But this can't be, people assured me that FLoC was an improvement to privacy, and that it would provide an alternative to persistent identifiers and profiles, and that it would help end the arms race on fingerprinting.
You mean to tell me that FLoC will be used for fingerprinting anyway, and it changes nothing about advertiser's strategies and tracking techniques, and they won't self-regulate, and that it doesn't work to throw them bones of extra data and hope that they'll willingly stop their abusive behavior if we meet them halfway?
This is a shocking development.
The only consolation is that Google's next privacy compromise with the ad industry definitely won't suffer from exactly the same problems. The best thing for us to do now is to assume that this is a completely random, one-time fluke that doesn't reflect anything on the industry's character. No need to change the way we engage with the advertising industry on privacy issues because of it. We should keep offering them compromises that make it easier for them to track users, and keep assuming that they'll in good faith regulate themselves.
You mean to tell me that FLoC will be used for fingerprinting anyway, and it changes nothing about advertiser's strategies and tracking techniques, and they won't self-regulate, and that it doesn't work to throw them bones of extra data and hope that they'll willingly stop their abusive behavior if we meet them halfway?
This is a shocking development.
The only consolation is that Google's next privacy compromise with the ad industry definitely won't suffer from exactly the same problems. The best thing for us to do now is to assume that this is a completely random, one-time fluke that doesn't reflect anything on the industry's character. No need to change the way we engage with the advertising industry on privacy issues because of it. We should keep offering them compromises that make it easier for them to track users, and keep assuming that they'll in good faith regulate themselves.