Google (Chrome): Don't be Part of the FLoC

[Portreve]

The greatest degree to which I trust Microsoft, Google, or anyone else, can be found in those contributions which can be peer reviewed with the daylight of public view.

[karlchen]

Hi, folks.

At this very moment I am sitting in front of Vivaldi and typing this message:

Code: Select all

Vivaldi	3.7.2218.55 (Stable channel) (64-Bit)
Überarbeitung	95bbce164915ddff8d58c77a97064f858db3df2b
Betriebssystem	Linux
JavaScript	V8 8.9.255.25
User-Agent	Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/89.0.4389.128 Safari/537.36

Invoked from this same Vivaldi, this webpage, which has been mentioned several times in this ongoing thread before, https://amifloced.org, confirms:

Your browser does not currently have FloC enabled.

The FLoC origin trial currently affects 0.5% of Chrome users, and it doesn't look
like you are one of them. Google may add to or change the set of users in the trial
at any time. You can check back here to see if FLoC is turned on in the future.

The mentioned FLoC sub-directory, ~/.config/vivaldi/FloC, is present on this machine and it is not empty.
But its existence alone may not be sufficient to conclude anything, in particular as I would have to understand what its content may be used for or may not be used for; yet, I admit that I don't at this point in time.

Code: Select all

~/.config/vivaldi/Floc$ ls -lR
drwx------ 3 karl karl 4096 Apr  2 12:33 1.0.6

./1.0.6:
-rw-rw-r-- 1 karl karl    66 Apr  2 12:33 manifest.fingerprint
-rw------- 1 karl karl   122 Apr  2 12:33 manifest.json
drwx------ 2 karl karl  4096 Apr  2 12:33 _metadata
-rw------- 1 karl karl 33872 Apr  2 12:33 SortingLshClusters

./1.0.6/_metadata:
-rw------- 1 karl karl 1765 Apr  2 12:33 verified_contents.json

For the moment, I will trust the Vivaldi makers' promise not to implement FloC in any way, made in their blog here.

Cheers,
Karl

[Glamtrains]

I don't get the Google panic. I don't buy things online, I am not easily influenced by advertising and I am well-informed about everything big brother and such. Do people really believe they can outsmart a cyber oppression predicted two thousand years ago by removing anything Google? So, how about all the Facebook and Whatsapp they run so gladly?

Linux isn't going to be your big brother firewall; the thing goes well beyond that.

[rene]

Just can't help myself; will always remain fascinated. Do we even want to know about that two thousand year old prediction?

[Cassandra]

I don't understand the attraction of Chromium and Chrome. I gave up all things Microsoft and Google when I moved to Linux on my work computer four years ago, and have not missed them one iota. Firefox with DDG suits me fine, so Google is welcome to install as many trackers in its software as it likes.

You may remember, back in the early days of widespread 'civilian' use of the www, that many websites used to announce that they were 'optimised for Internet Explorer'.
For example, I remember an era when many UK Government websites *required* one to use MS Internet Explorer to access them - so e.g. registering/taxing one's car, and ANY engagement whatever with the Social Security system REQUIRED one to use MS Internet Explorer.

Many websites nowadays seem to only work if you access them from Google Chrome.
For now, when I encounter one that does that, I just find an alternative website.

But there are two problems with that:
1- I expect that the 'optimised for Google Chrome' (or other, Chromium-based browsers) trend will only continue. Especially once website owners - and/or the advertisers upon whom they depend for their revenue - realise the immense power (especially the non-user-avoidable nature) that is inherent in Google's FLoC system.

2- if one's bank or government has 'optimised' its website for compatibility with Google Chrome, one doesn't really have any 'choice' except to use it, does one?
The 'retail' Banks here in the UK are currently engaged in a race to close-down all of their physical branches, and to instead require their 'customers' to instead use their online facilities (or, even worse, their installed-on-your-mobile-device 'apps'). Just before Covid-19 hit us last year I went in to my local branch of my bank to try to pay a bill. The tellers behind the glass referred me to the front-of-house 'welcome' desk, where the staff required me to log-in to an iPad that they had. This tells me that my bank is determined to close my branch very soon. And ALL the banks here are doing the same thing. Even a few years ago my town had branches of the five largest retail banks, and three other 'Building Societies' (Mutuals).
Now, the town is down to only three of the five largest retail banks, and only one (small, local, not national) Building Society.

We, as a group of people who value our privacy - and our right to NOT get lumped-in to some cryptically-defined 'cohort' by an algorithm, the identity of which defines which parts of the internet we are allowed to access, and which parts we are NOT allowed to access - have a pressing need to get the implementation of this Evil system prevented.

