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This repository was archived by the owner on Mar 16, 2023. It is now read-only.
I've been looking for some user needs analysis, or user stories, relating to FLOC.
Has any research been published on what users want from this?
Will FLOC meet users' needs?
While I understand what FLOC does, I'm not sure whether it addresses any published concerns by users.
Reacted by Alberto Camara, Luke Whitmore, Sora2455, Jeremy Keith, Steven, Florimond Manca, Guilherme Macedo, Daniël Schotman, Gunni, TheMaskMaker and 5 more
@lukewhitmore it's not really a revenue stream for Google, they already know what websites you visit if you are using Chrome. I think this is more to prevent them from getting anti competitive lawsuits, because they block other advertisers from spying. All the data belongs to Google and they give other advertisers some shitty cohort which does violate users' privacy right as well.
I think one thing this has going for it, is that the technology feels conceptually flawed; in a similar sense that DRM technology is flawed, or King Canutes desire wasn't ever going to be enough to turn the tide.
To answer @edent's original question: the underlying user-focused goal here is improved privacy. People are unhappy with the widespread tracking based on third-party cookies, and we plan to remove them from Chrome. A lot of the work discussed on https://privacysandbox.com/ is about preventing other types of tracking.
But most of the sites on the web get their revenue from advertising, and it turns out that a lot of advertising revenue depends on some use of cross-site data. According to a bunch of studies by folks in academia and industry and government, just getting rid of cookies will probably cost most websites 50%-70% of their revenue.
This speaks to your user needs question as well. People who want to use the web need websites to keep existing. As a web browser, Chrome wants the web to thrive. As a deeply web-based company, Google does too.
So cookies are a 25-year-old piece of technology that lets the web ecosystem work, but has substantial privacy costs. The goal of FLoC is to migrate to a new piece of technology that lets the web ecosystem work and has substantially better privacy properties. That change is the user story we're here to address.
Reacted by benjaminsavage, Dmitry Shalashov, Petr Heinz, Charles and Shoshana Wodinsky
Reacted by Wesley Kerfoot, Guilherme Macedo, Marcos Rubio, Aina Rasoldier, Daniël Schotman, Shivesh, Darrien Glasser, Henning Kowalk, Francesco Gazzetta, Utkarsh Gupta and 1 more
People are unhappy with the widespread tracking based on third-party cookies, and we plan to remove them from Chrome.
Are people unhappy with widespread tracking based on third-party cookies, or are they actually unhappy with widespread tracking?
But most of the sites on the web get their revenue from advertising, and it turns out that a lot of advertising revenue depends on some use of cross-site data. According to a bunch of studies by folks in academia and industry and government, just getting rid of cookies will probably cost most websites 50%-70% of their revenue.
To use an analogy, in many parts of the world people are talking about 'the death of the high street store'. I think most technologists would agree that this change is inevitable, and that we need to adapt and evolve.
Perhaps 'the death of targeted advertising' is also due. Maybe the way we fund the web needs to change?
Reacted by ph00lt0, Paritosh Bhide, Sora2455, Florimond Manca, Wesley Kerfoot, frju365, Guilherme Macedo, Marcos Rubio, Aina Rasoldier, Matheus Henrique and 12 more
Exactly, if targeted ads and people's personal data do not traverse into money, companies will automatically find other revenue streams and look into other business models. Customers never requested it to be free. This is simply something that was invented by the industry. If you make illuminate the option to make money from targeted ads the business will/has to find other ways. Also many websites have proven to make a decent amount of money without targeting users directly.
Ads can also be displayed on contextual basis rather than personal. Good example: https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/24/data-from-dutch-public-broadcaster-shows-the-value-of-ditching-creepy-ads/
Perhaps 'the death of targeted advertising' is also due. Maybe the way we fund the web needs to change?
Reacted by Luke Whitmore, Sora2455, Florimond Manca, Marcos Rubio, amnotbananaama, Francesco Gazzetta, Dev Daksan and Utkarsh Gupta
@edent
The 2019 research by Google Ads folks, on the impact of ad targeting without cookies, is one of the sources of data on revenue loss. But during the A/B experiment, they also measured user satisfaction with the ads they saw, based on people clicking the "X" in the top-right corner of ads to complain about them. They measured a 21% increase in people complaining that they were not interested in the ads they saw. (See the section "Additional Reflections" on p.3.)
These are both about the need for some replacement, not the need for this specific replacement. And indeed there are a multitude of possible replacements, which many people in the ads and browser world have been working on for the last couple of years, and which generally make a wide range of trade-offs.
Are people unhappy with widespread tracking based on third-party cookies, or are they actually unhappy with widespread tracking?
Our goal is to get rid of widespread tracking, irrespective of the technology it's based on.
Perhaps you came to this GitHub repo based on some media story that claimed FLoC was itself "widespread tracking"? It's not.
Perhaps 'the death of targeted advertising' is also due. Maybe the way we fund the web needs to change?
There are indeed also lots of proposals for alternate ways to fund the web! I'm personally enthusiastic about some and skeptical of others. If any of those succeed, then the need for this effort will certainly be diminished.
Reacted by Petr Heinz and Charles
Reacted by Marcos Rubio, Darrien Glasser and Francesco Gazzetta
I'd propose that profiling millions of users and assigning each a token representing similarity—specifically for the purpose of targeting advertising—is widespead tracking.
Anyway, disregarding semantics, the literature provided by Google itself makes reference to 'profiling' and the main documentation here echos many of my concerns.
