by tbodt on 3/31/21, 4:37 AM with 90 comments
by Varriount on 3/31/21, 7:25 AM
The proposal rests on the assumption that people in “sensitive categories” will visit specific “sensitive” websites, and that people who aren’t in those groups will not visit said sites. But behavior correlates with demographics in unintuitive ways. It's highly likely that certain demographics are going to visit a different subset of the web than other demographics are, and that such behavior will not be captured by Google’s “sensitive sites” framing. For example, people with depression may exhibit similar browsing behaviors, but not necessarily via something as explicit and direct as, for example, visiting “depression.org.” Meanwhile, tracking companies are well-equipped to gather traffic from millions of users, link it to data about demographics or behavior, and decode which cohorts are linked to which sensitive traits. Google’s website-based system, as proposed, has no way of stopping that.
The way I interpret this is that, based on your browsing history in Chrome (or any browser that implements this kind of functionality) you are placed into a number of categories (or, if one reverses the metaphor, a number of descriptive tags are attached to you). Google is aiming to ensure that certain categories/tags that might be considered sensitive (mental state, physical illnesses, etc.) will be blocked.(To be clear, this is my interpretation of what they are stating, not an assertion of fact)
The EFF is arguing that this isn't really that straightforward, as sensitive details can still be inferred from non-sensitive details.
What I'm curious about is, who is doing all the ID generation, categorization, and data centralization? Or is Chrome just going to calculate everything itself, then send the data to sites that ask for it?
by gerbler on 3/31/21, 6:11 AM
Isn't bundling users into buckets good for individual privacy? In theory if the bucket is too small you are identifiable, but my understanding is that the entire premise of this approach is to ensure that is not the case.
by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 3/31/21, 7:53 AM
by EMM_386 on 3/31/21, 6:17 AM
You can opt-out of this (for now) in Chrome by disabling third-party cookies.
You can also simply use another browser such as Firefox.
by gbil on 3/31/21, 6:12 AM
by nextstep on 3/31/21, 7:42 AM
I think Firefox has improved significantly in recent years as well, but I haven't used it in a while.
by radiKal07 on 3/31/21, 7:17 AM
by visarga on 3/31/21, 9:44 AM
The flock system sounds like the Chinese social credit score. I'm wondering what things will be conditioned on FlockID. There are going to be elite flocks and worthless flocks. "Sorry, our services are available only to flock-3453 and flock-2234. Losers like flock-23232 need not come."
by LordHeini on 3/31/21, 8:47 AM
Not sure if it would suffice to just overwrite the document.interestCohort(); function and have it report something trollish.
Since a cohort is rather small could a botnet be sufficiently large, to create its own private cohorts and mess up a lot of add deliveries?
by magicroot75 on 3/31/21, 11:04 AM
It seems like if each user only gets a single floc grouping, that this is more private than a system like FB, where any given user could be part of thousands of different targetable "interest groups." Am I missing something? On FB, for instance, I could be targeted for liking Infinite Jest. And separately for like Mountain Biking. And separately for living in Pennsylvania. It seems like Google is doing a lot to obscure the user information into a data black box. Maybe I don't get the idea.
by dgan on 3/31/21, 7:29 AM
This effectively solves the question of optout as i can choose to use default value so that i am indistinguishable from thousands other people This also clearly allows for some targeted ads that user does actually care about. I don't mind seeing ads for technology, but all those "You wouldn't believe this!! 11", and "Look, penis!!" are just insult to humanity.
I know it's still ads. But i have an impression it's ao much better solution
by alfiedotwtf on 3/31/21, 10:51 AM
by danmur on 3/31/21, 9:47 AM
by eagleal on 3/31/21, 8:44 AM
Any different advertising platform will always be inferior by definition.
by adamsvystun on 3/31/21, 6:32 AM
by butz on 3/31/21, 3:29 PM