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Federated Learning of Cohorts

December 15, 2023

"FLoC" redirects here. For other uses, see Floc (disambiguation).

Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) is a type of web tracking. It groups people into "cohorts" based on their browsing history for the purpose of interest-based advertising.[1][2] FLoC was being developed as a part of Google's Privacy Sandbox initiative,[3] which includes several other advertising-related technologies with bird-themed names.[1][4]: 48  Despite "federated learning" in the name, FLoC does not utilize any federated learning.[5]

Federated Learning of Cohorts
AbbreviationFLoC
StatusReplaced by Browsing Topics API
Year started2019
OrganizationGoogle
SeriesPrivacy Sandbox
Websiteprivacysandbox.com/proposals/floc/

Google began testing the technology in Chrome 89[6] released in March 2021 as a replacement for third-party cookies. By April 2021, every major browser aside from Google Chrome that is based on Google's open-source Chromium platform had declined to implement FLoC. The technology was criticized on privacy grounds by groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and DuckDuckGo, and has been described as anti-competitive; it generated an antitrust response in multiple countries as well as questions about General Data Protection Regulation compliance. In July 2021, Google quietly suspended development of FLoC;[7] Chrome 93,[8] released on August 31, 2021, became the first version which disabled FLoC, but did not remove the internal programming.[9]

On January 25, 2022, Google officially announced it had ended development of FLoC technologies and proposed the new Topics API to replace it.[10][11] Media and competitors (e.g., Brave) criticized Topics API as a rebranding of FLoC with only minor changes and without addressing any main concerns.

Function edit

 
FLoC in Google Chrome components.

The Federated Learning of Cohorts algorithm analyzes users' online activity within the browser, and generates a "cohort ID" using the SimHash algorithm[12] to group a given user with other users who access similar content.[13]: 9  Each cohort contains several thousand users in order to make identifying individual users more difficult,[14] and cohorts are updated weekly.[15] Websites are then able to access the cohort ID using an API[13]: 9  and determine what advertisements to serve.[16] Google does not label cohorts based on interest beyond grouping users and assigning an ID,[1] so advertisers need to determine the user types of each cohort on their own.[4]: 47 

Opting out of cohort calculation edit

FLoC experiment was active only in Google Chrome browser and ran from Chrome 89[6] (inclusive) to Chrome 93 (not inclusive). Modern browsers do not support FLoC. While the experiment was active, users could opt out of FLoC experiment by disabling third-party cookies. Website administrators could opt out from cohort calculation via special HTTP headers. It can be accomplished with a new interest-cohort permissions policy or feature policy, the default behavior is to allow cohort calculation. To opt-out of all FLoC cohort calculations a website could send either of the following HTTP response headers:[17]

Permissions-Policy: browsing-topics=()

or 

Feature-Policy: browsing-topics 'none'

Google Chrome applies interest-cohort Feature Policy restrictions to Browsing Topics API as well.[18]

Timeline edit

Initial prototype edit

On August 22, 2019, Google Chrome developers coined the term FLoC and first started discussing the upcoming replacement for cookies.[19] In July 2020, the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority found the FLoC proposal to be anti-competitive, since it would "place the browser in a vital gatekeeper position for the adtech ecosystem." Instead, the authority recommended adoption of a competing proposal called SPARROW, which maintains the same privacy-enhancing objectives but creates a different completely independent "Gatekeeper" which does not have any other role in the adtech ecosystem and does not have access to user-level information.[20]

Testing edit

Google began testing FLoC in the Chrome 89[6] released in March 2021[15] as a replacement for third-party cookies,[21] which Google plans to stop supporting in Chrome by mid-2023.[22] (Initially Google announced plans to remove third-party cookies by late 2021,[16] then postponed it to early 2022,[2] and then to 2023 due to delay of FLoC technology.) The initial trial turned on FLoC for 0.5% of Chrome users across 10 countries:[15] the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and the Philippines.[23] Users were automatically placed in the trial and were not notified, but could opt out by turning off third-party cookies. Furthermore, site administrators could disable FLoC and opt out from interest calculation via a Feature-Policy header.[citation needed] The initial trial did not include users in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area due to concerns about legality under the area's privacy regulations.[24]