Please correct me if I am misunderstanding any of the following:
Site visitors will have their browsing habits and behaviour analysed to create a profile
The analysis will occur locally
This activity will occur on an 'opt out' basis
This data will be used to categorise the user into cohorts for the purpose of providing targeted advertising
The information about the cohort the user belongs to will available to sites that wish to advertise
Sites that know a person’s PII (e.g., when people sign in using their email address) could record and reveal their cohort. This means that information about an individual's interests may eventually become public. This is not ideal, but still better than today’s situation in which PII can be joined to exact browsing history obtained via third-party cookies.
also ..
A cohort could be used as a user identifier. It may not have enough bits of information to individually identify someone, but in combination with other information (such as an IP address), it might. One design mitigation is to ensure cohort sizes are large enough that they are not useful for tracking.
These mitigating factors suggest to me that there is still a user focused penalty associated with this technology. At the same time the main beneficiary seems to be the advertising industry (obviously not withstanding Google's advertising division).
I found one of the interesting points relating to third party cookies, was the ingenuity it encouraged on the part of developers on behalf of advertisers. The actual way third party cookies ended up being used far exceeding the initially intended use cases.
The sad fact is the same will occur here. It wouldn't surprise me if those causes for concern listed, end up being the first port of call for advertisers trying to create an advantage.
Ultimately the creator of this thread is asking a very important question. Perhaps it has
10000
been slightly disingenuously phrased, because it's so blatantly obvious that the technology is not designed according user need. It's for the advertisers.
However, that's nothing compared to the disingenuous premise associated with encouraging an open standard that serves the need of a single corporation above all others.
What's happened to the old Google? What happened to putting users first? What happened to 'don't be evil'?
I genuinely don't think the world would miss this technology; we might end up in a better place without it.
Reacted by Jacob Aronoff, Florimond Manca, Wesley Kerfoot, Guilherme Macedo, Alberto Camara, Alessandro Lai, Aina Rasoldier, Daniël Schotman, Nikola Jankovic, Shivesh and 10 more
Reacted by ♦♣♠♥, Paritosh Bhide, Sora2455, Florimond Manca, Edward Akerboom, frju365, Daniël Schotman, Shivesh, Petr Heinz, Charles and 7 more
You are, of course, welcome to take the view that the world would be a better place without the ability to target ads, even if that means all content is behind a sign-in or paywall or app store. Chrome believes that preserving the open web has substantial benefits, both for the web's immediate users and for the world more broadly.
However, that's nothing compared to the disingenuous premise associated with encouraging an open standard that serves the need of a single corporation above all others.
To address this point specifically: Google makes most of its money from the ads that appear on Google Search. Those ads are based on what people just searched for. So while most of the sites in the world would lose 50%-70% of their revenue in the alternative you're advocating for, Google is not one of them.
The thing that would hurt Google is if a large amount of the content on the web went away. But that's not a particular-to-Google problem — like I said, I think that would hurt a lot of us.
This technology benefits Google more than anyone. Let's be honest. Google is using its near-monopoly in search to fund a browser that pushes invasive surveillance technology onto unsuspecting users. I don't think anything discussed here will change the fundamental direction of this project, and that's because Google's future success depends on its success.
I'm sure that once they've successfully added this technology to every platform they control (Android, Chrome) they will push the narrative that they've made the web a safer and more private place without tracking. None of it is true, obviously, and everyone here knows it.
I do wish that they would teach proper ethics classes to technologists. Hiding behind a famous corporate logo and a big salary to do unethical things that your boss says are vital for the continued existence of the web, that's just... extremely disappointing.
Someone noticed somewhere that this is disabled by default for users in the EU. So that's something. We can only hope for strong government regulations that outlaw such massively invasive tracking technologies in the rest of the world as well. But let's be honest, that will take years (decades?), and all the while Google will track almost every single individual in each country that doesn't have such regulations. Because of the work that you and your colleagues do, @michaelkleber. I'm sure you are a nice person, and that you have told yourself a useful story that justifies you working on this, but the world would be a better place without the technology that you are developing here.
Let's hope US regulators have the balls to break up Google. It's high time.
Reacted by Sora2455, Wesley Kerfoot, frju365, Aina Rasoldier, Daniël Schotman, Darrien Glasser, amnotbananaama, Henning Kowalk, Dan Miller, Francesco Gazzetta and 3 more
I would be happy to hear why you think this is true.
If your idea of "benefits Google more than anyone" is measured in terms of what fraction of their money different companies stand to lose without something like FLoC, then what you're saying is very definitely not the case.
If your idea is that Google will somehow use FLoC as an alternate identifier and track you with it, then first we designed FLoC to keep that from being possible, and second check out this blog post saying "we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products."
I'm sure you are a nice person, and that you have told yourself a useful story that justifies you working on this, but the world would be a better place without the technology that you are developing here.
Thank you for the benefit of the doubt. I'd like to hear what you think the world would be like without this technology that you think would be an improvement. This is surely the right question to be asking, and I hope you @infostreams (and @lukewhitmore also) will paint a picture of an end state that you think is better.
I think we all agree that proposed Privacy Sandbox changes will negatively impact most publisher revenues, given marketers will receive:
less accurate information and time-delayed feedback on their advertising across publishers relative to what trains advertising ML today, hence impaired ability to make more accurate timely decisions, while
the largest publishers will continue to have sufficient scale to provide real-time optimized marketing and hence can continue to provide more accurate and timely matches of ads to visitors.
