“There are several improvements in Topics,” said Hamed Haddadi, principal scientist at Brave, a privacy-focused browser and search engine. He said that under FLoC, people can be grouped into more than 30,000 different categories, which will allow advertisers to gain specific knowledge about their interests. This information can then be combined with other data to create an incredibly detailed picture of each of us.
This is less common in Topics, as there are about 350 interest categories that can be assigned to everyone. Although this number is likely to increase — Technical description of speaking Its ultimate goal will be to source these themes from third parties and possibly have “several thousand topics”. Haddadi also adds a Friday random theme to people’s preferences making the system more privacy conscious.
Another potential difference between FLoC and Theme is that Google states that FLoC will try to avoid assigning “sensitive categories” to people — such as allowing individuals to be shown ads based on race. or their gender. FLoC is be censured for having the ability to generate or infer sensitive attributes through people’s behavior and preferences. Google says people will have more control over areas of interest assigned to them, and can change settings, block topics, and opt out in Chrome. In practice, however, not many people will change Chrome’s settings this way.
Furthermore, the risk of websites finding out someone’s sensitive personal characteristics is not completely eliminated by Topics. “It is still possible that websites calling the API may combine or correlate topics with other signals to infer sensitive information beyond the intended use,” Google’s description of Topics says. Over time it will ability for a website to “grow a list of topics relevant to that user” and this could reveal sensitive information. There are other privacy and security issues Google says it needs fixing. Google plans to test Themes in Chrome in the coming months and the system may change based on feedback.
Then there’s the question of competition. A lesser number of interests assigned to people could delegate more power to Google in the online advertising industry it already dominates. Paul Bannister, co-founder of ad management company CafeMedia, says that Topics seems like a step forward in terms of people’s privacy, but a potential step back for advertising agencies. Bannister says the 350 interests currently included in the Topic are very broad, and this means it’s less likely to be useful to advertisers trying to target individuals with the products they have. more likely to buy. Those themes are fixed, he says, so it can be hard to find unique segments that are really interesting for your marketing campaign.
“As it stands, Themes appear to be just a solution for the Chrome browser. Phil Duffield, vice president of Trade Desk, a UK-based technology and software company, said it was neither cross-browser nor cross-platform. Company build your own cookie replacement rival based on identifiers associated with email addresses that people use to log into websites. “For any complex engineering challenge, there are no silver bullets, but we believe in the importance of future solutions that are interoperable and easy to use by all those involved. industry players,” said Duffield.
