[wg/pat] Privacy-preserving advertising

[wseltzer]

[WG Charter 2022 horizontal review below.
2022 AC review.
And 2023 AC review]

The Improving Web Advertising Business Group is exploring proposals to support advertising and monetization on the open web without individually-identified cross-site or web-wide tracking.

• A table of business use cases matched with technical proposals

• Relevant proposals are being discussed and incubated in WICG and PrivacyCG.

• When ready, work may migrate to WebAppSec, HTML, or a new group.

[chaals]

Is this something obviously different from #62? @draggett?

[dontcallmedom]

https://www.w3.org/community/patcg/ was launched in October to identify proposals towards standardization and a supporting WG charter

[samuelweiler]

Draft WG charter: https://github.com/patcg/patwg-charter

I'm moving this pipeline card from "Investigation" to "Evaluation"

[dontcallmedom]

direct link to charter https://patcg.github.io/patwg-charter/charter.html

[samuelweiler]

The draft WG charter is ready for horizontal review.

Charter Review

Private Advertising Technology Working Group Charter

What kind of charter is this? Check the relevant box / remove irrelevant branches.

• New WG

Advance notice sent: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-new-work/2022May/0009.html and https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2022AprJun/0037.html

Communities suggested for outreach: Improving Web Advertising BG, Privacy CG

Known or potential areas of concern:

Where would charter proponents like to see issues raised? https://github.com/patcg/patwg-charter/issues

Anything else we should think about as we review? This work has been - and future work items will be - incubated in the Privacy CG and/or Private Advertising Technology (PAT) CG. The charter was developed by the community in the PAT CG.

[himorin]

• line of Brief background of at right above '1. Scope' is remaining as template but not removed??
• It seems a link to 'Private Attribution Measurement' is not set? (I could find only repository for discussion but not spec development one, although..)

[michael-n-cooper]

APA has no comments on the charter, but expects to review deliverables. It is important that the technology preserve privacy for users of assistive technology as well.

[himorin]

no comment/request from i18n

[samuelweiler]

I made a couple of charter suggestions, neither of which are blocking.

I observe that the charter uses the "separate privacy and security sections" language, which we've recently changed in the template, but there's no problem with using this version.

[samuelweiler]

Sent for AC review in August 2022: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2022JulSep/0033.html (member only) Snapshot sent for review

Result of AC review (member-only)

Returned to CG for further work October 2022: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-ac-members/2022OctDec/0008.html (member-only)

Diff between charter as sent for review in August 2022 and working copy

[samuelweiler]

The PAT CG has revised the charter and is ready for it to be considered again.

[plehegar]

(@pes10k is interesting in getting a review from PING)

[michael-n-cooper]

Reviewing from TiLT role, some comments:

1. The link to the one normative spec is dead; AC reps must be able to see the proposed doc. I haven't checked all links, this should be done.
2. I'm not comfortable with "The Working Group intends to add other normative specifications as the technology becomes ready". The charter should specify what it will work on, and recharter if adding new work. An editorial change that would address my concern and might meet the intent anyways would be to clarify that the deliverables under incubation would be added in a future charter period of this group.
3. Section 2.3 Timeline hasn't been completed. It needs to say something, and can have a reference to an external resource for better info.
4. This may need updates to the latest charter template, in the template diff the Success Criteria section in particular seems out of date.
5. I'm curious about section 10 Anti-trust. This is not something I've seen in a charter before, and I don't know the reasons or implications. It would be helpful to know more about why that's there and what review was involved.

[mnot]

I tend to agree re: section 10; charters shouldn't be setting policies like this.

[plehegar]

section 10 should be removed since it's applicable no matter what.

[svgeesus]

Strong -1 from me, this charter is only partly finished and is not at all ready for AC review.

1. I agree with all of the points that @michael-n-cooper makes above, some of which I also made on the most recent TiLT call and which have not been addressed.

2. The sole deliverable has an empty link:

<dt id="private-attribution" class="spec"><a href="#)">Private Attribution Measurement</a></dt>

and is missing all of the required information for a rec-track deliverable such as the Draft state, Adopted Draft, Exclusion Draft, and Exclusion Draft charter.

3. The Motivation and Background section is missing

4. It is unclear why a novel term "Design Team" is introduced, whose policies "for example" are largely undefined. If this is a task force (subset of the WG, with identical policies) say so.

5. the [team contact name] is missing

In general, please start again with a fresh, current copy of the charter template; add in the information from the current charter draft, and re-open this issue when the charter is actually ready for review.

[plehegar]

this will need to loop through the CG but I believe we may have a path forward here:

• refine the description of the PAM deliverable to narrow it down a bit more
• resync the success criteria with the charter template
• refine the coordination with IETF/ECMA/WHATWG for the purposes of demonstrating wide review before moving to Candidate Recommendation

[siusin]

One sentence was dropped from the success criteria of the charter template:
[[
This Working Group expects to follow the TAG Web Platform Design Principles
]]
Is there any story behind it or shall we try to be in sync with the template?

[svgeesus]

I have the same question as @siusin

That one point aside, the charter looks much better now.

[plehegar]

Pull request to re-align the proposed charter with the template is at patcg/patwg-charter#74

[samuelweiler]

Announcement of AC review (member-only)

Charter snapshot for review (public)
WBS poll (member-only)

[plehegar]

update: we have one Formal Objection and the Team is investigating.

[plehegar]

Here are the formal objections for this charter:

• https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-review-comments/2024Jan/0004.html
• https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-review-comments/2024Jan/0005.html

Note that they include by reference the following formal objections from the 2022 AC review:

• https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-review-comments/2024Jan/0001.html
• https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-review-comments/2024Jan/0002.html
• https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-review-comments/2024Jan/0003.html

[martinthomson]

@plehegar just confirming, but are these the same objection with different formatting, or am I missing something?

[plehegar]

Council was convened on March 3.

[plehegar]

The Team announced convening a Council on March 3rd.

[plehegar]

The Council was announced. Team report is available.

[plehegar]

The CEO overruled the formal objection and we're now proceeding with launching the Working Group.

[plehegar]

Decision was made public.

[plehegar]

Group was announced.