Proponents of the changes suggest that the reduction in revenues for smaller publishers will address user's needs for their important privacy rights to be better respected.
Thus, returning to one of the core questions raised above by @lukewhitmore
Are people unhappy with widespread tracking based on third-party cookies, or are they actually unhappy with widespread tracking?
@michaelkleber the reference to research that people did not find ads relevant does not address this issue:
[Google Ads Team] measured a 21% increase in people complaining that they were not interested in the ads they saw. (See the section "Additional Reflections" on p.3.)
To address @lukewhitmore, I do believe it would be helpful to reference published research that people are more concerned about third-party tracking relative to concerns around the scale and sensitivity of personal data collected online and associated with their identity, regardless which organization is collecting this personal data.
Can anyone link to such research that might help address @edent's original question:
I would be happy to hear why you think this is true. If your idea of "benefits Google more than anyone" is measured in terms of what fraction of their money different companies stand to lose without something like FLoC, then what you're saying is very definitely not the case.
Don't give me the argument "we're doing this for other people" 😂 Google is only in this for themselves. This is Google's response to regulatory pressure that forbade tracking everyone everywhere without their consent. After the GDPR forced publishers to ask for consent, I'm sure there's a sizable portion of users who do NOT provide their consent and opt-out of everything. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but anecdata (in German) points to anywhere between 10% and 90% opting-out, with specialized companies such as consentmanager and cookiebot reporting opt-in rates of only around 40 - 50%.
So, if these numbers are correct, Google just lost half of their tracking data. Because these days most websites use other "free" services such as Google Analytics or Google Webfonts, which gives Google (how convenient) insight of what people do after they leave their search results page. So what can you do to get that data back?! Well, you can just build it into your "free" browser that conveniently has the largest market share, and you're back on track!
If your idea is that Google will somehow use FLoC as an alternate identifier and track you with it, then first we designed FLoC to keep that from being possible, and second check out this blog post saying "we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products."
I will believe it when it passes a European court. Additionally, I think statements such as "we will not build" and "we will not use" are too weak. I would like to see "we can not build" and "we can not use".
paint a picture of an end state that you think is better.
That's an easy one. We can and should build a web that doesn't track anyone. It's unnecessary and harmful. Everyone who thinks we need all this tracking is lying. There's no reason for a company in California to know everything about me, a random guy in an apartment 10000 kilometers away, and all my neighbors, friends and family. It's insidious. We can do better. We can still have a functioning internet without it. Google is just doing this because they think they can get away with it. Please enable it in Europe too, once it's done, I can't wait for the court case.
Reacted by Sora2455, Wesley Kerfoot, frju365, Marcos Rubio, Alessandro Lai, Aina Rasoldier, Daniël Schotman, Shivesh, roverbus, Darrien Glasser and 6 more
Reacted by Francesco Gazzetta, Dev Daksan and Cyerra
@michaelkleber I'm very happy to hear you have access to academic articles that suggest Privacy Sandbox proposals like FLoC will:
"push those dollars away from apps and walled gardens and into the open web. I think that is a good thing."
My understanding is that walled gardens will continue to rely on scaled, fine-grained audience sequential messaging and real-time optimized feedback, which as I understand it will not be available across the open web to smaller publishers. However, I'd love to read any research that shows the relative utility of Privacy Sandbox proposals to what walled gardens will still offer.
Can you please share?
Alternately, if anyone has a reference to published research that people are more concerned about third-party tracking relative to concerns around the scale and sensitivity of personal data collected online and associated with their identity, regardless which organization is collecting this personal data that too would useful to help inform how we can advance protecting privacy rights while ensuring the open web can thrive.
Can anyone link to such research that might help address @edent's original questions:
Has any research been published on what users want from this?
@lukewhitmore - we have already seen 80% of digital marketing spend move to two companies that offer the richest set of features prior to the current changes. See the CMA report I referenced. In a democracy I prefer the regulator overseen by elected representatives to settle this question rather than market participants acting unilaterally.
The 25 people at the CMA who spent a year writing the report did a thorough job documenting the economic model for the open web. The CMA felt Privacy Sandbox was such a significant risk that they opened a specific investigation in January 2021.
"Consumers want more control over their data: most say they value their ability to control access to their data, and only a small minority (13%) say they are happy to share their data in return for relevant advertising."
The 25 people at the CMA who spent a year writing the report did a thorough job documenting the economic model for the open web. The CMA felt Privacy Sandbox was such a significant risk that they opened a specific investigation in January 2021.
If I understand correctly, the CMA are suggesting that Google's proposed third party cookie replacement technologies (of which FLoC is part of) could place Google in jeopardy of breaching UK competition law.
How does this support your argument? Unless I'm misunderstanding this, it seems like it exposes a potential leading factor in Google seeking approval. For Google, I'd imagine the absolute necessity of these technologies being accepted by the W3C is only increased by this investigation.
"only a small minority (13%) say they are happy to share their data in return for relevant advertising"
Thank you for reading. Here are some other sections I also find relevant.
“4.75 Consumers have also reported that it was hard to effectively engage with companies who collect and use their data because of a perceived lack of alternatives if they want to stop using specific companies whose data collection they are concerned"
Consumers prefer relevant advertising until they understand it involves their data.