Before we wake up to find that the whole world has become 'online-only', and that every interaction in which we try to take part is pre-filtered by a system that is a cross between that was created here by 'Cambridge Analytica' in order to target the political campaign advertising for the Brexit-referendum here, and the identity-filtering system that was used by 'The Consulting Association' in order to blacklist job applicants for about twenty years here before they got caught.
(Have you never heard of it? I urge you to look it up.)

[cliffcoggin]

Like you, if a website will not open for me with Firefox, I would find an alternative website rather than roll over and yield to Google. However I have never had to resort to such a measure in the four years since abandoning Google and Microsoft. Bank, government, commercial and institutional websites all work as expected with Firefox.

[Moem]

So, how about all the Facebook and Whatsapp they run so gladly?

I don't use either of those. Is it okay with you if I prefer to give Google as little of my data as I can manage? I know that it's impossible to use the internet and not give them any, but a little is still better than a lot.

[rene]

In this thread: viewtopic.php?f=58&t=282997 presumed blink/v8 (chromium's web/javascript engine) monoculture was discussed before with me personally holding the position that that's not necessarily and in fact a bad thing. In the context of Cassandra's last post above I'd still happily repeat that for now: a web-engine monoculture is not necessarily bad. Things like FLoC and/or other popular privacy invasions are not an engine but frontend matter and easily not enabled by other browsers even if using blink/v8.

[Cassandra]

This post is very long, for which I apologise, but I urge you to read it.

I don't get the Google panic....

The mechanism of FLoC is this:
it tracks your browsing and, after Google's algorithms analyse your browsing habits, it then *assigns you* to a 'cohort' that has been defined by Google's algorithms. The 'cohort' is defined by Google as a group of people that Google's algorithm SAYS are all interested in 'x', 'y', and 'z', but NOT interested in 'a', 'b', or 'c'.

The identity of the 'cohort' to which you have been assigned is then available to every website with which you ever interact.
This 'cohort' identity will then be used to determine e.g. which adverts you will be served on any particular website.
BUT - because News websites want to keep you within their website for as long as possible (so that you click on the adverts that are paying THEM for ad-space, as opposed to leaving their website and clicking on adverts placed on Somebody Else's website) - the identity of the 'cohort' to which YOU have been assigned by Google's algorithms WILL also be used to determine which news links appear on pages you look at.

Now imagine that you are an employer who is advertising a vacancy. Or a Bank that is selling mortgages.
'If' you get applicants to apply online, your Corporation's computers will also be able to look at the applicant's FLoC tag - and therefore know the 'cohort' to which Google has assigned them.

If you do advertise a job online, you are going to receive hundreds of applications for it - if not thousands of applications. How many companies want to waste staff time by getting them to sift through all of the applications manually? Especially if the company could instead just automate the process of whittling-down to a shortlist of, say, twenty or thirty for a human employee to go through.

So, for example:
Might an applicant have the 'wrong' political views? FLoC will tell you that
Might an applicant be of the 'wrong' ethnicity? FLoC will tell you that
Might the applicant be of the 'wrong' religion? FLoC will tell you that
Might the applicant be interested in joining/already a member of a Union? FLoC will tell you that
Has the applicant searched for (or visited) a bar in mid-week? FLoC will tell you that

You could, if you were so inclined, program your servers to automatically reject applications - for jobs, or for healthcare, or for mortgages, or for loans, or for insurance, or for anything else - based on an applicant's ethnicity, political beliefs, religion, social beliefs, shopping habits, union membership, or whatever other 'controversial' thing you can think of; and achieve that simply by telling the server to automatically reject all applications from anyone who Google has defined as being a member of whichever 'cohorts' you wish to 'Unperson'.
Also, if you were to route your application process through 'cloud' servers in another country, you could do all of that data-processing in jurisdictions that are beyond the reach of any pesky data-protection laws in the country in which you are nominally-based.

And the ONLY thing that any rejected applicant would ever know about it is that 'on this occasion' they 'were not selected for an interview'....

Now consider that the 'cohort' to which Google assigns you is based on your browsing history. And that THAT is the one that is held on Google's servers, NOT the one that is held on your own computer.
What is your teenaged son searching for/looking at online? Has he had friends over to your house? What are THEY searching for/looking at online?
Do you have a daughter who is studying at university, and has had to look up religious or political extremist groups in order to write an essay? Or has she had friends stay over who needed to look up such things for one of their essays?

What does the browsing done by those people tell Google's algorithms about which FLoC 'cohort' it should assign you to?

