privacycg/ad-topic-hints

Ad Topic Hints

ad-topic-hints's Issues

How much more functionality should the browser perform?

Hi!

I would like to begin by saying that I have long been a believer in the concept which you have termed "Person-driven advertising" in your explainer.

However, post the start of a heavy move to make advertising more private I am seeing lots of proposals for shifting more and more logic into the browser, which mean centralising more of that functionality since there are really only 3-4 browser providers and less engines.

So my question is broad and maybe not directly related to this specific proposal but I still feel is relevant, and that is how much more of this logic can we shift to the browser and away from "open web" apps and services which anyone is free to build and innovate on in a much quicker fashion than standards and committees?

To me it feels these are no longer standards and protocols, they are full fledged applications. Which draws the question why should applications be baked into the browser specs?

Look forward to your feedback :)

How can we set user expectations correctly?

@johnwilander mentioned today at the Privacy CG that if these preferences are "cross-site" (that is, they are communicated to sites other than the one open when feedback was provided) that we should endeavor to set this expectation with the user. This makes sense.

Brian May had a similar point, which was that we should endeavor to correctly set user expectations that not all sites will use this API, and thus the ads they see may not in any way be affected by their configured preferences.

It seems like the proposed "Confirmation Dialogue" is one place where we can try to set these expectations. Perhaps language along the lines of:

"Your preferences will be relayed to all websites you visit, which may or may not utilize them when selecting ads".