaldi and Firefox, and I love both browsers.
| Currently I use Vivaldi more than Firefox. Here's what I like
| in both:
|
| Firefox:
|
| - Multi-account Containers extension is amazing. I only use it
| for a handful of accounts, but it is very simple to use. This
| is probably the feature I miss most in Vivaldi.
|
| - The interface integrates better with my DE (Cinnamon), and
| overall feels less cluttered. Vivaldi has some kind of bar on
| each edge of the window. Toggle UI (Ctrl+F11) helps to hide
| this, but Vivaldi does take more space away from the webpage.
|
| - I use uBlock Origin for adblock which seems to block more
| than Vivaldi by default. Vivaldi's built-in blocker is really
| great though, and I haven't felt the need to install an
| extension for adblock in Vivaldi.
|
| Vivaldi:
|
| - I love the recent addition of a second tab bar[0], though I
| was skeptical at first. I can quickly stack tabs by host to
| declutter, and then see all the tabs on a second row with full
| details when I select the stack.
|
| - The experimental builtin RSS[1] and Email panels are
| wonderful. Still some rough edges, but it is nice to not rely
| on another tool or service for RSS, and it is my favorite RSS
| reader I have used so far because it is simple and stays out of
| my way.
|
| - Many more tab management features. Saving tabs as a session,
| tiling, stacking, periodic reload, etc. Not all features I use
| daily, but handy when I need it.
|
| Overall, I've settled on using both browsers now. Each has
| strengths and weaknesses and I will use whichever helps me best
| in the moment. I'd say give it a try, and don't think about it
| as a switch, rather as a new tool.
|
| [0]: https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/tabs/tab-stacks/
|
| [1]: https://help.vivaldi.com/mail/mail-feeds/feeds/
| rufugee wrote:
| Actually, the lack of multi-account containers probably kills
| it for me. They've become such an important part of my
| workflow these days.
| kovac wrote:
| There's the profiles in Vivaldi. That's what I use and I
| found it to be better than Firefox's multi account
| containers because I don't have to choose the container
| each time I open the site.
| thedanbob wrote:
| I've been using Vivaldi full-time for a few months and I find
| it very pleasant. It took me a while to get used to the sidebar
| but now I appreciate having it. Ditto with how it reopens your
| last session's tabs by default.
| grishka wrote:
| Yes. I used Opera before, and Vivaldi is as close as one could
| get to that Opera <=12 experience (unfortunately including them
| taking years to fix minor bugs that annoy you).
|
| It leaks memory for me on macOS. Not sure whether it's its own
| bug or if it's the Nvidia driver.
|
| On the built-in ad blocker, I don't use that on my computer
| (uBlock Origin is way better) but I do use it on my phone. I
| don't use notes either, IMO there's no good reason this should
| be part of a web browser.
|
| The tab grouping is a cool feature. The ability to screenshot
| the entire page is also a cool feature, but there's a bug that
| causes it to capture anything with border-radius without anti-
| aliasing, I reported that as VB-56521 on 26/08/2019 and it
| _still isn 't fixed_.
|
| Overall, there's this lack of attention to detail that
| permeates all their products and sometimes drives you crazy,
| but it's still way better than all other browsers that redesign
| their UIs every several years for no benefit to the user.
| jefftk wrote:
| Vivaldi and Brave both have built-in ad blockers. FLoC is a
| feature specifically designed to support advertising. Regardless
| of the privacy qualities of FLoC, it would be kind of pointless
| in these browsers anyway?
|
| (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
| OnlyRepliesToBS wrote:
| IE6 was just a practice run
| anticristi wrote:
| > The FLoC component in Chrome needs to call Google's servers to
| check if it can function since Google is only enabling it in
| parts of the world that are not covered by Europe's GDPR.
|
| Well then, why do we keep looking for technical solutions to non-
| technical problems.
