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Comment by fh9302

3 years ago

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.

  • Then bringing up third party cookies seems like a red herring. They're worse, but for example I have a pi-hole at home. This prompt will probably mislead my wife into accepting it as an improvement, while it will presumably undermine the tracking mitigations I've set up for her until I go fix it.

    This is unambiguously a privacy downgrade, regardless of what third party cookies may also be able to do.

    • I brought it up because this API aims to replace a use case of third party cookies.

      If you are blocking 3rd party cookies by DNS you will also block topics too.