No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.

[anonysubscribe]

I moved from google to vivaldi recently. we need a balance between privacy and an ethical business model.

[Pesala]

@jane-n To me, it looks like floccinaucinihilipilification.

[ch3f]

for the doubters and the curious among us
https://amifloced.org

[mossman]

@WildEnte said in No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.:

Signing up to be a member of a community (party, church, internet forum, bowling club) because I want to is something very different than being placed there by others.

When put like that it clearly sounds like a form of "-ism" stereotyping... with the whole internet being segregated by Google and set up for all sorts of discrimination. The bubble on steroids...

[stilgarwolf]

@guigirl But how long will Vivaldi be able to block this FLoC crap?

[mossman]

Just saw an article mention that DuckDuckGo is going to block FLoC for anyone using their site.

[thomasp]

@guigirl said in No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.:

https://spreadprivacy.com/block-floc-with-duckduckgo/

As a website owner, what can I do to avoid this?

Websites can take steps to protect the privacy of their users by opting out of FLoC, which would be applicable to all their visitors. It's done by simply sending the following Permissions-Policy HTTP response header:

Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=()

Some publishers like The Markup and The Guardian have already done so, as have we at DuckDuckGo Search, and we encourage others to follow.

At Vivaldi we have already done this across all of our websites by the way.

[Catweazle]

@anonysubscribe , ethical behavior begins with respect for the user. On the web there are other possibilities of doing business than treating the user as merchandise, Vivaldi is an example of this.

[code3]

@jane-n How will you make sure that FloC turned off is not used for fingerprinting? Empty cohort? I would think empty cohort would work, but maybe the amount of users are too small...

[code3]

@mossman You can see it in the developer console. Do a duck duck go search and there will be a note in the console that Vivaldi does not know of this header.

[dude99]

The major problem we are facing is currently GC have over 2/3 of global browser market share, so even if everyone else block floC, it will be just a minor lost to advertisers. Eventually, advertisers can still force this on everyone by demand floC to become mandatory for all websites they sponsoring (just like Youtube). And G will definitely help 'em to enforce this via Google Ads. Then, it will be either get floCed or get lost situation for the rest of the us.

Remember when everyone keep complaining about a lot of websites doesn't work properly in all browsers other than IE6 & Firefox? And then everyone just put all the blame on these browser makers & demand 'em to fix the "problem" repeatedly? This is going to be our future if floC allow to continue, & the only way for Chromium based browser to fix this is enabled floC.

Another solution would be hopefully EU will slap an anti-trust on Google for using monopoly in ads market to strangle the web browser market. Oh, don't bother to rely on US for this, cuz Biden is totally in bed with G since day one... I won't be surprise if he abuse his executive power to force this on all US Internet user because of "Net Neutrality". LOL

[Komposten]

@dude99 said in No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.:

so even if everyone else block floC, it will be just a minor lost to advertisers.

The sad thing about this is that there are several (smaller) companies that have switched from personalised advertising to contextual advertising and seen increased advertising revenue, suggesting that contextual ads might be more effective. If this is true also on the bigger scale, then it suddenly makes personalised ads even worse than they already are: Why use a less optimal advertising technique, unless it provides another source of revenue (say, trade in personal information) that's large enough to cover the loss in ad revenue and the cost of the personalisation technology?

[LorenAmelang]

@code3 said in No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.:

@mossman You can see it in the developer console. Do a duck duck go search and there will be a note in the console that Vivaldi does not know of this header.

I see:

Failed to load resource: net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT  /t.js?q=floc&t=D&l=wt-wt&s=0&ct=US&ss_mkt=us&p_ent=&ex=-1&cdrexp=b&biaexp=b&msvrtexp=b:1 

That looks like Vivaldi blocking the DDG page from loading some bit of FLoC... But why is the DDG page even requesting it?

Oh... Looking in the Head:

<style class="darkreader darkreader--root-vars" media="screen"></style>
  <script type="text/javascript" async="" src="/t.js?q=floc&amp;t=D&amp;l=wt-wt&amp;s=0&amp;ct=US&amp;ss_mkt=us&amp;p_ent=&amp;ex=-1&amp;cdrexp=b&amp;biaexp=b&amp;msvrtexp=b"></script>

So extensions can include FLoC bits into a page intended to ignore them?

Error with Permissions-Policy header: Unrecognized feature: 'interest-cohort'.

