No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.
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Why Vivaldi browser will not support Google’s FLoC, a new suite of technologies to target ads on the web.
Click here to see the full blog post
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Thank you!
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FLoC off Google!
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@jane-n That's an interesting article as it also relates to "third party" cookies.
Over time, these have come to be regarded as BAD by many users (despite their intended use) because of the advertising "misuse".This causes problems when "third party" cookies are used legitimately; an example being (of course) Vivaldi.com & Vivaldi.net. There have been a few posts on these forums where users blocked the cookies and couldn't understand why their Vivaldi blogs etc. didn't keep them logged in.
I guess the same could be said for (some) Google services in their early days - e.g. gmail, youtube & facebook; but referring to them (or changing the paradigm) as "google id/login" only confuses the issue. Of course, the Google ID is now used for much more than "cross website" logins!!
FLoC (and addressable media as @guigirl said in Cookies to be FLoC'd?) are going even further than cookies ever dreamed of!
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Excellent.
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Wonderful to have some official word from Vivaldi on this
I just want to <ahem> - point out that I posted about this back in October after I noticed a new component was being downloaded. Jus' saying'
Also wondering, will Vivaldi eventually block/proxy the download of the component completely, like I think Brave will be doing? Because currently it is being downloaded to User Data and also updated regularly.
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...this increases my confidence in Vivaldi very much 
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It presents FLoC as part of a set of so-called “privacy” technologies, but let’s remove the pretence here; FLoC is a privacy-invasive tracking technology.
War is peace, freedom is slavery, &c.
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An aspect about FLoC groups which I find incredibly worrying is, in addition to being assigned groups that you are deemed to identify as, you may accidentally be put into groups that you do not identify as.
I wonder how easy it will be for bad faith actors to "poison" people's FLoC groupings. Who gets to assign these values? Is it Google alone with a vulnerable algorithm, or can any (site / advertising partner / foreign state with enough cash on hand) add their own identifiers with whatever metrics they please? It's supposed to be done on-device, so can malware or 0-days do this in the background?
If Google's efforts with the YouTube recommendation algorithm are any indication, it will be all to easy for regular white middle aged men to be automatically assigned to the "conspiracy theorist" group.
No doubt when this eventually happens, in the ensuing fallout google will do some corporate hand-waving about how it was an algorithm that assigned you to FLoC groups and no-one could have foreseen this happening. so sad. so sorry. it won't happen again, guv, honest.
Because FLoC settings are no doubt going to be hidden away from users as much as possible, how would (maliciously or accidentally) poisoned users even know what's happened? It won't be a flick of a switch, but a steady increase in extremist / partisan advertising over time. How do they get out of it? How do other people offer help to such users, without looking over their shoulder to see what ads they're being served?
It's a rather pessimistic view, but it's really difficult to see the upside to any of this :waves at everything:.
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@LonM said in No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.:
If Google's efforts with the YouTube recommendation algorithm are any indication, it will be all to easy for regular white middle aged men to be automatically assigned to the "conspiracy theorist" group.
We are all now prospective members of the conspiracy group "Google no longer believes in DO NO EVIL"
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One concern is if websites will break if this function is disabled.
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@Priest72 said in No, Google! Vivaldi users will not get FloC’ed.:
One concern is if websites will break if this function is disabled.
That's a possibility, but seeing as this is supposed to be an on-device function that simply provides extra information to interested parties, Vivaldi could probably just provide fake data for such websites (via a per-website switch, of course).
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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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