Comment by skybrian

3 years ago

Looking at 'Ad topics' in Chrome settings, they seem extremely generic and barely count as targeting. If disclosing these topics to a bunch of websites harms me, I don't see how? I don't care who knows them.

Here you go:

   * Arts & Entertainment
   * Computers & Electronics
   * Internet & telecom
   * News
   * Online communities

Seems reasonably accurate, but so what? What am I missing?

13 comments

skybrian

Reply
jansan  3 years ago

I think Google is being reasonably transparent here:

- When this was introduced, Google asked my if I permit using those topics. I declined and now in the settings the toggle is switched off, just as it should be.

- Your topics will be listed when you open the ad settings.

- Instead of disallowing topics, you can also block individual topics.

  • troupo  3 years ago

    If you count the dark pattern of "we've improved privacy, got it" while having all ad-related toggled on is not "reasonable transparent"

two_in_one  3 years ago

Is it true Chrome keeps third party cookies while all other major browsers have disabled them long time ago? And disabling in Chrome isn't even scheduled, right? Then this is in addition to cookies.

Second, if you have a bunch of parameters attached to you, then you can be tracked. What exactly those parameters are doesn't matter, as long as the set is more or less stable and unique.

Third, do you really want to disclose your interest to every website? Without a way to opt out.

  • soared  3 years ago

    It is scheduled for 2024.

    It does matter what is tracked, because advertisers need to be able to match on-site behavior to what they can identify and target in a bid.

    You’re not disclosing your interest to every website. Your allowing your browser to store a list of your interests and then advertisers can target users who have those interests. This is miles more privacy focused than the current solution where any vendor can place pixels all over the web to build any audience they want, small or big. They can track really any data they want, combine it with any offline data see they want, and sell it to anyone they want.

RubyRidgeRandy  3 years ago

At the end of the day, I think the categories are very broad and better respect people's privacy compared to what we had before. Some people in the privacy community seem to think advertising and tracking in any form should not exist and will always make a stink about whatever incarnation they take.

These proposals were made directly because of legislation like GDPR. It's not as if Google got up one day and said "Let's make our job harder."

  • rapind  3 years ago

    > Some people in the privacy community seem to think advertising and tracking in any form should not exist and will always make a stink about whatever incarnation they take.

    I don't think I'm in the "privacy community". It's my opinion that advertising will always exist, but tracking is complete horseshit and should be abolished ASAP. I don't think this is a very unpopular opinion either. There seems to be an attempt to Stockholm us all into thinking tracking is a necessary evil we must accept.

    • yetanotherasian  3 years ago

      I'm not apologizing for google, but think many people who are against all forms of this aren't really thinking the problem through. The same way newspapers said "stop linking headlines to us" and then once some popular service did and all their traffic disappeared they came back and said "oh, wait, no, you can link to us"

      For the ads, a large portion of the internet that people want (maybe not you in particular but lots of people in general), run on ads. Arstechnica runs on ads, theverge runs on ads, slashdot runs on ads, the register runs on ads, kotaku runs on ads, tech crunch run on ads. To name a few sites that might be popular here

      If those sites can't support themselves they'll more than likely disappear. If all those sites disappeared I feel like plenty of people (maybe not you but more people than not) would realize that they thought they wanted (zero disclose) lead to outcomes they didn't want

      I feel like Google is genuinely trying to do something positive here. Provide a way of those sites to still target ads, still check if an ad was effective, still try to check for bad actors making fake clicks, but also be practically un-attributable to a single user.

      Going through the actual specs, they really are trying to make it so you can't track and individual but sites can still function based on ads.

      Is it in Google own interest? Yes. But it's also in the interest of sites people want which means it's also in the interest of the people who want those sites.

      Apple on the other hand, would prefer you be tracked directly by having you download an app for each site where that app can track you way more than a browser with these features can track you.

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