What You Need to Know About FLoC, the Ad-Targeting Tech Google Plans to Drop on Us All About two weeks ago, millions of Google Chrome users were signed up for an experiment they never agreed to be a part of. Google had just launched a test run for Federated Learning of Cohorts—or FLoC–a new kind of ad-targeting tech meant to be less invasive than the average cookie. In a blog post announcing the trial, the company noted that it would only impact a “small percentage” of random users across ten different countries, including the US, Mexico, and Canada, with plans to expand globally as the trials run on. ... “WTF is a FLoC?” In Google’s own words, it’s a “privacy-preserving mechanism for interest-based ad selection.” In normal human words, it’s a way to track users across the web for ad-targeting purposes, in a way that’s more privacy-friendly than the cookies and code advertisers have relied on until now—at least, that’s what Google says. “How’s it supposed to work?” It’s a bit complicated. When someone floats from site to site across the web using a FLoC-powered browser, that browser will use an internal algorithm to suss out an appropriate “interest cohort” to lump that person into, and these cohorts will get recalculated on a weekly basis. These specific cohorts, Google says, are built up of thousands of different users at any given time, making tracking and targeting your specific browser history nigh impossible for any sleazy adtech types. ... “But at least it’s good for privacy, right?” Again, it depends who you ask! Google thinks so, but the EFF sure doesn’t. In March, the EFF put out a detailed piece breaking down some of the biggest gaps in FLoC’s privacy promises. If a particular website prompts you to give up some sort of first-party data—by having you sign up with your email or phone number, for example—your FLoC identifier isn’t really anonymous anymore. ... https://gizmodo.com/what-you-need-to-know-about-floc-the-ad-targeting-tech-1846664143 I just wonder whether it will impact privacy and ad-blocking addons. I also wonder how Chrome got to be so damned popular in the first place. Firefox is better, both are free, and Chrome is not the default browser on any desktop PC platform (only on Android).
That would be stupid, of course, since it would impact all Chrome users no matter where they go online. If you want to stick it to Google, stop using their browser!
