No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.
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"It is extremely concerning that we have reached a stage that a number — FLoC ID — could be so dangerous. Could you ever imagine this?"
Yes. Revelations 13:16-18: "It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. "
There used to be a great deal of push back against national identification numbers for much the same reason.
Admin edit: quote restored.
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@Priest72 Definitely a valid concern, though for now it will depend on whether enough browsers choose to implement it. If enough browsers refuse to do so, websites most likely will continue to function either with or without the API. But this remains to be seen.
There are several approaches that can be used to disable it. A browser can simply not offer the API at all (and stand out as being different), it can offer an API that does not return a value or returns a static non-profiled value (again standing out). Or it can offer an API that returns nonsense values, random per load or per site.
It all depends on how it is finally implemented, and how many sites choose to use it, how many try to mandate it, and how much trust they place in the returned values. Fear not, we're keeping our eye on the situation, and will adjust our approach if needs be.
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It will be nice if Manifest v3 will be as simple to just not implement as this sounds like it is, but somehow I doubt it.
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And even if you ignore the dangerous implications here that someone will abuse the system (which many will say can be dismiss because it is hypothetical) and simply think about the ads and the content offered based on group assignments: this means continued reinforcement of belonging to that particular bubble. The lack of randomness and diversity in the contents we are offered continuously erodes our willingness to even acknowledge other viewpoints, and leads to more polarization of society.
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.
Usually on Win11 running Vivaldi Snapshot builds. Opinionated about working efficiently with email. Folders are evil | Mail workflow: receive, read, reply, mark as read, done.
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@stargazera5: The point of my use of the well-known Revelations 13-18 quote in my original message was that the use of numbers to identify people, particularly in the realm of buying and selling, has been feared for thousands of years. So yes, it's very easy to imagine the dangers as, from an historical point of view, it is nothing new.
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It's amazing what G comes up with to 'improve user experience'.
Perhaps the following will be to deny access to the pages, if there is no user ID. I see it coming. -
Hmmm... I remember when what became "the internet" first appeared as an alternative to Commercial Compuserve and Dialog and DJNR. It had the lofty non-commercial advantage of being run mostly by universities, but the scary history of having been developed by the military. Now big business has taken over, and lots of people are suggesting government should take control over them. I'm a bit afraid control by the "critical theorists" now "wokening" our universities would be even scarier.
What is left? Dark web? Fediverse? Metaverse?
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I moved from google to vivaldi recently. we need a balance between privacy and an ethical business model.
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@jane-n To me, it looks like floccinaucinihilipilification.
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for the doubters and the curious among us
https://amifloced.org -
@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...
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@guigirl But how long will Vivaldi be able to block this FLoC crap?
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Just saw an article mention that DuckDuckGo is going to block FLoC for anyone using their site.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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...
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@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.
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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
Sorry, I'm currently hiatus from updating any of my CSS mod until further notice...
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@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?
