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Google’s Federated Cohort Learning (FLoC) is part of its Privacy Sandbox, a new suite of tools to replace and improve conventional third-party cookie tracking that enables modern advertising on the web. The company has been working on it for over a year and this week it is expected to start using the system on a small portion of Chrome users in the US and other countries.
FLoC is complicated, but in a nutshell: the idea is to replace cookies, small files that track your web history and other semi-personal information, with a new, more secure and less individual system. FLoC uses the browser itself to identify behaviors and broader interest groups, like, for example, “sports fans” instead of a “single user who clicked on featured soccer videos on Youtube”. This information is sent to advertisers, so instead of targeting advertisements to specific users in a system that can sometimes be so sensitive that it is practically a digital signature, advertisers sell advertisements to large groups. Or, as the abbreviation Tortured is no doubt meant to indicate, the herds.
Getting rid of individual cookie files reduces some of the risk and exposure enabled by today’s web – at least Google claims it, anyway. The initial testing of the new FLoC system is part of the company’s efforts to remove third-party cookie tracking from all web use of Chrome by early 2022. In addition to the United States, some Chrome users in Australia, Brazil , in Canada, India and Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and the Philippines will be added.
Google’s efforts to make browsing more private and secure without breaking the advertising foundations that much of the web rests on seem lofty, and that certainly doesn’t hurt Google’s ongoing struggles with increased regulatory scrutiny. But not everyone buys it. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, among others, sees FLoC as a mere mask for a new generation of more sophisticated tracking systems that go beyond the cookie.
It is certainly true that there are more complex, and sometimes more efficient, ways to track internet user behavior without ever leaving a file on the local machine. These ‘fingerprinting’ methods are also more geared towards identifying specific groups of people, including perhaps those who are more likely to be the subject of targeted advertising – for example, a group of addicts. recovering gambling with an ad for a gacha game that uses casino tactics to encourage spending. For what it’s worth, Google has promised that it won’t use these alternative tracking methods once it gets rid of third-party cookies in Chrome. As part of its commitment to overhaul user privacy in Chrome, Google has launched a new site dedicated to the Privacy Sandbox.
How to block FLoC tests
Users who have manually blocked third-party cookies in Chrome will not be included in the test. If you want to block FLoC immediately on the desktop version of Chrome, go to the main Chrome settings menu. Click on “Confidentiality and security”, then on “Cookies and other site data”. Make sure “Block third-party cookies” is selected.
On Android, this process is a bit different. In the Settings menu, tap “Site Settings”. Then press “Cookies” and make sure “Block third-party cookies” is selected.
Google says that later in April it will add a switch to Chrome browsers to disable FLoC and Privacy Sandbox testing. We will update this article when this option becomes available.
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