Between large web publishing platforms and all alternate browsers blocking FLoC, I think we could kill it, yes. WordPress is used by a lot of marketing focused folks though, so we'll see if WP is able to land this.
It's staggering how much leverage WordPress has. They were going to stop using React because of the patents clause, and only a week later Facebook caved and relicensed it as MIT.
This is very interesting. My web development role right now is at a marketing company that works pretty exclusively with Wordpress.
I've always been so interested in learning about the next best thing that I hadn't given Wordpress much thought.
Now, using it all the time, it's popularity is very understandable as an interface for people who are not technically savvy to maintain their own website.
I feel like the Wordpress community isn't the loudest, but it is certainly a force. I think, as a brand, this move definitely has me more excited about working with their software.
Exactly. A big part of the WordPress community are publishers, bloggers, affiliate marketers, etc who rely on ads to generate revenue. I'm not sure they'd be too thrilled with this proposal.
Sure, but this doesn’t mean no advertising, it means no default supporting FLoC. I know advertisers aren’t going to like it, but I doubt it means they’ll give up advertising altogether.
I wonder if AdWords will require use of floc headers
> I wonder if AdWords will require use of floc headers
I don't know, but I guess they won't. Instead, you'll just get worse targeting on your site if your users don't send the headers. Which I think may also not be very popular with WordPress users, but I guess the proof will be in the pudding.
If the ToS are contrary to the law, then they are null and void. Laws tend to trump private agreements. Then, if it goes to trial in Europe, they’d have a hard time proving that the ToS are fair and that the user agrees freely and understanding what is being agreed, which is also another condition for any form of contract to be valid.
You're saying there is some law which prevents me from inputting my own data into a program, and it categorizes me into one of a thousand types of people?
My comment was specifically that ToS are not a licence to behave illegally. There is no law preventing you from doing that in general (though there are specific limitations), but there are laws on how PII needs to be processed and stored.
The GDPR requires tracking to be opt in. The fact that you have to use special headers to opt out is already problematic. Ignoring the headers to track anyway is of course worse.
IANAL, but my understanding is that this is not in line with GDPR. You are not allowed to force the customer into tracking, which effectively happens in the scenario you describe since the user can't use the browser without accepting the ToS. Also, you have to be quite explicit: simply burying tracking in 52 pages of unrelated legalese is not compliant with GDPR.
Someone please chime in if I'm wrong here. I'm no lawyer but do take these things seriously (I'm trying my best to provide a tracking-free website.)
They will lose that case under GDPR, you can't hide the details in ToS and hope the user doesn't see it. You must get informed and freely given consent. Google is violating both, because I can't click "No" and the information is so hidden you can't expect a normal consumer to find it.
It will take a few years but they're going to get hit very very hard by EU privacy regulators.
Of course, but the goal is not to win, the goal is to make it so it take years before they get fined. In the meantime, they will have made enough money and it will be factored into the cost of business, then they will come up with a new tracking scheme. Rinse and repeat.
A key point of this is that if they consider it a security flaw, they will backport it into point releases for WordPress blogs that haven't done major upgrades in years.
I’m not sure whether that would be wise to do for WP. It will show that WP can and is willing to basically push any update to sites running WP just to further a cause of the company.
Mweh if it doesn’t break anything. But terrible if it breaks something.
Surely that depends on what their experience using it is, just like every other "winning" browser before that is no longer winning? If FLoC generates so much hostility within the web dev community that a few major sites/platforms start actively blocking it, and if Google responds by ignoring the opt-outs in Chrome, and if the community responds with a SOPA-like "no access using Chrome for the next 48 hours then, here are some other fine browsers you can use instead that don't invade your privacy in this way", Google will simply be outgunned. However, you probably need platforms on the scale of WP and/or some sites with huge audiences like Facebook/Wikipedia/Netflix/Reddit to be on board for the effect to be fast and powerful enough to make a difference.
>and if the community responds with a SOPA-like "no access using Chrome for the next 48 hours then, here are some other fine browsers you can use instead that don't invade your privacy in this way"
It appears that Google is trying to rewrite the rules of how browsers and the Web work, with the appearance of being on the side of privacy, but actually introducing an alternative method of surveillance that is going to be less favourable to almost everyone except Google. How many of the huge-audience sites are potentially going to lose out from that, not least because they rely on advertising themselves for the lion's share of their revenues?
This whole discussion started with a proposal from a platform that is supporting nearly half of the sites people are visiting. That puts WP in a unique and potentially very powerful position here as well, and evidently they're interested in trying to force the issue.
And finally, the SOPA experience has shown that it is not entirely implausible for large numbers of sites to collaborate in this way if they feel the threat is serious enough. So if FLoC is as bad as the critics are suggesting, it doesn't seem entirely out of the question. There seem to be quite a few powerful organisations that would have a variety of motivations for wanting to give Google a bloody nose over this one.
I wonder whether, if WP takes the stance that FLoC is a security risk, whether they'd also consider a version of Chrome that doesn't allow opting out of it a security risk as well. And, if not, why not?
Chrome is entranched, but not like IE was. You have to install the browser in the first place, which means the moment it starts to be too crappy people move elsewhere.
Why do you think Google hasn't prevented adblockers from running on it? If they did so, it would sink the browser so quickly.
One of the ways Chrome got as popular as it did was to bundle installation of it with various other programs, the way spyware and adware did. You install a random program, you don't open "advanced install" and uncheck "Chrome", and you end up with Chrome installed.
As far as I'm aware, it's flawed in the same way as the PHP popularity stat: domains that report it in an HTTP header. I don't know about you, but I don't put a header advertising that I built a site with Python and Flask or whatever.
Currently, for A/B testing, FLoC is automatically opting-in 0.5% of sites that serve ads, but that's only for a small testing population, the idea is that FLoC history contribution will be opt-in exclusively. (There's a proposal that you have to contribute to FLoC history calculations to get access to a user's FLoC identifier)
Why is that a problem? If I visit ognarb.com, what right do you have to tell me "You aren't allowed to use that fact for developing a profile about yourself"?
You send me a bunch of data, including headers, and I'm more or less free to do with that what I want within the privacy of my own browser. I don't have to listen to any of your headers if I don't want to.