4.68 When asked about their attitudes to digital advertising, a majority of consumers report that they prefer advertising to be ‘relevant’ to them. For example, in a report for Ofcom and the ICO, Harris Interactive found that 54% of participants reported that they prefer advertising that was relevant to them rather than seemingly random ads. Focus groups run for Which? also found that most participants preferred targeted advertising and personalised discounts to non-targeted advertising and generic discounts. However, we consider that this stated preference for ‘relevant’ advertising does not reflect the full picture of consumer attitudes. In particular:
Research by Ipsos MORI found that only 5% of respondents felt that they benefited greatly from companies using their personal information to send personalised adverts and marketing material. In addition, only a small minority of all consumers say that they are happy to share their data in order to receive relevant advertising. For example, Ofcom found that only 13% of respondents said that they were happy for online companies to collect and use their data to show more relevant adverts or information.
4.8 Ensuring that consumers have more control over the use of their data will not only protect them but could also offer them benefits by increasing the potential for competition between platforms. That is firms could compete on the basis of the extent of control and choices over privacy they offer to consumers and compete more actively to encourage consumers to allow their data to be used for personalised advertising by explaining the benefits to them. Firms could also differentiate themselves more in the range of services and benefits that they offer according to the extent to which consumers agree to allow their data to be used for personalised advertising.
4.47 We note that academic research on privacy-related decision-making (eg Brown (2001), Acquisti (2004), Barnes (2006), Acquisti et al (2016), Kokolakis (2017), Barth and de Jong (2017)) has discussed the existence of what has been termed a 'privacy paradox' in relation to the consumers in an online environment. That is, in surveys consumers will report that they are very concerned about their privacy but they then behave in a way that contradicts this clearly stated preference eg by not taking advantage of privacy controls that are available to them. There is a debate as to whether this is in fact a genuine paradox (eg consumers could be acting in a rational way and properly evaluating the costs and benefits), or whether there are factors at work which prevent consumers from being able to make effective choices.
4.50 Decisions about privacy and the disclosure of personal information tend to be heavily context-specific. Decisions about privacy can be influenced both by the nature of the personal information being shared and the organisation to whom that personal information is disclosed. For example, research indicates that consumers are more willing to share data with public authorities than they are with private businesses. The upshot is that general statements about privacy preferences may be of limited significance when it comes to trying to predict privacy decisions in specific circumstances.
My argument is that if personalized marketing is to exist on one platform, then it must also exist on all platforms a
10BC8
nd offer equal features, if people are going to have choice. I also have an off topic belief that personalized marketing on all platforms should be significantly improved to address the concerns raised in the report to reduce complexity and make privacy meaningful so people can make informed choices.
How does this support your argument?
Google need a solution that both ensures a level playing field from a competition perspective and addresses the privacy problem they have identified. I believe they have over stated the privacy problem and their role in addressing it only with engineering/mathematics based proposals. What about laws and economics? What about working with others including regulators?
Based on the report and the sections that you quoted:
4.8 Ensuring that consumers have more control over the use of their data will not only protect them but could also offer them benefits by increasing the potential for competition between platforms …
4.47 … That is, in surveys consumers will report that they are very concerned about their privacy but they then behave in a way that contradicts this clearly stated preference eg by not taking advantage of privacy controls that are available to them. There is a debate as to whether this is in fact a genuine paradox (eg consumers could be acting in a rational way and properly evaluating the costs and benefits), or whether there are factors at work which prevent consumers from being able to make effective choices.
And also:
40 The upshot of this is that users understandably simply agree to the default choices they are presented with. These are set by the platforms, and it is hard to be confident that they will adequately balance users’ preferences about the use of their personal data against the substantial benefits to the platform.
4.51 There are also other factors which will make it difficult for consumers to make properly informed decisions relating to privacy trade-offs. One key factor is that it is difficult for consumers to anticipate what the long-term implications might be of sharing their data with platforms and so they are having to make decisions based on imperfect or asymmetric information. The large amount of information available online can make it difficult for consumers to identify information that is most relevant to them and, in particular, the way in which online services curate information may not be fully transparent.
4.52 In addition, behavioural biases and cognitive limitations can also impact on consumers’ decision-making. Acquisti et al (2015) have argued that uncertainty and context dependency mean that people may not be able to navigate the complex trade-offs involving privacy in a self-interested fashion.
This has drifted rather off-topic - sorry @michaelkleber!
Let me rephrase my original question.
Has Google done any research with users to see if FLoC meets their needs?
By users - I mean individuals who browse the web.
I would expect that Google, like most organisations, takes a user-needs approach to launching new products and services. That's especially important when defining new Web standards. For example, we wouldn't launch a new <olfactory> element without conducting detailed research on whether users wanted smell-o-vision on the web. Just saying "well, perfume companies really want to make their pages smell nice" isn't really a compelling user story!
So far Google have shown some excellent research into advertisers and publishers. But I am concerned that we haven't seen anything which talks to end-users.
Please let me know if I've missed anything obvious because, at the moment, this does not look like a user-focused proposal.
Reacted by Luke Whitmore, Sora2455, Edward Akerboom, Guilherme Macedo, Matheus Henrique, Darien Maillet Valentine, Daniël Schotman, Charles, Darrien Glasser and Francesco Gazzetta
The user-focused goal here is privacy improvement, compared to the web with 3rd-party cookies, in which pervasive tracking is possible.
As with many things about making changes to the web, there are many parties to consider. We believe that it's possible to solve that user goal without also causing most web sites to lose most of their revenue.
That means we're doing some sort of balancing act, and our solutions probably won't appeal to people who focus exclusively on the privacy goal and ignore the 50%-70% revenue loss of alternate solutions. So be it.
