Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] First-Party Sets (#342)

To summarize and close this review, we note that there are some disagreements about goals here that underpin the disconnect.
  
The goals you have set out in the explainer are:
  
> * It must be difficult to reidentify significant numbers of users across sites using just the API.
> * The API should provide a subset of the capabilities of third-party cookies.
> * The topics revealed by the API should be less personally sensitive about a user than what could be derived using today’s tracking methods.
> * Users should be able to understand the API, recognize what is being communicated about them, and have clear controls. This is largely a UX responsibility but it does require that the API be designed in a way such that the UX is feasible.

The set of goals also implictly compares the privacy characteristics of this API to the web **with** 3rd party cookies (and tracking).  In the spirit of "[leaving the web better than you found it](https://w3ctag.github.io/design-principles/#leave-the-web-better)," we would like to see the design goals achieved whilst also preserving the privacy characteristics of the web **without** third party cookies.

We do acknowledge that you have arguably achieved the 4th goal, with an API that does not actively prevent the user from understanding and recognizing what is being communicated about them. However the implicit [privacy labour](https://w3ctag.github.io/privacy-principles/#privacy-labour) that would be required to manage this set of topics on an ongoing basis remains a key question.

Finally, we challenge the assertion that reidentification *in the absence of other information* is the right benchmark to apply.  As we previously noted, the potential for this to affect privacy unevenly across different web users is a risk that is not adequately mitigated.
  

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Received on Tuesday, 27 February 2024 20:37:28 UTC