FLoC - Federated Learning of Cohorts, Some Thoughts

This is a facinating topic. I suggest you skip to "sources" below and don't let me bias you with my thoughts on the topic.

I am only a decent way into trying to fully understand this so I am sure my thoughts may change as I read futher. Also I do not work in ad tech nor fully understand exactly what information they collect and how they choose an ad based on that information.

My overal question is: "Two step forwads one step back?"

Browsers kill the third party tracking cookie and then Google introduces Third Party Tracking Lite™ but also (to me) "Let us (Google) dictate the ad targeting world". I can't but help feel this is a power grab as both that ad provider AND the browser provider (anti-trust?).

I don't like having knee-jerk reactions - but I think Google and the WICG could do a better job providing a more central and clear information about how: When the browser generates a cohort, how that will be, should be, used by the ad provider? What happens when nothing is sent?

But also what happens when Apple or Mozilla decides this is a bad idea and doesn't want to implement this? Do we have an xkcd n+1 standards issue? Are websites just going to fail because they're using the Javascript that doesn't exist? Are we forcing Apple and Mozilla to build shims like they had to with Google Analytics because devs don't guard against external data being available?

I don't want to quote the entire document but if you open up the FLoC Github page there is an entire section of Privacy and Security Considerations that honestly document how this idea should be considered a non-starter but they're posing it as "These are possibilities"...

I am going to continue my reading on this so I'll leave these quotes:

Quotes

> We stand at a fork in the road. Behind us is the era of the third-party cookie, perhaps the Web’s biggest mistake. Ahead of us are two possible futures. In one, users get to decide what information to share with each site they choose to interact with. ... In the other, each user’s behavior follows them from site to site as a label, inscrutable at a glance but rich with meaning to those in the know. ... [1]

> FLoC, Google’s alternative to third-party cookies, won’t be tested in Europe, at least for now. Countries covered by the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive will not participate. FLoC is probably not compatible with European privacy law, so Google will not continue with FLoC testing in Europe. These data collection systems could say Google is somehow becoming a privacy arbiter, which is not in line with broad privacy and data collection legislation in Europe. [2]

I think these sum up my thinking on this.

Sources

FLoC Whitepaper:

[https] FLOC-Whitepaper-Google.pdf (github)

[https] github.com/WICG/floc

[https] wicg.github.io/floc

EFFs:

[https] [1] Google's FLoC Is a Terrible Idea

[https] Google Is Testing Its Controversial New Ad Targeting Tech in Millions of Browsers. Here’s What We Know.

[https] Am I FLoCed? A New Site to Test Google's Invasive Experiment

Digitizer:

[https] [2] Will FLoC change advertising as we know it?

Conclusion

For the moment, I am not too concerned as they're running their trial right now (funny only in the US because the EU says it's a nonstarter - thanks GDPR!) and I do not use Chrome, at all, ever.

Please let me know if you have more insights or links on more/better information on this. I'll actually edit this post with more links if I do receive anything.

Sorry this post was mostly "Here is this thing? I don't like the sound of it? But I also don't quite fully get it?"

> When it comes to privacy: "Good enough" is never enough.

- Senders, 2021

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