But solving for the needs of people who use the web, while considering the interests of the multiple constituencies the web needs to operate — that is the intent.
Would another statement of the goal be for users to have a choice to see ads generally relevant to their interests (when they see ads) while reducing collection of granular browsing history by third parties?
That doesn't speak to research about user interests about seeing relevant ads or on the balancing of different user interests (or interests of publishers or advertisers), but it might provide clarity missing from considering it just a privacy feature. Clearer statement of those goals might also provide for comparison of different approaches, or ways to limit the scope of the feature.
Certainly you are correct that people seeing more-relevant ads is an additional benefit! But aside from some Super Bowl parties I've been to, it's pretty rare to find people caring more about the ads they see than about the content they're inside of.
So if I were to bundle the multiple effects together, I'd be more inclined to express the goal as letting ads-supported web sites make money while reducing collection of granular browsing history by third parties.
This means that information about an individual's interests may eventually become public. This is not ideal, but still better than today’s situation in which PII can be joined to exact browsing history obtained via third-party cookies.
"Hey, look at this shiny new thing we're building! Oh and, it's also pretty bad. But at least it's not as bad as that other thing we had before..."
I have recently been pointed to this paper in relation to W3C and DNT. At the heart of the issue is the question, “who speaks for people?” I might also add there is a second question, “can they do so without being conflicted?”
It is for these reasons I found the CMA report the most important document in the debate. It does not side with anyone commentator. It is a balanced assessment. As long as a small number of large integrated organisations that are both gatekeepers (web browsers) and service providers can do something then other players must also be able to do that thing. That is what an elected government has concluded. They safely speak for people.
Since this issue was raised we also see that government working with the G7 to form a common position. That is encouraging, if slow progress.
Therefore we have two remedies to the question of personalised marketing.
Prevent all entities from performing personalised marketing.
Provide a method where all entities, with a person’s meaningful permission, perform personalised marketing.
For those that wish to pursue the former option then the W3C is not the forum to do so. I think the W3C consensus approach currently shows that it is unacceptable to prevent someone from doing something so long as it doesn’t harm others. If other W3C watchers believe otherwise do comment.
Therefore within the W3C we need a method of understanding how to achieve the latter option. FLoC is one such option. Many people, myself included, believe FLoC does not meet the CMAs requirements concerning choice.
There is a simple test to confirm this. If FLoC was better than existing methods for personalised marketing then Google would have confirmed they will be using it with YouTube, search and their other products and abandoning other methods of personalising marketing on their platform. After all "what is good for the goose is good for the gander".
Google have not done so. In fact their research on other similar algorithms shows a 5% decline in conversions per dollar. Others believe the figure is higher. @wseltzer, general counsel of the W3C, has confirmed there is no evidence available to support the work. This is a shame.
As FLoC does not appear to comply with rules in Europe it is being tested only in other geographies. We will start to see different experimenters presenting the results in the summer. It is a shame they will not do so in a scientific and unified way. However, I suspect Google will claim it a success without evidence, and the wider industry will be muted for fear of reprisals or negative publicity. Who wants to be seen to not follow the "well lit [and publicised] path" of Google?
The most value the commenters on this issue can provide is to call for transparent data and impartial analysis. W3C could facilitate this. Sadly however none exists today.
However, I suspect Google will claim it a success without evidence, and the wider industry will be muted for fear of reprisals or negative publicity. Who wants to be seen to not follow the "well lit [and publicised] path" of Google?
I'm not sure about that - my understanding is that Firefox and Safari have confirmed that they plan to not implement FLOC, and Edge has declined to confirm they will. Wordpress are pushing out a security update that disables FLOC on their sites. Plenty of people are coming out as against it ahead of time.
@Sora2455 even if all the other web browsers don't support FLoC then Chrome still has 70%+ market share so publishers and advertisers will still need to rely on it if they want to limit revenue decline. It is those publishers and advertisers that will be powerless in their response.
Activity
lukewhitmore commentedon Apr 16, 2021
This feels like a disingenuous technology.
It's a solution to a problem which specifically relates to Google and the preservation of their core revenue stream.
It leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. More and more, it feels like Google are becoming Microsoft (prior to the MS reinvention).
ph00lt0 commentedon Apr 16, 2021
@lukewhitmore it's not really a revenue stream for Google, they already know what websites you visit if you are using Chrome. I think this is more to prevent them from getting anti competitive lawsuits, because they block other advertisers from spying. All the data belongs to Google and they give other advertisers some shitty cohort which does violate users' privacy right as well.
lukewhitmore commentedon Apr 16, 2021
@ph00lt0 Surely anti-competitive lawsuits a threat to their revenue stream though?
lukewhitmore commentedon Apr 16, 2021
I think one thing this has going for it, is that the technology feels conceptually flawed; in a similar sense that DRM technology is flawed, or King Canutes desire wasn't ever going to be enough to turn the tide.
I have a good reason to stop using Chrome.
michaelkleber commentedon Apr 16, 2021
Hello folks, nice to meet you all.
To answer @edent's original question: the underlying user-focused goal here is improved privacy. People are unhappy with the widespread tracking based on third-party cookies, and we plan to remove them from Chrome. A lot of the work discussed on https://privacysandbox.com/ is about preventing other types of tracking.
But most of the sites on the web get their revenue from advertising, and it turns out that a lot of advertising revenue depends on some use of cross-site data. According to a bunch of studies by folks in academia and industry and government, just getting rid of cookies will probably cost most websites 50%-70% of their revenue.
