Proposal: Treat FLoC as a security concern

Re:Proposal: Treat FLoC as a security concern by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Sunday April 18, 2021 @08:17PM (#26857905)

One difference between third party cookies and FLoC is that with FLoC it is being explained to the public how browsing history is being used. The third parties who send Set-Cookie headers do not write up documentation attempting to explain to the public what they are doing and why it is not a threat to privacy.

As other comments point out, it would be more difficult for people to "be all up in arms" about third party cookies because third party cookies is not an issue that is easily attributable to one entity nor one set of documentation.

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Re:Proposal: Treat FLoC as a security concern by millsmob on Monday April 19, 2021 @11:21AM (#26863726)

“attempting to explain to the public what they are doing”

The idea that you can explain FLoC, third party cookies or any other digital advertising technology to the public is crazy talk.

Ad tech is extremely complex and constantly evolving - “the public” includes children, the intellectually disabled, the mentally ill, the elderly and the illiterate.

No amount of documentation is going to help these people reach a point where they could actually be considered as giving “informed consent” to their “use” of an ad-tech stack that often involves dozens of different legal entities and software components.

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“why it is not a threat to privacy”

The entire purpose of FLoC is to maximise profit for Google by minimising my privacy.

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Re:Proposal: Treat FLoC as a security concern by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on Monday April 19, 2021 @05:58PM (#26868376)

Agreed 100%.

Only me, but I actually find the docs insulting for the reasons you stated.

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