[gentleman11]

If Firefox had larger market share, Chrome wouldn’t have been able to make this opt out for websites rather than opt in because it would have given them a bad public image. I don’t think it’s fair that some company gets to force every website maintainer (most aren’t extremely technical and just use Wordpress or something similar) on earth to muddle through documentation for their particular setups to 1) learn it exists and 2) turn it off if desired.

[gpm]

> opt out for websites

This wording annoys me. The websites have nothing to do with it. Google choosing to turn it's browser into spyware that leaks information about what you used to do with it isn't the websites fault, the webserver doesn't do anything and doesn't have anything done to it, there is nothing for it to opt out of.

Google chose to give websites a way to request that the users browser doesn't include the fact that they visited this website in it's cohort calculation. That's fine, but the messaging around it is a transparent attempt at shifting the blame. It's not the website opting out or in, it's the website acting as an uninvolved third party bystander asking google to stop. Asking why a website didn't opt out is equivalent to a thief asking "well why didn't you stop me?" to the person looking on from the sidewalk.

We shouldn't accept this messaging. We should be very clear that Chrome is the entity spying on you, not the website, and that the website has no power to decide whether or not chrome spies on you, only the ability to make a polite request that it doesn't (or more accurately, does so less).

[magicalist]

> If Firefox had larger market share, Chrome wouldn’t have been able to make this opt out for websites rather than opt in

FLoC is only opt in for testing the proposal[0]. As a sibling comment says this is technically performative but publicly signals a stance against the proposal.

Though we also shouldn't forget that Amazon loves third party tracking and happily falls back to IP address associations if cookies aren't available.

Edit:

[0] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/floc/#take-part-in-a-floc-...

[jmholla]

Isn't it the opposite. It's opt-out for testing and is supposed to be opt-in when it goes live? I mean, I just disabled it and I am certain I didn't opt-in to it given that I had to go to about:config to have the setting show up.

You can opt-in to actively be a part of FLoC, but if you don't opt-out, Google may randomly choose you to be part of their testing.

Edit: I think your point may have been from the perspective of a website owner. Sorry.

[paulpan]

From a purely implementation standpoint, defaulting to opt-in instead opt-out leads to a long and arduous user migration process. Especially if it's a major change and/or somewhat controversial. Furthermore it tends to fragment the userbase and accumulation of tech debt (e.g. feature disparity). I think this is a huge factor in iOS versioning having such good consistency across its install base.

[mdoms]

If Firefox wants a bigger market share they need a significantly better product. That's just how the world works. I don't use Chrome but I sure as heck don't use Firefox.

[tentacleuno]

Perhaps better for privacy too, unlike the telemetry-riddled Firefox of today. LibreWolf sounds a hell of a lot better, though.