If any of you want to call me 'paranoid' consider this:
I once 'liked' a Facebook page that was a satirical parody of a certain political party in the UK.
A couple of years ago I checked to see what Facebook's algorithms had defined ME as being 'interested in'.
They had listed me as 'interested in' that political party - which is an entity that I hate. i.e. Facebook's 'smart' algorithms had defined me as holding political opinions that are completely antithetical to the ones that I actually espouse.

Now let's think once again about FLoC, and consider the phrases "if it's on the computer it must be true" and "the computer says 'no'...".

Again, I ask anybody who is reading this to - please! - look up the former UK construction-industry body called 'The Consulting Association'.
Do you think that THEY might have liked to have FLoC available to them?

Linux isn't going to be your big brother firewall; the thing goes well beyond that.

You are absolutely correct about that.
We need to be lobbying our governments to prevent the implementation of FLoC, or getting enough 'ordinary people' to kick up enough of a fuss that FLoC goes the same way as the Perez/Agnelli/Woodward 'European Super League'.

[rene]

We need to be lobbying our governments to prevent the implementation of FLoC

That, or we need to flip the switch that will be present to opt out of it should it become established technology (right now you can opt out of the trial on Chrome by disabling third-party cookies --- which if you're the person who cares in the first place you long did anyway). Or again, need to use a different browser altogether. As in, <yawn>, really.

[Cassandra]

In the context of Cassandra's last post above I'd still happily repeat that for now: a web-engine monoculture is not necessarily bad. Things like FLoC and/or other popular privacy invasions are not an engine but frontend matter and easily not enabled by other browsers even if using blink/v8.

And if you happen to be one of the few (relative to the total population) people who can find out how to disable FLoC, does that mean that you get defined into a 'cohort' of 'refuseniks' or 'troublemakers' or 'crimethinkers who unbellyfeel Ingsoc'?
Does the web infrastructure built upon the immense power of FLoC just refuse to let you access any information until you 'upgrade your Browser'?
Or does the set of algorithms that drive the FLoC system simply use the traffic to your IP address (and other forms of proxy information) to assign you to a FLoC 'cohort'?

I don't work for Google, or for a large web-infrastructure company, or for a media conglomerate, or for an advertising-industry technical committee - so I don't know how FLoC 'refuseniks' will be treated.

But I am aware of the human species' propensity to create things like the Albigensian Crusade and the Holy Inquisition, like the Star Chamber court, like Walsingham's spy network, like the Gestapo, KGB, Stasi, and Securitate, and like the 'Morality Police' in Iran and Saudi Arabia and under the Taliban in Afghansitan.
And of the existence/history of Cambridge Analytica, TCA, and the Chinese State's 'Social Credit' system.
It seems to me that FLoC would have been a tool that each of those groups would have LOVED to have had at its disposal.

I am opposed to FLoC for the same reason that I am opposed to the idea of spraying gasoline over my house during Forest Fire season.
I can see no 'upside' to it, and many, many downsides.

[Cassandra]

...or we need to flip the switch that will be present to opt out of it

And you can personally guarantee the ongoing perpetual existence of that opt-out flip-switch to me, can you?
In your capacity as the sole-proprietor and CEO of Google/'Oath'/Amazon/Facebook/News International/the whole of the worldwide internet infrastructure?

In that case, please will you tell me why it doesn't actually even exist yet?

Edit to add:
Furthermore, as I wrote above, precisely what is the web infrastructure that is built to exploit the immense power of FLoC going to be programmed to do to FLoC refuseniks? I cannot say. Can you?

Much more-worryingly than that though, once every person's access to information is defined by their FLoC cohort, what happens to representative democracy?
Garbage In; Garbage Out.

I won't go in to the specifics of it here, but I urge you to look up the activities of, and the 'tools' developed by, Cambridge Analytica for the purposes of 'influencing' the outcome of the UK's Brexit referendum. Not least the fact that they did ALL of their 'data-handling' in countries that were OUTSIDE the jurisdictional reach of the GDPR.
And the fact that the referendum result that was delivered was precisely the one that was desired by their paymasters.

The implementation of FLoC is the worlwide release/application of Cambridge Analytica 'information'-targeting system.
Except that, unlike Cambridge Analytica's UK-only application, FLoC's scope is (like Google's) GLOBAL.

[Glamtrains]

"I don't work for Google, or for a large web-infrastructure company, or for a media conglomerate, or for an advertising-industry technical committee - so I don't know how FLoC 'refuseniks' will be treated."

Linux users, more so Tor users, were being tagged as 'radicals' by those 3-letter security agencies a decade ago already. And, tagged, they were being watched.

