Thread · 5 tweets · 26 Apr 2021

Oh, now I see what you mean. I don't actually see it as related to those legal concerns. Or, rather, those legal concerns probably played a part in creating the current situation but solving them might not solve this. There's a difference.

Here's the background I'm working from: it was a "self-evident" expectations when people started relying on 3P infrastructure that they would retain exclusive control over audience data. Otherwise, they never would've used it — it's just a net loss. But that expectation broke.

The reason I don't see it as distinctively a problem of monopoly power is because it's also what TDD et al are working towards with UID2 — which is just as problematic.

Put differently, it would be just as objectionable if the DDG browser took our audience info the way Chrome does. The impact is different because of scale, but it's inherently the same problem in that it makes investing in the Web a lot less valuable.

And it has a direct impact on how we should be designing standards. Forget all the other issues, it's an architectural expectation of FLoC that the effort one site puts into developing its own cohort should be used by others to monetise independently. That's a huge assumption!