(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
https://github.com/WICG/floc describes something open source and running on the client. Will that be sufficient, or is there additional disclosure you'd like to see?
It enhances the ability to fingerprint me, effectively exposing my browsing history.
If Google offered it as an "opt in", giving me some reward for sharing my personal information that Google sells to advertisers, then that is a fair deal. In return for some form of sharing the revenue, Google gets to sell my information.
But that's not the model. It's still the "you're a product" model where Google not only gets to sell my search history, but now also continues to sell my browsing history.
I can see how it benefits Google and how it gives them/you something to sell to advertisers, but what's in it for me?
What you get in return is that ad-supported sites you visit are better funded because they can show better-targeted advertising.
The devil is in the detail. So if FLoC and new third party tools to subvert FLoC became too mainstream, then I would expect Google to act in its own interest and provide value-added back-end services. Just as has happened with Android AOSP and Play Services.
Until then though, I feel FLoC being both client-side and open-source would be an improvement on the status quo
.. unaccountable to them storing their personal information. Period.
It's okay to say that you personally don't believe in a right to privacy or don't believe that it's an issue to vacuum up the data of own's own citizens, etc, but what I don't understand is saying that other people are paranoid elitists if they hold the view that they think it's wrong to spy on citizens. It seems incredibly uncharitable.
Furthermore your comment reads like you're addressing an argument the GP never made. What's the relevance of this section:
> Does the average voter care enough to vote one way or other for it? I would suspect not.. they have bigger problems to deal with and they seem ok with government knowing something about them.
The GP never insinuated that the average voter cares about such things (indeed by mentioning that the HN userbase does that implies that the general population does not otherwise it would not be worth mentioning)