|
| Please make the GDPR part of US law and we can move on. :)
| gramakri wrote:
| It took me w while to find out what FLoC is. It stands for
| "Federated Learning of Cohorts". Both this post and the one from
| brave never expands this abbreviation.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Doesn't Vivaldi allow 3rd party cookies by default? Because if
| they do it seems a bit hypocritical to dislike a potential for
| abuse of FLoC when the ability to abuse 3rd party cookies is far
| simpler and more direct.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Disabling third party cookies apparently still has the
| potential to break certain websites, in particular those having
| to do with external authentication providers and authorization
| flows.
| echelon wrote:
| The DOJ needs to strip Google's ability to run the world's most
| popular browser away from it. This is far more blatant than
| Microsoft antitrust with Internet Explorer. Google is literally
| shaping the entire internet into their ad funnel.
|
| Google cannot be allowed to run Chrome.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| So if you create something interesting enough, the government
| shouldn't let you keep it? What kind of incentive is that to
| create interesting things?
| bserge wrote:
| _Big enough_ , yes. Once you're past a certain point, it
| becomes a matter of _social_ concern to limit your control
| over it.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| People, sovereign, elected congress which passed antitrust
| law. You are not allowed to keep it because law passed by
| duly elected representatives of sovereign people says so.
|
| To fix incentive problems, convince people.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Can you help me connect the dots re: the Sherman Antitrust
| Act of 1890 and Google Chrome's 64% global market share
| (47% in the US, the country being discussed)? I'm having a
| hard time seeing how those two things are related.
| eitland wrote:
| No.
|
| That's not what it means.
|
| Chrome was fine early on.
|
| The problem is when they have abused their power for 5 years
| and have all but killed all competition.
|
| Then they need to be published just like Microsoft was.
|
| There's nothing to be worried about: Google will survive,
| just like Microsoft did despite some serious punishment. If
| anything Microsoft learned and came out (somewhat) nicer and
| more agile.
| eitland wrote:
| Actually if _someone trustworthy_ could take care of developing
| the browser engine everyone else could develop the browsers
| around it.
|
| Not sure if it would be a good idea, but absolutely an
| interesting one.
|
| My biggest issue with the idea is how we can ensure that a
| single browser engine isn't manipulated into a tool for power
| hugry politicians and the increasingly problematic media
| industry.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| WebKit was that engine, shared by Chrome and Safari. In
| retrospect WebKit age was the golden age of web browsers.
| Santosh83 wrote:
| > My biggest issue with the idea is how we can ensure that a
| single browser engine isn't manipulated into a tool for power
| hugry politicians and the increasingly problematic media
| industry.
|
| With a single engine diversity is already dead. But one can
| argue you can still build shallow or deep skins on top, but
| the problem of default bundling with devices is harder to
| solve. That's really where Chrome got the clinching edge over
| Firefox.
| kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj wrote:
| Google needs to be split up, plain and simple. They are the
| most dangerous company in America
| dubcanada wrote:
| Then Microsoft would just take over?
|
| You can't just point fingers at a specific company and say,
| yes that giant monopoly out of the other 50 monopolies is the
| bad one. The others are perfectly fine.
| bilal4hmed wrote:
| Splitting is not the solution to anything. Tell how splitting
| will solve anything ?? Let chinese companies or Apple or
| Microsoft buy up everything ???
| dont__panic wrote:
| Presumably splitting up the company would also involve
| restrictions about other large tech companies gobbling up
| the resulting Google-chunks. Anti-trust law is a thing that
| the US could enforce if they so chose.
| f6v wrote:
| Who is then?
| sanxiyn wrote:
| A company that is independent from advertisers like Google
| and Facebook.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| How should they make money?
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Mozilla seems to manage.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Mozilla is largely funded by Google. It's advertisement
| turtles all the way down.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Google is buying service (traffic) from Mozilla. It is
| not a donation.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| That doesn't change the fact that if Google stopped
| selling their ads, Mozilla would have to stop paying
| their developers.
| type0 wrote:
| > Mozilla would have to stop paying their developers.
|
| Well they are almost there, wouldn't be surprised if
| there are no developers left pretty soon
| [deleted]
| Trias11 wrote:
| US Government needs to actually represent interests of citizens
| more than interests on corps bribing them to allow abuse of
| people rights and privacy to continue.