This speaks to your user needs question as well. People who want to use the web need websites to keep existing. As a web browser, Chrome wants the web to thrive. As a deeply web-based company, Google does too.
So cookies are a 25-year-old piece of technology that lets the web ecosystem work, but has substantial privacy costs. The goal of FLoC is to migrate to a new piece of technology that lets the web ecosystem work and has substantially better privacy properties. That change is the user story we're here to address.
edent commentedon Apr 16, 2021
Thanks @michaelkleber. Has Google conducted any researchwwith Web users? If so, is it published?
We can't have a meaningful discussion unless we understand if this meets user needs.
lukewhitmore commentedon Apr 16, 2021
@michaelkleber
Are people unhappy with widespread tracking based on third-party cookies, or are they actually unhappy with widespread tracking?
To use an analogy, in many parts of the world people are talking about 'the death of the high street store'. I think most technologists would agree that this change is inevitable, and that we need to adapt and evolve.
Perhaps 'the death of targeted advertising' is also due. Maybe the way we fund the web needs to change?
ph00lt0 commentedon Apr 16, 2021
Exactly, if targeted ads and people's personal data do not traverse into money, companies will automatically find other revenue streams and look into other business models. Customers never requested it to be free. This is simply something that was invented by the industry. If you make illuminate the option to make money from targeted ads the business will/has to find other ways. Also many websites have proven to make a decent amount of money without targeting users directly.
Ads can also be displayed on contextual basis rather than personal. Good example:
https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/24/data-from-dutch-public-broadcaster-shows-the-value-of-ditching-creepy-ads/
michaelkleber commentedon Apr 16, 2021
@edent
The 2019 research by Google Ads folks, on the impact of ad targeting without cookies, is one of the sources of data on revenue loss. But during the A/B experiment, they also measured user satisfaction with the ads they saw, based on people clicking the "X" in the top-right corner of ads to complain about them. They measured a 21% increase in people complaining that they were not interested in the ads they saw. (See the section "Additional Reflections" on p.3.)
These are both about the need for some replacement, not the need for this specific replacement. And indeed there are a multitude of possible replacements, which many people in the ads and browser world have been working on for the last couple of years, and which generally make a wide range of trade-offs.
@lukewhitmore
Our goal is to get rid of widespread tracking, irrespective of the technology it's based on.
Perhaps you came to this GitHub repo based on some media story that claimed FLoC was itself "widespread tracking"? It's not.
There are indeed also lots of proposals for alternate ways to fund the web! I'm personally enthusiastic about some and skeptical of others. If any of those succeed, then the need for this effort will certainly be diminished.
lukewhitmore commentedon Apr 16, 2021
@michaelkleber
I'd propose that profiling millions of users and assigning each a token representing similarity—specifically for the purpose of targeting advertising—is widespead tracking.
Anyway, disregarding semantics, the literature provided by Google itself makes reference to 'profiling' and the main documentation here echos many of my concerns.
Please correct me if I am misunderstanding any of the following:
Based on the documentation here:
also ..
These mitigating factors suggest to me that there is still a user focused penalty associated with this technology. At the same time the main beneficiary seems to be the advertising industry (obviously not withstanding Google's advertising division).
I found one of the interesting points relating to third party cookies, was the ingenuity it encouraged on the part of developers on behalf of advertisers. The actual way third party cookies ended up being used far exceeding the initially intended use cases.
The sad fact is the same will occur here. It wouldn't surprise me if those causes for concern listed, end up being the first port of call for advertisers trying to create an advantage.
Ultimately the creator of this thread is asking a very important question. Perhaps it has 10000 been slightly disingenuously phrased, because it's so blatantly obvious that the technology is not designed according user need. It's for the advertisers.
However, that's nothing compared to the disingenuous premise associated with encouraging an open standard that serves the need of a single corporation above all others.
What's happened to the old Google? What happened to putting users first? What happened to 'don't be evil'?
I genuinely don't think the world would miss this technology; we might end up in a better place without it.
michaelkleber commentedon Apr 16, 2021
You are, of course, welcome to take the view that the world would be a better place without the ability to target ads, even if that means all content is behind a sign-in or paywall or app store. Chrome believes that preserving the open web has substantial benefits, both for the web's immediate users and for the world more broadly.
To address this point specifically: Google makes most of its money from the ads that appear on Google Search. Those ads are based on what people just searched for. So while most of the sites in the world would lose 50%-70% of their revenue in the alternative you're advocating for, Google is not one of them.
The thing that would hurt Google is if a large amount of the content on the web went away. But that's not a particular-to-Google problem — like I said, I think that would hurt a lot of us.
infostreams commentedon Apr 17, 2021
This technology benefits Google more than anyone. Let's be honest. Google is using its near-monopoly in search to fund a browser that pushes invasive surveillance technology onto unsuspecting users. I don't think anything discussed here will change the fundamental direction of this project, and that's because Google's future success depends on its success.
I'm sure that once they've successfully added this technology to every platform they control (Android, Chrome) they will push the narrative that they've made the web a safer and more private place without tracking. None of it is true, obviously, and everyone here knows it.
I do wish that they would teach proper ethics classes to technologists. Hiding behind a famous corporate logo and a big salary to do unethical things that your boss says are vital for the continued existence of the web, that's just... extremely disappointing.
