Workflow to quit one flock and try to get into a better one

[dmarti]

If a user ends up in a low-status flock, and receives mostly advertising that seems to be low value or high risk, how can the user quit their current flock and join a higher-status flock?

(For example, a user who notices a lot of ads for predatory finance, political rage-bait, and alarming sketchy tech support offers might want to switch flocks to get more mainstream brand advertising with higher production values and lower perceived risk.)

[jkarlin]

Interesting question. I could imagine a couple of options:

1. Provide an option to select a new flock. The new flock will be an unused neighbor of the current flock. The browser won't be privy to which flocks get which ads, so I think the best we can do here is to try to find something still relevant to the user (e.g., a nearby flock) based on the data the browser has.

2. Opt out of flock. This will provide a random flock which at least gets the person out of the rut of ads they're seeing now.

[michaelkleber]

Another thought: The browser might show some sort of "Why am I in this flock?" data, like "Here are web sites you've visited that contributed to what flock you're in: A, B, C." In that case, letting the user say "Ignore my activity on site B" could be a way for them to get ads relevant to other stuff they do care about.

It's not obvious whether anyone would want to go to that trouble rather than just turning flock off altogether, but it is a third option.

[tomrittervg]

letting the user say "Ignore my activity on site B" could be a way for them to get ads relevant to other stuff they do care about.

It's not obvious whether anyone would want to go to that trouble rather than just turning flock off altogether, but it is a third option.

Being able to exclude selected browsing history from influencing ads seems incredibly relevant. Don't show me ads related to my activity on this website which:

• was a shopping website I was buying my spouse's christmas presents from
• was a health website I was looking up treatment information on
• was an adult website
• was a topical website inappropriate for others on my computer (firearms, gambling)

[dmarti]

The problem with filtering out flock information by sites is that users probably aren't visiting sites that they're aware are connected to the problem ads.

For example, a tech support scam might be targeting based on whether a flock contains users of legit sites for senior citizens, and a political misinfo operation might be targeting based on sites of local interest, to try to hit certain voting districts while avoiding the news organizations that cover politics there. In those cases the user would see sketchy ads but nothing in their web history would appear connected to those ads.

[michaelkleber]

Don: Good point -- interesting that you bring up cases where a person might well not want to change their flock, since some ads targeted at the flock might be exactly what they want to see. It seems like you might be asking for a "block this advertiser" flow? Just because it's otherwise hard to separate the good from bad uses of the information.

Tom: The bit in this Explainer about Sensitive Categories is at least partly relevant here, and spouse's Christmas presents are a classic Incognito mode use case. But you're right, excluding some activity might be valuable for FLoC and for the related PIGIN API.

[dmarti]

Blocking one advertiser at at time might not be that effective. If you get one problem ad from one low-bidding advertiser, you're going to get a bunch of them, because you're not getting enough interest from high-bidding advertisers. If you can quit your flock and try for a less well matched, but more attractive to advertisers, flock, then you have a chance to get more of the better ads.