|
| Implementing GDPR like regulation in US will solve a lot of
| issues.
| zimbatm wrote:
| A better strategy would be to pretend to be in favor of FLoC
| until 3rd-party cookies are all eliminated. Since the FLoC ID is
| generated on the client side, it then becomes super easy to
| return fake ones to the website. :-D
| pkaye wrote:
| You can already block third party cookies in Chrome (and
| probably other browsers.)
| paxys wrote:
| > The FLoC component in Chrome needs to call Google's servers to
| check if it can function since Google is only enabling it in
| parts of the world that are not covered by Europe's GDPR
|
| This is all you should need to know about it.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Except there may be perfectly benign reasons for doing this,
| not "this is totally illegal in the EU but let's just push it
| on everyone else".
|
| For example, the lawyers may believe the technology is legal,
| but haven't worked through all the implications with respect to
| the GDPR. So the end goal may be that it is launched in the EU,
| but they aren't ready to do so yet.
| domano wrote:
| Man GDPR is such a pain to implement and UX-wise, but it seems
| to actually have improved personal data protection.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| I think that's the whole point of GDPR. Linda like the
| Windows alerts, if they are made/forced to be made obnoxious
| enough, the ux suffers and companies just learn to play nice
| instead.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| Yes, it is a pain to implement user-hostile "features" that
| GDPR was designed against. It's working as intended!
| gsich wrote:
| It's not. For non-essential stuff you need permission from
| your user. So don't track and you don't need to show a cookie
| banner even if you use cookies.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| You mean it's not a pain, or that it's not helpful?
| Etheryte wrote:
| I don't see what you mean. It's very easy to be GDPR
| compliant, just don't track your users. In fact, it's more
| work to be non-compliant than to be compliant.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| That depends on what you are doing. If you are doing
| ecommerce, you need shipping address. GDPR does add work in
| this case.
| bserge wrote:
| Amazing how people won't spare a minute to enter their
| details every time they place an order.
|
| To them, I'd say "order with Amazon, then", but sadly
| that's a lot of lost clients.
| laurowyn wrote:
| Is not using the shipping address for any other reason
| than shipping an order really that much more effort?
|
| Sure, protecting that information is more effort, but you
| should be doing that already, right? not just from a GDPR
| perspective but a business perspective too - if a
| competitor can get a list of all your clients and send
| them brochures with 10% discount on your prices, you'll
| close down pretty quick.
| bserge wrote:
| Why do you have the list? Ideally, you purge their
| information after the order is delivered.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| I agree all systems should have better support for
| autocompletion so that users configure address only once
| for device, not for each service. Not only is this more
| private, it is also more convenient. Alas, until support
| is in place, remembering address is significantly more
| convenient for users.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| A little extra work in order to kill a lot of adtech is
| arguably a good thing.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Does FLoC include anti-tamper features or could one of Chrome's
| competitors "support" FLoC by populating the FLoC user profile
| with fabricated user data?
| yoavm wrote:
| There's no need to tamper with anything, the specs already
| mention this:
|
| > Whether the browser sends a real FLoC or a random one is user
| controllable
|
| https://github.com/WICG/floc
| tarruda wrote:
| That's exactly the same thing I asked myself after skimming
| through the github README.
| [deleted]
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Please switch to a browser that supports FLoC to view this
| page." [Links to Chrome, etc.]
|
| "This website requires a browser that supports FLoC. Please
| install one of the folllowing compatible browsers: " [Links for
| Chrome, etc.]
|
| "We've detected you are using a browser that does not support
| FLoC. Please update your browser to use this website." [Links to
| Chrome, etc.]
|
| "Your browser is outdated! Please upgrade." [Links to Chrome,
| etc.]
|
| "Browsehappy" [Links to Chrome, etc.]
|
| As someone who routinely uses a browser that does not support
| Javascript, I see "warnings" like this once in a while. There are
| so many. Apologies if I remember the wordings incorrectly. Of
| course, 99% of the time the lack of a Javascript engine has zero
| effect on the ability to retrieve the information I need from the
| site. And I still get the info in the 1% cases anyway, if I
| really want it.
