Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics [LWN.net]

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 5:03 UTC (Thu) by devkev (subscriber, #74096)
In reply to: Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics by IanKelling
Parent article: Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

> Advertisers (and others) can request information via a JavaScript call to document.browsingTopics(), which will return zero to three Topic IDs

My initial reaction was "Ugh, more JavaScript". But then I realised this makes it very easy to have a browser extension which monkey-patches the method to return 3 random topics instead.

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Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 11:13 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm sure google will, in time, disallow such privacy extensions by api removal.

Goodbye FLoC, hello Topics

Posted Jan 27, 2022 12:06 UTC (Thu) by devkev (subscriber, #74096) [Link]

There are an awful lot of extensions that rely on content page JS injection, so I think it's more likely they'd adjust the Chrome Store policies to disallow hooking browsingTopics() (including whatever automated extension testing they have). The end result is effectively the same - any such extension could only be side-loaded, which is fine for technical folks, but as good as non-existent for regular users.