So the DDG page has the "Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=()" header, and Vivaldi ignores it? I guess that's more private than returning '0'?

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 ()  www.floc.com.ico:1

That seems to say Vivaldi asked FLoC for something they don't have. But why is Vivaldi requesting it? Maybe because of Dark Reader? But Dark Reader is also active on this Forum page, where I see none of those. So with no header or FLoC calls in the Forum page, nothing for Dark Reader to request?

I've probably misinterpreted all of this... But I'd like to understand before I add that header to my website!

[Komposten]

@LorenAmelang said in No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.:

I see:

Failed to load resource: net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT  /t.js?q=floc&t=D&l=wt-wt&s=0&ct=US&ss_mkt=us&p_ent=&ex=-1&cdrexp=b&biaexp=b&msvrtexp=b:1 

I searched for "cake" on DuckDuckGo and got a similar error but with "cake" instead of "floc", so it seems like some standard DDG script thing based on your search phrase.

GET https://duckduckgo.com/t.js?q=cake&t=D&l=us-en&s=0&dl=en&ct=SE&ss_mkt=us&p_ent=&ex=-1&cdrexp=b&biaexp=b&msvrtexp=b net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT

Error with Permissions-Policy header: Unrecognized feature: 'interest-cohort'.

So the DDG page has the "Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=()" header, and Vivaldi ignores it? I guess that's more private than returning '0'?

It seems like Vivaldi doesn't even recognise this header, and I guess that is because Vivaldi has disabled FLoC.

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 404 ()  www.floc.com.ico:1

That seems to say Vivaldi asked FLoC for something they don't have. But why is Vivaldi requesting it?

If I were to guess, you searched for "floc". DDG shows website favicons among the results so it tried to get the favicon for the website floc.com (one of the search results) but failed with a 404.

---

(Oh, and I'm not using Dark Reader, by the way)

[Pathduck]

@Komposten I guess the poor web admins at the Farm Labor Organizing Committee are going "what are all these requests coming in from search engines all of a sudden!??"

[Komposten]

@Pathduck Hahaha, I didn't even glance at the page so I completely missed that it wasn't FLoC-related.

[code3]

@dude99 said in No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.:

Eventually, advertisers can still force this on everyone by demand floC to become mandatory for all websites they sponsoring (just like Youtube).

Opt outs are required by law.

[Catweazle]

@code3 , this in any case will happen in pages with European regulations, but in the rest of the world it would not be so sure.
Anyway, it is best to get as far as possible from the influence of Google, although in some services it is really difficult, for example YouTube does not have an alternative that offers this content that it has, but you can use Front-Ends like Invidious or Desktop clients like Freetube, who hit trackers with the door in their noses.
Instead of GMaps you can use Open StreetMap, but StreetView? I have not found any valid alternative yet
The same with some other services out there.
Time the developers and FOSS Communities scramble to create the missing valid alternatives.

And Vivaldi still has Google Image search in the context menu, which also irritates me a bit.

[LorenAmelang]

@Komposten Duh! Thank you for pointing out how I contaminated my tests...

I wonder if interest-cohort=() really does put you in a null cohort, or if it will come to be recognized as a cohort of privacy fanatics?

https://github.com/WICG/floc/blob/main/README.md
Exploring that I see that what I read here as "Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=()" is not the "equals zero" it absolutely looks like on my (Windows scaled) screen, but "equals leftParen space rightParen". So it should be taken as null rather than zero. But what third-party .js does with it is anyone's guess.

https://github.com/WICG/floc/issues/61
A browser extension can inject javascript into pages that the user visits and therefore read the value. An extension could also overwrite the document.interestCohort() API and return a different value.

https://github.com/WICG/floc/issues/33
Issue #61 points out that a browser extension will be able to obtain the user's cohort by injecting a script that calls interestCohort. There are legit reasons for an extension to be able to get the cohort (see #17). However an extension might inject such a script into a page that does not already call interestCohort and opt the page into FLoC training.

What I'm missing is how this interestCohort on a particular page relates to the eventual interestCohort into which the visitor is placed. I suppose it is handled by some opaque algorithm? Would it really look at a single number rather than the actual content of the page?

[code3]

@Catweazle Yeah, but they often spread to other parts of the world. And even if Google puts up a fight about opt-out, it would be trivial to put V users in empty cohort, which I doubt G will mess with.
I do use privacy redirect, you could look at mapbox for independent street view.