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A comment on Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network. Parent comment

Re:Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network by jedwhite on Friday April 16, 2021 @01:40AM (#26829949)
The current state with third-party cookie tracking is terrible. This is terrible in a different way. It gives Google even more control over the ad-tech industry. Rather than a diversity of ad-tech kings using third-party cookies to track people and invade privacy, this becomes the "One Ring to Rule Them All" that makes Google even more dominant in ad-tech, while allowing them to pretend that they care about privacy as a prophylactic to anti-trust action. It's nothing if not clever.
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Re:Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network by ehsankia on Friday April 16, 2021 @02:11AM (#26830165)
What about FLoC gives Google "even more control"? Isn't it something any ad-company can use? Maybe I don't understand how it works, but from what I've read, any website has the exact same access as Google does to the data.
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Re:Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network by jedwhite on Friday April 16, 2021 @02:32AM (#26830333)
As noted by Consumer Reports:

"When third-party cookies are replaced by FLoC, Google will have a way to track consumers that isn’t available to other companies, which could give Google a steep advantage in the advertising business." [1]

According to the EFF, Google controls the algorithms, and will also be running its implementation and auditing its outputs, a task the EFF describes as "both orwellian and sisyphean". The EFF also notes that "Users and advocates must reject FLoC and other misguided attempts to reinvent behavioral targeting."

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/duckduckgo-solutio...

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-...

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Re:Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network by ehsankia on Friday April 16, 2021 @12:06PM (#26835650)
> that isn’t available to other companies

Is there a proof for this claim?

My understanding is that the cohort you belong to is available to any page. Is that not true?

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Re:Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network by JetSpiegel on Wednesday April 28, 2021 @05:43AM (#26967545)
> My understanding is that the cohort you belong to is available to any page. Is that not true?

Chrome is closed source, do you trust Google?

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Re:Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network by ezrast on Friday April 16, 2021 @02:23AM (#26830267)
It's about writes, not reads. With cookies, the tracking networks get to decide what data to store, and they're bounded by what browser APIs allow. FLoC data is computed by Chrome itself, so Google and only Google gets to decide what data is exposed, and it has full access to your browsing behavior even if you're blocking (or visiting sites that don't use) trackers.
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Re:Opting Your Website Out of Google's FLoC Network by stefan_ on Friday April 16, 2021 @03:59AM (#26830919)
The "data" is just a not further specified number and then they waxed a bunch of lyric about how this number will only be determined through privacy-preserving magic algorithms.

So yes, controlling how that number is calculated is infinitely more control than reading it.

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