patcg-individual-drafts / topics

The Topics API

Home Page:https://patcg-individual-drafts.github.io/topics/

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Should sites receive historic topics every visit, or first visit only?

jkarlin opened this issue · comments

  • For sites that users frequently visit there is no difference in privacy. For infrequently visited sites, this becomes a trade-off between topic dissemination rate and utility.
  • How might one define “first visit”?
    • It could be: does the site have any cookies or other storage for the user? If so, it’s not first visit.

Providing information on "first visit only" doesn't change the dissemination rate...? My understanding is that the question is whether there should be some bar beyond "user loaded page" that gates access to topics — correct?

My hunch is that the browser should reserve the ability to modify the list of returned topics not only based on the caller, but also based on the context of site and visit. For example, if a hostname is flagged by Safe Browsing, I would expect the API to return an empty set, ditto for Incognito-loaded visit. Other heuristics could be integrated over time as well.. e.g. referrer quality / source, and so on.

Closing as this hasn't really come back up. Can revisit in the future.