|
| With FLoC, will web developers be able to make claims that a site
| "will not work" without FLoC. How will they get users to use
| Chrome or other browsers that enable FLoC by default.
| Emendo wrote:
| At this point, the only browser that could ignore FLoC without
| being blocked by website is Safari. If Safari chooses not to
| implement FLoC, it might be sufficient to prevent web
| developers from blocking other non-FLoC browsers.
|
| All of this rest on Apple standing up for privacy through.. so
| watch for any announcements from Apple.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Privacy has been Apple's thing the last few years though,
| very unlike that they implement FLoC.
| readams wrote:
| iOS ads use a system very similar for FLoC though. It's
| unlikely they'll implement it, but not because of privacy
| reasons.
| drusepth wrote:
| Why wouldn't sites that rely on FLoC block Safari if the
| browser doesn't implement it?
| bgorman wrote:
| iOS is too lucrative of a market to ignore. It is like not
| selling cars in California. Every car manufacturer conforms
| to California emissions standards because California is too
| lucrative to ignore.
| Jonnax wrote:
| Websites need Apple. Apple doesn't need them.
| idownvoted wrote:
| Because of Market Share.
|
| Which is just another reason - maybe even a responsibility
| of every web dev - to stop using chrome.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| This would be boring if it weren't so serious. It's damn time
| that the Googles of this world were brought to heel with
| legislation that has real teeth -- i.e.: the levying of fines
| worth 20% upward of annual turnover _as well as_ heavy fines
| levied on employees who concoct, design and or deliberately
| participate in introducing or maintaining these scams.
|
| Once employees are also targeted and held responsible for their
| actions at law then we stand a chance of getting at least some
| of our internet back.
|
| Google, Facebook and their cohorts are outrageous, they have
| been stealing our internet with complete impunity for over two
| decades like a metastasizing cancer. We users really do need to
| get proactive over this, if not then soon the internet will be
| effectively dead for many of us--we'll be left ghettoized in
| some outpost or alternatively we'll be forced to abandon it
| altogether. We may even need to resort to street demos or
| marches to convince politicians that the rotten, monopolistic
| behavior of Big Tech is no longer to be tolerated.
|
| It's also time we banned non-human entities (aka corporations)
| from lobbying politicians in private. Any lobbying by them
| ought to be done at public hearings specifically held for the
| purpose (corporate lobbying has probably done more damage to
| our Democracies since the Civil War or even earlier than any
| single other factor.)
|
| _" As someone who routinely uses a browser that does not
| support Javascript,<...>"_
|
| Likewise, my browser has JavaScript turned off by default.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7, what you failed to mention was how much faster
| webpages render without JavaScript, when it's switched off the
| speed improvement is enormous, also all that jerkiness and
| unevenness of presentation disappears. (As I've posted many
| times, it's not JavaScript that's the main fault-it's the
| enormous abuse websites commit using it. It's nothing nowadays
| for a webpage to be anywhere between 2 and 5MB in size, and on
| inspection a huge percentage of that code is devoted to serving
| up you private data to surveillance capitalism. Reality check:
| remember a standard page of text is only 2kB!)
|
| _" Javascript engine has zero effect on the browser's ability
| to display the information I need from the site. And I still
| get the info 100% of the time anyway, if I really want it."_
|
| Exactly right! Take note website owners who present blank pages
| when JavaScript is turned off: I used to find it a challenge to
| get your pages which I then proceed to do anyway. Now I no
| longer bother, as I've learned that websites that use such
| scummy lowdown tactics aren't worth visiting anyway. From my
| observation there's a remarkable correlation between such
| behavior and the [lack of] quality of the material on the
| website.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| If I do a search on https://www.google.com without sending
| SNI, I get a terse message placed in the CN X.509 attribute
| of the returned certificate: "Fix your client". It feels like
| arrogance and it seems like they have acquired a remarkable
| sense of entitlement. (The search still works.)
