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A comment on TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe. Parent comment

Re:TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across E... by qwertox on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @12:51PM (#26156641)
It's also interesting to see how Google has reacted to this. Them being the owner of Chrome, they could have implemented a new API in no time which would allow advertisers to use an alternative to cookies. An API where I as a user can define my preferences regarding targeted advertising, and the site owner can query these preferences.

An API where advertisers can also store advertising-ids and more site-specific, tracking-related settings into (if the user grants this permission), giving them the possibility to move away from the use of cookies for this purpose. Then it should become obligatory to not use cookies for tracking and ad-related purposes.

There are cases where 3rd-party cookies are important, and I'm a bit afraid that Google wants to remove them altogether.

I personally don't care about non-personalized ads. If the advertisers see that it makes no sense to offer me a random ad, they may start looking at the context of the page where they are serving there ads, in order to serve me a bit more relevant ads. Then again, there are others who absolutely love personalized ads. So this solution would be a fair offering to the advertisement industry.

This API could even be so advertiser-friendly that the user could even specify categories of interest so that the advertiser doesn't have to guess through tracking.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across E... by jefftk on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @02:24PM (#26157705)
It sounds like you're describing https://github.com/WICG/turtledove, which Google is definitely working on.

(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, including the seller-side of Turtledove. Speaking only for myself.)

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Re:TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across E... by curiousllama on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @12:56PM (#26156700)
Didn't they try, and got hit for antitrust?

ETA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26018928

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Re:TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across E... by dkersten on Tuesday February 16, 2021 @03:28PM (#26158385)
I assume the key aspect here isn't to provide an alternative storage mechanism (since the cookie laws aren't actually about cookies themselves, but rather storage), but rather to provide a mechanism with clear and centralised user control. Users must opt-in, so its good in the eyes of the laws, but the advertisers get the benefit of easy legally-compliant tracking when a user allows it.
[ Parent | on HN ]