Someone noticed somewhere that this is disabled by default for users in the EU. So that's something. We can only hope for strong government regulations that outlaw such massively invasive tracking technologies in the rest of the world as well. But let's be honest, that will take years (decades?), and all the while Google will track almost every single individual in each country that doesn't have such regulations. Because of the work that you and your colleagues do, @michaelkleber. I'm sure you are a nice person, and that you have told yourself a useful story that justifies you working on this, but the world would be a better place without the technology that you are developing here.
Let's hope US regulators have the balls to break up Google. It's high time.
michaelkleber commentedon Apr 17, 2021
I would be happy to hear why you think this is true.
If your idea of "benefits Google more than anyone" is measured in terms of what fraction of their money different companies stand to lose without something like FLoC, then what you're saying is very definitely not the case.
If your idea is that Google will somehow use FLoC as an alternate identifier and track you with it, then first we designed FLoC to keep that from being possible, and second check out this blog post saying "we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products."
Thank you for the benefit of the doubt. I'd like to hear what you think the world would be like without this technology that you think would be an improvement. This is surely the right question to be asking, and I hope you @infostreams (and @lukewhitmore also) will paint a picture of an end state that you think is better.
joshuakoran commentedon Apr 17, 2021
I think we all agree that proposed Privacy Sandbox changes will negatively impact most publisher revenues, given marketers will receive:
Proponents of the changes suggest that the reduction in revenues for smaller publishers will address user's needs for their important privacy rights to be better respected.
Thus, returning to one of the core questions raised above by @lukewhitmore
@michaelkleber the reference to research that people did not find ads relevant does not address this issue:
To address @lukewhitmore, I do believe it would be helpful to reference published research that people are more concerned about third-party tracking relative to concerns around the scale and sensitivity of personal data collected online and associated with their identity, regardless which organization is collecting this personal data.
Can anyone link to such research that might help address @edent's original question:
infostreams commentedon Apr 17, 2021
Don't give me the argument "we're doing this for other people" 😂 Google is only in this for themselves. This is Google's response to regulatory pressure that forbade tracking everyone everywhere without their consent. After the GDPR forced publishers to ask for consent, I'm sure there's a sizable portion of users who do NOT provide their consent and opt-out of everything. Exact numbers are hard to come by, but anecdata (in German) points to anywhere between 10% and 90% opting-out, with specialized companies such as consentmanager and cookiebot reporting opt-in rates of only around 40 - 50%.
So, if these numbers are correct, Google just lost half of their tracking data. Because these days most websites use other "free" services such as Google Analytics or Google Webfonts, which gives Google (how convenient) insight of what people do after they leave their search results page. So what can you do to get that data back?! Well, you can just build it into your "free" browser that conveniently has the largest market share, and you're back on track!
I will believe it when it passes a European court. Additionally, I think statements such as "we will not build" and "we will not use" are too weak. I would like to see "we can not build" and "we can not use".
That's an easy one. We can and should build a web that doesn't track anyone. It's unnecessary and harmful. Everyone who thinks we need all this tracking is lying. There's no reason for a company in California to know everything about me, a random guy in an apartment 10000 kilometers away, and all my neighbors, friends and family. It's insidious. We can do better. We can still have a functioning internet without it. Google is just doing this because they think they can get away with it. Please enable it in Europe too, once it's done, I can't wait for the court case.
6 remaining items
joshuakoran commentedon Apr 19, 2021
@michaelkleber I'm very happy to hear you have access to academic articles that suggest Privacy Sandbox proposals like FLoC will:
My understanding is that walled gardens will continue to rely on scaled, fine-grained audience sequential messaging and real-time optimized feedback, which as I understand it will not be available across the open web to smaller publishers. However, I'd love to read any research that shows the relative utility of Privacy Sandbox proposals to what walled gardens will still offer.
Can you please share?
Alternately, if anyone has a reference to published research that people are more concerned about third-party tracking relative to concerns around the scale and sensitivity of personal data collected online and associated with their identity, regardless which organization is collecting this personal data that too would useful to help inform how we can advance protecting privacy rights while ensuring the open web can thrive.
Can anyone link to such research that might help address @edent's original questions:
jwrosewell commentedon Apr 19, 2021
@lukewhitmore - we have already seen 80% of digital marketing spend move to two companies that offer the richest set of features prior to the current changes. See the CMA report I referenced. In a democracy I prefer the regulator overseen by elected representatives to settle this question rather than market participants acting unilaterally.
The 25 people at the CMA who spent a year writing the report did a thorough job documenting the economic model for the open web. The CMA felt Privacy Sandbox was such a significant risk that they opened a specific investigation in January 2021.
lukewhitmore commentedon Apr 19, 2021
@jwrosewell
This in particular, stood out to me when reading through the CMA report you reference.
--
If I understand correctly, the CMA are suggesting that Google's proposed third party cookie replacement technologies (of which FLoC is part of) could place Google in jeopardy of breaching UK competition law.
How does this support your argument? Unless I'm misunderstanding this, it seems like it exposes a potential leading factor in Google seeking approval. For Google, I'd imagine the absolute necessity of these technologies being accepted by the W3C is only increased by this investigation.
jwrosewell commentedon Apr 19, 2021
@lukewhitmore
Thank you for reading. Here are some other sections I also find relevant.
My argument is that if personalized marketing is to exist on one platform, then it must also exist on all platforms a 10BC8 nd offer equal features, if people are going to have choice. I also have an off topic belief that personalized marketing on all platforms should be significantly improved to address the concerns raised in the report to reduce complexity and make privacy meaningful so people can make informed choices.