|
| As for speed, it would be interesting to have a "surfing
| contest", i.e., a web surfing contest that is a "browser
| challenge", pitting a team of users using a no-Javascript
| user agent versus a team using a "modern browser". The
| objective might be something like a race to interactively
| extract a given item of textual information from a selection
| of Javascript-heavy websites.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I'd love to ditch javascript entirely. Is there an android
| browser that supports that?
| PAGAN_WIZARD wrote:
| firefox on android supports noscript
| grishka wrote:
| That same Vivaldi does have a JS toggle.
| munk-a wrote:
| I've been using NoScript with block-all by default (on a
| laptop - not mobile) for about two years now and I really
| appreciate how many sites I can visit and immediately close
| due to the sheer number of scripts that would be require
| enabling to actually render the page.
|
| It's a nice way to screen for better browsing experience
| pages.
| syrrim wrote:
| Could spoof it.
| mixedCase wrote:
| Is FLoC built in a way where you couldn't just feed websites
| fake data?
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| You definitely could. Though apparently in incognito mode
| it's recommended that browsers just throw an exception rather
| than provide fake data: https://github.com/WICG/floc/blob/dcd
| 4c042fa6a81b048e04a78b1...
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Throwing an exception in incognito mode allows websites to
| detect incognito mode, which is not desirable. Incognito
| mode should provide fake data.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Of course the FLoC team would want browsers to throw an
| exception, since that wouldn't damage the perceived
| legitimacy of FLoC. But as a user I'd rather feed them
| false data if possible.
| nitrogen wrote:
| There are quite a few ways for a site to distinguish
| private/incognito from normal browsing, and IMO these
| differences should be treated as bugs. Indeed, these
| differences often break sites (including a vaccine
| registration site) that should work fine. We don't need
| even more ways for sites to break in private/incognito
| mode.
| type0 wrote:
| Sure, but you would have to be careful with that though, if
| you use any Google services they might ban your account with
| no recourse.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Nah, tbh i dont even add adblocker-blockers. I think many
| publishers (most, i would say) are disgruntled with the way
| google totally dominated the market, and we'd rather stop
| feeding their monopoly this time. I added a referral link to
| brave browser on all my sites instead.
|
| anecdotally i rarely see adblocker-blockers anymore
| EMM_386 wrote:
| I don't see how the entire FLoC concept can succeed.
|
| There is zero incentive for Chromium forks, let alone any other
| browser vendor, to implement/leave-in this technology. For other
| browser vendors, it is zero-effort to not support it.
|
| For Chromium forks, implementing it is zero effort but also comes
| with the same negative gain it would have for other vendors (that
| end-users are blind to). Unless you consider "more relevant
| advertisements" a win for users.
|
| Although Chrome/Edgium have enough market share to make
| advertisers happy with this change, I see this entire concept as
| something that could further erode that given enough negative
| publicity. Which is fine by me.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| I can see advertising networks forming some sort of revenue
| split agreement with browsers so that they include FLoC.
| toyg wrote:
| _> I don 't see how the entire FLoC concept can succeed._
|
| It probably doesn't need to. What is important is that Google
| can show authorities that they _tried_ to track less, honest
| guv! It 's the market that won't let us!
| noisem4ker wrote:
| If third party cookies (what FLoC is meant to replace) are
| indeed going away, Google will be in a tough spot.
| luke2m wrote:
| >There is zero incentive for Chromium forks, let alone any
| other browser vendor, to implement/leave-in this technology.
|
| Chrome has a 60-70% market share on its own. Most people don't
| even know the difference between "the internet" "the www" and
| "chrome" So, there is zero incentive for the 30% of non-chrome
| browsers, but most of the people who don't use adblockers
| anyway will be sucked into this.
| type0 wrote:
| Correctemento, for non technical users Chrome is the window
| to the internet (it used to be Internet Explorer).
| Aachen wrote:
| Why'd they go out and download another browser if they
| don't understand the concept of a browser? Only Android
| comes with the Google browser as default browser as far as
| I know.
|
| I think whatever the setupper of the computer dictates
| whatever Internet is, and secondarily the OS vendor if the
| new user doesn't have a tech friend.
