On: Chrome now tracks users and shares a “topic” list ...

[imiric]

Way to ad hominem, but you're right, I'm not a domain expert. Just a web user who refuses to be tracked and manipulated by advertising, and highly skeptical that any of these changes are done to benefit the user.

> there is nothing to match a fingerprint to, so fingerprinting is useless

Huh? A fingerprint doesn't need to match _to_ anything. It just needs to be consistent across browsing sessions for a profile of visited sites and interests to be built.

> Additionally fingerprinting is not a tactic that advertisers want to use

Really? Citation needed. All advertisers want their ads to be highly targeted to a consumer who is most likely to make a purchase. The reason web advertising is much more appealing than advertising in traditional media is precisely because it allows microtargetting on a level not possible via traditional means. Advertisers are always chasing a higher conversion rate, and microtargetting is proven to yield better results than showing ads to a large and generic cohort of consumers. Advertisers aren't happy about the Topics API, and many will choose the technology that allows them to continue to target ads more accurately. Fingerprinting is so far the most foolproof method of doing this, since it avoids pesky cookie blockers, and is difficult to detect.

> We all want a technology that is truly privacy focused for users, but still enables functionality that is critical to advertising like brand safety, frequency caps, and some semblance of targeting

I call BS on the first part. Ad targetting goes directly against user privacy. There's no reconciliation of the two. Advertisers can go back to buying ad space in context-relevant places (e.g. show fishing ads on fishing-related sites), but none of them want to lose a _substantial_ part of their revenue by not taking advantage of user tracking.

How you can be so defensive about this is beyond me, and leads me to believe you work in the ad industry.

[soared → imiric]

I work at a DSP and directly manage a few million a month in ad spend. I talk to digital marketing managers, vps of marketing, heads of analytics, etc of household e-commerce and cpg brands weekly. All of them have extremely strict vetting practices to ensure their vendors are not fingerprinting or using any mildly questionable tactics. Literally all of them want privacy focused advertising, some of them are even requesting audits of environmental impacts of our server usage/etc.

Their is a world that is privacy focused and gives advertisers what they need - that’s what the privacy sandbox is trying to achieve. My employer works with Google directly on topics and other solutions to achieve what we want and create privacy.

[imiric → soared]

Do their vendors, or your DSP, even have the information of where user profile data originally came from? If it was exchanged on multiple data brokers and part of 2nd or 3rd party data, is the original source even known? And if so, does your platform give advertisers the filters to exclude profile data based on method of acquisition?

And you're saying that all of those big brands refuse to use profile data acquired by fingerprinting, even if it would allow them to microtarget their campaigns? So they're essentially valuing people's privacy over their own profits? Somehow I highly doubt that.

I'm not saying that what you're saying is false. I just think that in an industry with highly shady and consumer hostile practices, built on the core ideas of psychological manipulation, that needs to be regulated to stop violating people's right to privacy, and even then finds ways to tip toe around regulations, it's quite unbelievable that all of a sudden they have a change of heart and actually claim to care about consumers. I mean, you're a part of it, so forgive me if I instinctively distrust your claims, and the claims of your clients.

> Literally all of them want privacy focused advertising

So they're running ad campaigns without targeting user profiles at all, in the same way advertising is done on traditional media? Because that's the only "privacy focused advertising". I highly doubt this as well.

Again, privacy and advertising are part of a zero-sum game. Advertising profits increase at the expense of user privacy, and the more targeted campaigns are, the more profitable they are. It would be foolish to think advertisers and adtech companies would be willing to sacrifice their profits out of the goodness of their hearts. This is why we need regulation in the first place, because they're not capable of self-regulation, and will pursue profits at all costs. But this is nothing new, and big business has been exploiting people since the dawn of industry. So please don't try to frame advertisers and adtech as some kind of benevolent actor.