These are strategies that are being aggressively restricted. Chrome has not started preventing third party cookies yet, but they're the last holdout and have already stated they will kill them shortly.
If you're using a non-user-hostile browser, these strategies are already heavily limited by default and are already not a concern. Every Firefox release is making significant improvements on reducing the fingerprinting footprint of the browser, and several user-hostile API features proposed by Google have been rejected by them and Safari to prevent expanded fingerprinting.
> Chrome has not started preventing third party cookies yet, but they're the last holdout and have already stated they will kill them shortly.
Chrome's original announcement about phasing out third-party cookies is explicit about new technologies like Privacy Sandbox (which includes FLoc) being how third-party cookies will no longer be needed:
"After initial dialogue with the web community, we are confident that with continued iteration and feedback, privacy-preserving and open-standard mechanisms like the Privacy Sandbox can sustain a healthy, ad-supported web in a way that will render third-party cookies obsolete. Once these approaches have addressed the needs of users, publishers, and advertisers, and we have developed the tools to mitigate workarounds, we plan to phase out support for third-party cookies in Chrome. Our intention is to do this within two years." -- https://blog.chromium.org/2020/01/building-more-private-web-...
(Disclosure: I work on ads at Google, speaking only for myself)
Rhetorical thought question: How long could Chrome survive as the only browser which refuses to stop tracking users? The idea that Chrome was the fastest or best browser has fallen pretty far out and behind those which block tracking scripts and ad content, and two alternatives to Google straight up pay users to use them, where's the carrot for using Chrome?
It is not clear to me at all what the overall view is on FLoC. Brave and Vivaldi don't like it, sure, but they already ship with built-in ad blockers so of course they don't. People here who don't like it also seem to be against advertising in any form beyond direct deals between publishers and advertisers for <img src="https://advertiser.example/ad">.
If there are people who are (a) ok with personalized ads, providing they can be done sufficiently privately and (b) do not like FLoC, then I'd love to read what they have to say!
People here who don't like it also seem to be against advertising in any form beyond direct deals between publishers and advertisers
I doubt many people object to ad networks and real time bidding; it's just that the user's personal information shouldn't be exposed in the process. Yes, that means the only signals you'd get are the current page, and maybe high-level OS/browser/device info.
(a) ok with personalized ads, providing they can be done sufficiently privately
My opinion, which I think is fairly common around here, is that what you're describing is fundamentally impossible. Much like the incessant government demands for encryption backdoors that don't compromise security.
>> providing they can be done sufficiently privately
> what you're describing is fundamentally impossible
I guess the question is what you would consider to be sufficiently private? For example, would it be sufficient for the advertiser to be completely unable to distinguish you from a sufficiently large group of people with similar behavior?
I mean, the issue is personalized ads. It shouldn't exist, and advertisers would make just as much money without it if it were illegal. Content-based targeting has worked for decades and does work today. Sites have target markets, ads have target markete, connect these and you are serving ads to the right people, without compromising their privacy.
> the issue is personalized ads. It shouldn't exist
Why shouldn't personalized ads exist?
> advertisers would make just as much money without it if it were illegal
It depends very much on the advertiser. Advertisers with broad interest or close matches to specific publication types, sure, but that's not everyone. One way to think of this would be to imagine a world in which advertisers couldn't even choose where their ad appeared -- they would make less money then, without the ability to target contextually, right? There are many valuable transactions that only happen because the right information is given to the right person, and the less well-targeted ads are the more of those you lose.
The story is even worse for publishers. There are major kinds of publishing with negligible commercial tie-in. Historically, the expense of producing a newspaper or magazine meant that you were never holding a single article, and it could be treated essentially as one unit for advertising purposes. But now it is very common for articles to be shared in isolation, which means this cross-subsidy disappears.
If you're using a non-user-hostile browser, these strategies are already heavily limited by default and are already not a concern. Every Firefox release is making significant improvements on reducing the fingerprinting footprint of the browser, and several user-hostile API features proposed by Google have been rejected by them and Safari to prevent expanded fingerprinting.