Comment by fh9302
3 years ago
It's nefarious how they ask you if you want to turn on "ad privacy", indicating that this feature increases your privacy when in reality it does the opposite.
3 years ago
It's nefarious how they ask you if you want to turn on "ad privacy", indicating that this feature increases your privacy when in reality it does the opposite.
Technically they’re correct: the privacy offered by this new system is superior to that which is offered by the web with no tracking protection.
Thinking about it in a very abstract way I find the whole thing fascinating. Google is clearly terrified that the tracking protection offered by other browsers is going to become the norm and they’re trying to head that off at the pass by implementing this compromise. But I’m not sure why they’re all that worried about it, they still have the lions share or the browser market. Maybe they’re worried about incoming legislation?
If I'm understanding correctly, they're not turning on some other tracking prevention when you enable this "feature". It's strictly a privacy downgrade.
Not yet but they can't just turn off third party cookies arbitrarily in their browser without giving time for sites and advertisers to update their systems to account for the removal. They're already facing anticompetitive/monopoly scrutiny on many other fronts, they don't need to shoot themselves in the foot in the advertising space as well. Thus the first step is to implement a replacement technology first and then make the change.
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After the launch of this feature they plan to disable third party cookies. It's not happening simultaneously because they would get hit with antitrust suits by adtech companies if they gave no time to transition.
That sounds then like a class action lawsuit waiting to be filed.
We're in a transition period to turning off third-party cookies. When that happens, this is objectively more privacy-secure.
> Technically they’re correct: the privacy offered by this new system is superior to that which is offered by the web with no tracking protection.
That’s not true, this new system is a tracker, not tracking protection. Simply turning it off improves privacy.
There’s literally no point in implementing this system if you aren’t going to pair it with tracking prevention, as Google plans to do.
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As of right now they don't turn off 3rd party cookies when you enable this, so no. This objectively decreases your privacy.
It’s beautiful, from a sociopath’s perspective, if you think about it.
“If you let me punch your teeth out, the stabbings will stop (sometime in the future, terms and conditions may apply)”
All while refusing to acknowledge that there is an option that requires neither punching nor stabbing.
To an uninformed user that takes Google’s words at face value it sounds like an upgrade.
>in reality it does the opposite.
Third party cookies can do everything the topics API can do and more. Third party cookies lets sites collect granular data about what exact site you on and any data they want from it. This API just gives them some topics which may even be a random chosen one and not a real one.
Precisely. The article (and seemingly everyone else) fails to realize that topics is reducible to TPC. If you have TPC then topics provides no additional tracking capability.
Topics is a mess (see a great analysis from a colleague of mine[1]), but it’s a hard sell to call this current step nefarious.
[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.03825
Can you give me a source that enabling the topics API disables third-party cookies? And once Chrome has phased out third-party cookies the topics API will strictly decrease my privacy, not increase it.
>Can you give me a source that enabling the topics API disables third-party cookies?
I never claimed that. The current estimated timeline for phasing out 3rd party cookies as of last month is:
23Q4 Opt in testing for sites
24Q1 1% disabled
24Q2 fully disabled
https://privacysandbox.com/open-web/
> And once Chrome has phased out third-party cookies the topics API will strictly decrease my privacy, not increase it.
You are free to disable topics, sites, or even the entire system altogether. While it does decrease your privacy in return you can get more relevant ads. With 3rd party cookies if you disable them all you will break things even if those things are unrelated to ads.
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