[Cassandra]

Linux users, more so Tor users, were being tagged as 'radicals' by those 3-letter security agencies a decade ago already. And, tagged, they were being watched.

Yes, and have you been imprisoned by any of those agencies? Probably not. Because you are not a 'threat', and those Agencies have not limited your access to information, jobs, loans, healthcare, etc.

But FLoC enables unelected Corporations to define what information you will be allowed to see - and what information you will NOT be allowed to see.

Again, I urge you to please look up the activities of 'Cambridge Analytica' in respect of the Brexit referendum, and 'The Consulting Association' in respect of employment.
Those were both in the UK - which has some of the strongest data-protection laws, and legal protections of individual liberty, in the world.

FLoC is internet-based. It enables your data to be handled anywhere in the world (avoiding any local laws that govern data protection, rights to freedom-of-expression, privacy, etc). It defines how anyone with access to it will treat you.

The way that it defines you cannot be investigated or adjusted/corrected by you.
The way that a company decides to treat the members of 'your' FLoC 'cohort' can also be defined-&-processed anywhere in the world - i.e. beyond the reach of your local laws.
And, once again, you DON'T even have the legal right (let alone the actual capacity) to interfere in commercially-secret internal decision made by Corporations.

But yeah, why should I be worrying my pretty little head about something so utterly trivial - totally benign, actually -as this?

[rene]

In that case, please will you tell me why it doesn't actually even exist yet?

I already told you that it does exist: you opt out of the current trial by not allowing third-party cookies --- which again you already long had configured if you are the person that cares in the first place, although you'd in that case are in fact more likely to not use Chrome anyway.

Of Google, Microsoft and Apple, Google is the least problematic. I.e., whereas latter two are some mix of hardware and software vendor former is an ad vendor, and as stated before in this thread by a few people, if you don't by now know this to be Google's business model then you have only yourself to blame (hah, i wanted to type "are ridiculously stupid" but noticed just in time I'd then have to leave those other "few people" out of it). At least they're not hypocrites such as Apple. For those that didn't mind tracking by third-party cookies FLoC invades their privacy only less than it was invaded before. And note; Firefox has had them disabled by default for quite a few versions now; I assume you're worried about having been labelled a refusenik now as well, assuming you use Mint/Firefox?

FLoC is technology that makes things slightly better than how things are/were now. As the EFF says, it would've been a lot better if it had made it a lot better:

https://www.eff.org/nl/deeplinks/2021/0 ... rible-idea

The ad vendor didn't make it a lot better: big effing surprise. Stop using Google products such as Chrome if you don't care for Google. Or as mentioned, flip the option. Or feel, again, free to not to if you don't mind Google's business model and feel it provides also you with value as many in fact do. And not even just in the sense of liking Chrome or Google Docs or whatever: quite a few in fact like targeted ads. Like to see fancy women's shoes promoted to them when they're into fancy women's shoes rather than into technology.

I don't like that so I don't use e.g. Chrome and that's about the end of it: the kind of hubbub as in this thread just pulls this into stupid, paranoid conspiracy-theory territory. Oh please.

[Glamtrains]

As if I were abled, earned any money and able to spend it ...... sigh. Who cares about Google watching me? Decidedly not me YET I did delete my former Linux installation and reinstalled without Edge or Chrome. See? Why all the anxiety over something that can in no way affect me? I have a real life on a real street where I pay with my little bit of cash Google will never even know about.

It is as if people out there all are very rich, earn lank incomes and only ever buy things online. That's their reality, not mine, so why do they concern themselves with my manual lifestyle?

[Cassandra]

I already told you that it does exist: you opt out of the current trial by not allowing third-party cookies

That's a nice attempt to avoid my point that you can NOT guarantee the continued existence of what is in any case actually a rather-convoluted way to 'opt-opt' of it (NOT an actual opt-out switch); and is also a way to achieve 'opt-out' that also disables SOME web functionality.

CAN you guarantee its perpetual existence?
NO.

CAN you say how FLoC refuseniks are going to be treated?
NO.

But we CAN say that there are very good self-interested reasons for various actors to REQUIRE you to 'opt-in' to FLoC, and thus that they have the means, motive, and opportunity to FORCE you to 'opt-in' to it.

Or perhaps I should adopt your tone, and say "and I already told you why the existence of an 'opt-out' is irrelevant"?

Google is the least problematic.

So what?

The problem is not Google's action, it's what FLoC enables EVERY SITE WITH WHICH YOU EVER TRY TO INTERACT to do to you.
Your FLoC 'cohort' DEFINES you.
It DEFINES what websites will allow you to access/see/find out - and what you will NOT be allowed to access/see/find out.