|
| I don't think Chrome is somehow == Internet for these
| people specifically. (Personally I call the shortcut
| "Internet" so it's consistent across devices and they don't
| have to recognize Lightning on their phone and Firefox on
| their laptop.)
|
| The Google homepage on the other hand...
| type0 wrote:
| > The Google homepage on the other hand...
|
| The Google homepage for years said that web users should
| install Chrome and now almost everyone believes it.
| alerighi wrote:
| Only Chrome on Android alone accounts for a big
| percentage of web traffic. Android is the most used
| mobile operating system, and nowadays there are more
| users that browse with a mobile device than users that
| use a PC.
|
| Beside that, a lot of people is induced by Google to
| install Chrome. A lot of Google services doesn't work so
| well in browsers that are not Chrome. One of them is
| Google Meet, that is used in my country by a lot of
| schools. This is of course by design, there are no
| reasons Google couldn't make a software that works in all
| browsers.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| Most Chrome users didn't actually install it. That's the
| case on desktops/laptops, but not on mobile, which is the
| segment that bought a lot of new people to the internet
| in the past few years.
|
| Android is the most popular mobile OS (+70% of market
| share[0]) and most Android phones sold outside China come
| Google Apps/Chrome pre-installed. That's a lot of Chrome
| installations.
|
| And now Chromebooks are selling like hot cakes (30M in
| 2020[1], a huge increase mostly because of the pandemic)
| and Chrome is the default browser there too.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operatin
| g_syste... [1]
| https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/02/01/chromebooks-
| continu...
| devenblake wrote:
| Old folks don't download Chrome, their sucker children
| do. Those who are too frail to lift the koolaid cup to
| their mouths shall be aided by their brethren.
|
| But also Chrome isn't super hard to install anyway and
| the dark patterns "help" with the process. Go on
| Google.com with MS Edge and it'll tell you Chrome will
| give you a faster, more betterer Internet. It must be
| pretty convincing to hear that from the de facto arbiter
| of the world wide web and all you have to do is follow
| the pretty blue buttons. I was able to install Roblox
| when I was 10 with less guidance.
| luke2m wrote:
| Yeah. If I open Google docs with Gnome Epiphany, I get a
| message that says IE is no longer supported. IE? And
| until recently, Vivaldi had all sorts of issues on google
| websites, even though it's chromium.
|
| https://vivaldi.com/blog/user-agent-changes/
| baud147258 wrote:
| In addition to the various Google pages telling the user
| to install Chrome, it's also sometime bundled in the
| installer of other free (as in beer) software, with the
| default option installing chrome and setting it as
| default web browser.
|
| And chrome OS come bundled with chrome too.
| mike_d wrote:
| 100% of a browsers revenue comes from advertising. Nobody pays
| $24.95 for a boxed copy of Netscape Navigator anymore.
|
| In negotiating an exclusive search advertising deal, not
| supporting FLoC will decrease the overall value of the browsers
| users to the ad network.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Brave runs their own ad network. So does Edge. Firefox makes
| their money through search engine placement and donations. I
| don't think these browsers being less valued on another
| company's ad network is actually a loss for them.
| jimmydorry wrote:
| >Firefox makes their money through search engine placement
| and donations
|
| I have to assume you wrote this in good faith, however,
| this is a circuitous way of describing how Mozilla /
| Firefox makes its money.
|
| It comes directly from Google! One can easily imagine a
| future where Firefox must implement FLoC to continue
| receiving that money.
| dang wrote:
| Recent related threads:
|
| _Brave disables Chromium FLoC features_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26765084 - April 2021 (335
| comments)
|
| _Google's FLoC Is a Terrible Idea_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26344013 - March 2021 (348
| comments)
|
| I know there have been others - if anyone finds them, I'll add to
| the above list.
| aboringusername wrote:
| A bit off topic but I'd love to see a sort of ML/AI feature
| where "related discussions" can be added automatically for
| added context, I appreciate you do this manually and I find it
| very useful to get more of an idea of the relevance/importance
| of a topic!
|
| (Maybe even a "HN search found 3 possibly related threads")
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Why would that need ML? PageRank has worked for ages for this
| problem.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I really like the EFF article
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