Define parties across W3C considering relationship with one another, trust, choice, scale and varying conditions

[jwrosewell]

Defining entities purely in terms of first and third party generates many problems in practice. The model is too simplistic risking the removal of choice or disparity in markets. Many W3C documents and proposals that relate to “parties” fall short in this area. This issue is widespread and is not isolated to this First Party Sets proposal. I raise it here as requested following the Privacy CG 16th September 2020 F2F.

A person accessing a web site they trust and who recognises the value exchange associated with exposure to personalised advertising in return for quality content should not be prevented from expressing this trust choice. Such a trust choice involves many many parties. Further they should be able to do so using a method that remembers their choice and does not advantage one provider over another.

The publisher of the same content should also have the option to choose a supply chain of vendors to support their business. This is particularly important for smaller organisations that must “band together” to be able to compete with larger vertically integrated rivals.

However, the same person accessing content that might cause them embarrassment if another party or the publisher of the content were to directly identify them would wish to express different preferences.

A different person concerned about physical harm rather than embarrassment is likely to have another set of preferences.

There are also matters of societal harm. The ability of smaller publishers to “band together” to use either non personal or pseudo anonymous data for purposes associated with fraud prevention generates a complex trust and choice relationship involving multiple entities. Large vertically integrated companies will have different options available to them compared to smaller companies.

The conditions associated with different situations, the disparity in scale between participants in the same market, and the trust relationships have a significant bearing on the definitions of different entities.

Without such agreed definitions this work will risk being redone in the future resulting in wasted effort and rework.