from Hacker News

The Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC

by Fiveplus on 4/13/21, 5:08 PM with 204 comments

• by dang on 4/13/21, 6:41 PM

  Recent related threads:

  Brave disables Chromium FLoC features - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26765084 - April 2021 (335 comments)

  Am I FLoCed? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26755313 - April 2021 (33 comments)

  Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26344013 - March 2021 (348 comments)

  I know there have been others - if anyone finds them, I'll add to the above list.

• by EMM_386 on 4/13/21, 6:41 PM

  I don't see how the entire FLoC concept can succeed.

  There is zero incentive for Chromium forks, let alone any other browser vendor, to implement/leave-in this technology. For other browser vendors, it is zero-effort to not support it.

  For Chromium forks, implementing it is zero effort but also comes with the same negative gain it would have for other vendors (that end-users are blind to). Unless you consider "more relevant advertisements" a win for users.

  Although Chrome/Edgium have enough market share to make advertisers happy with this change, I see this entire concept as something that could further erode that given enough negative publicity. Which is fine by me.

• by jereees on 4/13/21, 6:28 PM

  I’m sure there has to be a better way to introduce the audience to FLoC. I’m over five paragraphs in and the article hasn’t properly articulated what is FLoC and _why_ it is bad. Just that it is bad.

• by 1vuio0pswjnm7 on 4/13/21, 6:39 PM

  "Please switch to a browser that supports FLoC to view this page." [Links to Chrome, etc.]

  "This website requires a browser that supports FLoC. Please install one of the folllowing compatible browsers: " [Links for Chrome, etc.]

  "We've detected you are using a browser that does not support FLoC. Please update your browser to use this website." [Links to Chrome, etc.]

  "Your browser is outdated! Please upgrade." [Links to Chrome, etc.]

  "Browsehappy" [Links to Chrome, etc.]

  As someone who routinely uses a browser that does not support Javascript, I see "warnings" like this once in a while. There are so many. Apologies if I remember the wordings incorrectly. Of course, 99% of the time the lack of a Javascript engine has zero effect on the ability to retrieve the information I need from the site. And I still get the info in the 1% cases anyway, if I really want it.

  With FLoC, will web developers be able to make claims that a site "will not work" without FLoC. How will they get users to use Chrome or other browsers that enable FLoC by default.

• by zimbatm on 4/13/21, 7:07 PM

  A better strategy would be to pretend to be in favor of FLoC until 3rd-party cookies are all eliminated. Since the FLoC ID is generated on the client side, it then becomes super easy to return fake ones to the website. :-D

• by gfxgirl on 4/14/21, 7:35 AM

  What is the stealman argument for FLoC?

  I don't agree with the argument that "no tracking" is better than semi-anonymous tracking because I believe "no tracking" is effectively impossible. Only in some fantasy world are you going to get browsers to become the lowest-common-denominator place with no JavaScript. Not even Firefox nor Apple (privacy first) are pushing for that world.

  I think possible one argument is if FLoC is good enough it will slow the tracking arms race. I suppose that is also a fantasy though.

• by rufugee on 4/13/21, 7:50 PM

  Anyone using Vivaldi full-time? As a Firefox user, I find I have to install a number of third-party extensions to get some basic functionality that Vivaldi has out of the box (ad-blocking, note taking). Anyone made the switch, and, if so, can you share your experience?

• by jefftk on 4/13/21, 9:39 PM

  Vivaldi and Brave both have built-in ad blockers. FLoC is a feature specifically designed to support advertising. Regardless of the privacy qualities of FLoC, it would be kind of pointless in these browsers anyway?

  (Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)

• by AlexandrB on 4/13/21, 6:53 PM

  Does FLoC include anti-tamper features or could one of Chrome's competitors "support" FLoC by populating the FLoC user profile with fabricated user data?

• by cpeterso on 4/14/21, 4:21 AM

  What I have not seen described is how how advertisers will select which FLoC cohort IDs to advertise to, i.e. which ID is for baseball fans or which is for luxury travelers. The cohorts are generated independently by clients, so Google and others must recreate their own directory of IDs based on their own site lists.

• by anticristi on 4/13/21, 7:20 PM

  > The FLoC component in Chrome needs to call Google’s servers to check if it can function since Google is only enabling it in parts of the world that are not covered by Europe’s GDPR.

  Well then, why do we keep looking for technical solutions to non-technical problems.

  Please make the GDPR part of US law and we can move on. :)

• by neogodless on 4/13/21, 6:28 PM

  The article links to FLoC[0] but the site gives me a 404. I used Google, a popular web search engine, to discover what FLoC stands for[1].

  > Federated Learning of Cohorts

  > a new way to make your browser do the profiling that third-party trackers used to do themselves: in this case, boiling down your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then sharing it with websites and advertisers

  [0] https://blog.google/products/ad

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

• by oh_sigh on 4/13/21, 6:32 PM

  Doesn't Vivaldi allow 3rd party cookies by default? Because if they do it seems a bit hypocritical to dislike a potential for abuse of FLoC when the ability to abuse 3rd party cookies is far simpler and more direct.

• by gramakri on 4/13/21, 7:20 PM

  It took me w while to find out what FLoC is. It stands for "Federated Learning of Cohorts". Both this post and the one from brave never expands this abbreviation.

• by Traster on 4/15/21, 9:31 AM

  I just cannot see how this is anything other than a naked attempt by Google to get itself broken up. There's literally no reason someone writing a web-browser should be building spyware for advertisers. It's like if Microsoft had decided to start building those scummy Internet Explorer Toolbars in the 2000s.

• by varispeed on 4/14/21, 11:39 AM

  I still think that any kind of user tracking should be illegal. It is no different from stalking. You visit one site, maybe enter something in a search box about your health problem or similar. Visit next site and you have all sorts of ads trying to help with your problem. This is wrong.

• by 07121941 on 4/15/21, 7:20 PM

  Hey, thanks Vivaldi, I'm sure everyone will fucking listen to you!

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_IWVB2B7AI

• by kerng on 4/14/21, 4:52 AM

  Instead of fingerprinting out of millions of browser users a company now just has to have a rather small set (Floc) + old school finger printing to 100% uniquely identify a user.

  I wonder how this feature even passed an internal Google privacy sniff test...

• by dzonga on 4/14/21, 10:46 AM

  I like vivaldi, however I feel like the added UI features even though great and beneficial contribute to the browser crashing a lot. I like the vertical tabs feature so much, but having vivaldi crash on me has made me go to brave.

• by alkonaut on 4/14/21, 8:20 AM

  Is FLoC an option that can be disabled in Chrome? If not, why not?

• by paxys on 4/13/21, 6:18 PM

  > The FLoC component in Chrome needs to call Google’s servers to check if it can function since Google is only enabling it in parts of the world that are not covered by Europe’s GDPR

  This is all you should need to know about it.

• by Black101 on 4/14/21, 12:52 PM

  With FLoC, can you find out what sites were visited? or the sites AND the users are semi-anonymous?