What Corporation does NOT want to access THAT information about you?

FLoC is technology that makes things slightly better than how things are/were now. As the EFF says, it would've been a lot better if it had made it a lot better

FLoC is a wet-dream for people who wish to Unperson people who are of the 'wrong' political belief, or ethnicity, or religion, or gender, or nationality, or sexuality, etc
And it CANNOT be avoided by installing an ad-blocker, script-blocker, or by deleting cookies on your own machine.

It is a BACK-END system that you, the internet user, CANNOT circumvent.

It is NOT better than what we have now.
Except of course for advertisers, for Google's owners (who will be selling the facility to whomever wishes to exploit its undeniable power) and for those who wish to limit defined-groups of people's access to information.

Stop using Google products such as Chrome if you don't care for Google. Or as mentioned, flip the option.

One CANNOT opt-out of third-party Corporations with infrastructure in third countries using FLoC to define what you can - and what you CANNOT see, or apply for.
One CANNOT prevent third-party servers from e.g. simply refusing to allow any access to FLoC refuseniks.
One CANNOT prevent third-party servers in third-countries from treating FLoC refuseniks in any way that they see fit.

the kind of hubbub as in this thread just pulls this into stupid, paranoid conspiracy-theory territory. Oh please.

Look up Cambridge Analytica.
Look up 'The Consulting Association'.

Then come back here, explain what those two entities are/were and what they DID, and THEN explain how you can 'justify' your implicit accusation that I am being 'paranoid'.

[Cassandra]

As if I were abled, earned any money and able to spend it ...... sigh. Who cares about Google watching me? Decidedly not me YET I did delete my former Linux installation and reinstalled without Edge or Chrome. See? Why all the anxiety over something that can in no way affect me? I have a real life on a real street where I pay with my little bit of cash Google will never even know about.

It is as if people out there all are very rich, earn lank incomes and only ever buy things online. That's their reality, not mine, so why do they concern themselves with my manual lifestyle?

Most people in the UK have been buying most things online for the last year - almost all of our real shops on real streets have been closed because of the Covid-19 'lockdown'.

I urge you to look up 'The Consulting Association' and Cambridge Analytica.

Doing so will tell you why you a technology that DEFINES you by your browsing habits (i.e. by what you have NOT looked at as well as what you HAVE looked at) is something of which you should be afraid, no matter where you do your shopping.

[Glamtrains]

Please get a reality check - there is a world out there where literally half the population don't even have internet at all, where people go without when stores are closed, as we all had to endure the plandemic, after all. But the UK is a tiny little island and the US isn't the entire world - there is life beyond and it works differently. For nine months, I lived less than forty miles outside of Cape Town, in a rural town - and we went back in time with some two centuries. Your world may be your world but it isn't THE world. Learn to see things from a more global perspective and not measure all against a wee little island in the North Atlantic. There is life beyond..........and the bulk of 7 billion people are only bothered with flies, centipedes, grass snakes and mice. That's the bugs they get to deal with daily.

[rene]

I already told you that it does exist: you opt out of the current trial by not allowing third-party cookies

That's a nice attempt to avoid my point that you can NOT guarantee the continued existence of [ ... ]

No, it was a direct answer to the previous line which you failed to quote alongside, i.e., your incorrect statement that the opt-out "doesn't actually even exist yet". And for me that is quite the gist of it. From the end of that EFF article (an article which is very much up your alley):

Google will surely tout this as a step forward for “transparency and user control,” knowing full well that the vast majority of its users will not understand how FLoC works, and that very few will go out of their way to turn it off.

Even foregoing that flipping an option hardly counts as going out of one's way I do not personally give one single effing eff about the vast majority of Google Chrome users, and doubly not in this context if they belong to that mentioned group that in fact welcomes targeted ads; fully respect their right to be tracked, targeted and/or discriminated for and/or against as they see fit.

The current situation with highly individualized third party cookies is worse than what FLoC proposes and the only counter-argument you have against opt-out or simply not using Google's products is feeling yourself labelled a "refusenik". Again, Firefox has had third-party cookies disabled by default for a long time now (and Chrome has had the option for a long time now) so you could clearly already be. Do you find or fear that you are?

In any case the here proposed future is worse than the present only in a sci-fi dystopia: in the real world the technology will sell you softdrinks and shoes. Which I don't myself care for, meaning I will not be using the technology. I'm sure you'll continue your all-caps blabber about how such is not in fact an option; am also quite sure I'll stop bothering with it. Little doubt that others will be available to agree with you and fight the good fight alongside you. Have fun