Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] Early design review for the Topics API (Issue #726)

> These types of analysis and trade-offs are what we expect to continue tuning going forward.

It seems to me like this is where there is a large disconnect.  Implicit in the Topics design is an assumption that this sort of trade-off has been agreed.  PATCG has talked at some length about this, but that is a very narrow slice of the larger community, and very far from representative.

Reaching this conclusion is not natural.  Assuming that we all agree that a trade-off is necessary is presumptuous.  In part, addressing this assumption is why PATCG is chartered to produce a document that lays out the principles by which it guided its work.  The question of whether or not to entertain trade-offs is the primary reason for that work item - at least from my perspective - because none of this work to support advertising works without that work as a foundation.

It might be that specific proposals (like this one) fail on grounds that are less about the principle, but more about execution.  For instance, Topics proposes a weekly release of a small amount of data, with some amount of probabilistic protection.  You can model that protection as $(\epsilon, \delta)$-differential privacy with $\epsilon\approx10.4$.  Maybe the disagreement is about the amount of data release or the value of $\epsilon$.  But that doesn't mean that we have consensus about whether there is a trade-off in the first place.

This sounds like a subject where the TAG might add value.  Not in terms of determining values for $\epsilon$ - no one can solve that problem - but in terms of convening a discussion in the community about this problem.  Then perhaps we might have some better agreement about what those trade-offs might need to look like - if they exist at all.

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p.s., Please don't forget Meta when it comes to IPA.


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