Google need a solution that both ensures a level playing field from a competition perspective and addresses the privacy problem they have identified. I believe they have over stated the privacy problem and their role in addressing it only with engineering/mathematics based proposals. What about laws and economics? What about working with others including regulators?
To conclude with Matthew Parris, UK journalist and ‘national treasure, in his article titled The 31 inventions that Britain really needs
macedogm commentedon Apr 19, 2021
@jwrosewell Thanks for providing the CMA report.
Based on the report and the sections that you quoted:
And also:
Then I go back to my first #102 (comment):
edent commentedon Apr 20, 2021
This has drifted rather off-topic - sorry @michaelkleber!
Let me rephrase my original question.
By users - I mean individuals who browse the web.
I would expect that Google, like most organisations, takes a user-needs approach to launching new products and services. That's especially important when defining new Web standards. For example, we wouldn't launch a new
<olfactory>element without conducting detailed research on whether users wanted smell-o-vision on the web. Just saying "well, perfume companies really want to make their pages smell nice" isn't really a compelling user story!So far Google have shown some excellent research into advertisers and publishers. But I am concerned that we haven't seen anything which talks to end-users.
Please let me know if I've missed anything obvious because, at the moment, this does not look like a user-focused proposal.
michaelkleber commentedon Apr 22, 2021
The user-focused goal here is privacy improvement, compared to the web with 3rd-party cookies, in which pervasive tracking is possible.
As with many things about making changes to the web, there are many parties to consider. We believe that it's possible to solve that user goal without also causing most web sites to lose most of their revenue.
That means we're doing some sort of balancing act, and our solutions probably won't appeal to people who focus exclusively on the privacy goal and ignore the 50%-70% revenue loss of alternate solutions. So be it.
But solving for the needs of people who use the web, while considering the interests of the multiple constituencies the web needs to operate — that is the intent.
infostreams commentedon Apr 22, 2021
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
npdoty commentedon Apr 30, 2021
Would another statement of the goal be for users to have a choice to see ads generally relevant to their interests (when they see ads) while reducing collection of granular browsing history by third parties?
That doesn't speak to research about user interests about seeing relevant ads or on the balancing of different user interests (or interests of publishers or advertisers), but it might provide clarity missing from considering it just a privacy feature. Clearer statement of those goals might also provide for comparison of different approaches, or ways to limit the scope of the feature.
michaelkleber commentedon May 1, 2021
Certainly you are correct that people seeing more-relevant ads is an additional benefit! But aside from some Super Bowl parties I've been to, it's pretty rare to find people caring more about the ads they see than about the content they're inside of.
So if I were to bundle the multiple effects together, I'd be more inclined to express the goal as letting ads-supported web sites make money while reducing collection of granular browsing history by third parties.
vwkd commentedon May 1, 2021
Ugh! 😑
"Hey, look at this shiny new thing we're building! Oh and, it's also pretty bad. But at least it's not as bad as that other thing we had before..."
jwrosewell commentedon May 1, 2021
I have recently been pointed to this paper in relation to W3C and DNT. At the heart of the issue is the question, “who speaks for people?” I might also add there is a second question, “can they do so without being conflicted?”
It is for these reasons I found the CMA report the most important document in the debate. It does not side with anyone commentator. It is a balanced assessment. As long as a small number of large integrated organisations that are both gatekeepers (web browsers) and service providers can do something then other players must also be able to do that thing. That is what an elected government has concluded. They safely speak for people.
Since this issue was raised we also see that government working with the G7 to form a common position. That is encouraging, if slow progress.
Therefore we have two remedies to the question of personalised marketing.
For those that wish to pursue the former option then the W3C is not the forum to do so. I think the W3C consensus approach currently shows that it is unacceptable to prevent someone from doing something so long as it doesn’t harm others. If other W3C watchers believe otherwise do comment.
Therefore within the W3C we need a method of understanding how to achieve the latter option. FLoC is one such option. Many people, myself included, believe FLoC does not meet the CMAs requirements concerning choice.
There is a simple test to confirm this. If FLoC was better than existing methods for personalised marketing then Google would have confirmed they will be using it with YouTube, search and their other products and abandoning other methods of personalising marketing on their platform. After all "what is good for the goose is good for the gander".
Google have not done so. In fact their research on other similar algorithms shows a 5% decline in conversions per dollar. Others believe the figure is higher. @wseltzer, general counsel of the W3C, has confirmed there is no evidence available to support the work. This is a shame.
As FLoC does not appear to comply with rules in Europe it is being tested only in other geographies. We will start to see different experimenters presenting the results in the summer. It is a shame they will not do so in a scientific and unified way. However, I suspect Google will claim it a success without evidence, and the wider industry will be muted for fear of reprisals or negative publicity. Who wants to be seen to not follow the "well lit [and publicised] path" of Google?
The most value the commenters on this issue can provide is to call for transparent data and impartial analysis. W3C could facilitate this. Sadly however none exists today.
Sora2455 commentedon May 1, 2021
I'm not sure about that - my understanding is that Firefox and Safari have confirmed that they plan to not implement FLOC, and Edge has declined to confirm they will. Wordpress are pushing out a security update that disables FLOC on their sites. Plenty of people are coming out as against it ahead of time.
jwrosewell commentedon May 1, 2021
@Sora2455 even if all the other web browsers don't support FLoC then Chrome still has 70%+ market share so publishers and advertisers will still need to rely on it if they want to limit revenue decline. It is those publishers and advertisers that will be powerless in their response.