FLoC shutdown edit

In July 2021, Google quietly suspended development of FLoC; Chrome 93, released on August 31, 2021, became the first version which rendered FLoC feature void, but did not remove the internal programming.[9][7] As of March 2022, the underlying FLoC implementation is still shipped in Chrome and can be observed on internal page chrome://components/.[citation needed] Chrome 100, released on March 29, 2022, removed most of old FLoC code.[25]

Rebranding as Topics API edit

On January 25, 2022, Google officially announced it had ended development of FLoC APIs and proposed a new Topics API to replace it.[10][11] However, Topics API still retains most of the design of FLoC. Chrome still uses the FLoC name internally, and Topics API bugs are tracked under the label "InterestCohort".[26] Developers of the Brave web browser called Topics API a "rebranding [of] FLoC without addressing key privacy issues.[27] Despite this, designers of Topics API made an attempt to address some of the concerns about FLoC.[28]

Reactions edit

Google claimed in January 2021 that FLoC was at least 95% effective compared to tracking using third-party cookies, but AdExchanger reported that some people in the advertising technology industry expressed skepticism about the claim and the methodology behind it.[29] As every website that opts into FLoC will have the same access about which cohort the user belongs to, the technology's developers say this democratizes access to some information about a user's general browser history, in contrast to the status quo, where websites have to use tracking techniques.[30][12]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized FLoC, with one EFF researcher calling the testing of the technology in Chrome "a concrete breach of user trust in service of a technology that should not exist" in a post on the organization's blog.[31][32] The EFF also created a website which allows Chrome users to check whether FLoC is being tested in their browsers.[33] The EFF criticized the fact that every site will be able to access data about a user, without having to track them across the web first.[34] Additionally on the EFF blog, Cory Doctorow praised Chrome's planned removal of third-party cookies, but added that "[just] because FLoC is billed as pro-privacy and also criticized as anti-competitive, it doesn’t mean that privacy and competition aren’t compatible", stating that Google is "appointing itself the gatekeeper who decides when we’re spied on while skimming from advertisers with nowhere else to go."[35]

On April 10, 2021, the CEO of DuckDuckGo released a statement telling people not to use Google Chrome, stating that Chrome users can be included in FLoC without choosing to be and that no other browser vendor has expressed interest in using the tracking method.[36] The statement said that "there is no such thing as a behavioral tracking mechanism imposed without consent that respects people’s privacy" and that Google should make FLoC "explicitly opt-in" and "free of dark patterns".[37] DuckDuckGo also announced that its website will not collect FLoC IDs or use them to target ads,[38] and updated its Chrome extension to block websites from interacting with FLoC.[36]

On April 12, 2021, Brave, a web browser built on the Chromium platform, criticized FLoC in a blog post and announced plans to disable FLoC in the Brave browser and make company's main website opt out of FLoC.[39] The blog post, co-written by the company's CEO Brendan Eich, described Google's efforts to replace third-party cookies as "Titanic-level deckchair-shuffling" and "a step backward from more fundamental, privacy-and-user focused changes the Web needs."[40][41]

Tech and media news site The Verge noted that not all possible repercussions of FLoC for ad tech are known, and that its structure could benefit or harm smaller ad tech companies, noting specifically that larger ad tech companies may be better equipped to "parse what FLoCs mean and what ads to target against them."[1]

On April 18, 2021, a WordPress development team proposal suggested disabling FLoC by default on WordPress websites over possible privacy issues. The proposal stated that "WordPress powers approximately 41% of the web."[42][43]

On April 27, 2021, GitHub disabled FLoC on their websites, including github.com and GitHub Pages domain github.io by introducing HTTP header Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=(). However, GitHub Pages websites with custom domains are not affected.[44][45]

In April 2021, Drupal disabled FLoC by default in their products.[46]

In June, 2021, Amazon disabled FLoC on all websites of its companies, including its online store amazon.com, Whole Foods, Zappos, and Woot. Specialists speculated that Amazon staff might have decided to block FLoC not out of concern for user privacy, but rather as a strategic move to keep user data away from Google.[47]

Every major browser based on Google's open-source Chromium platform (other than Google Chrome) had declined to implement FLoC, including Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Brave, and Opera.[48]

In May 2021, The Economist reported that it may be hard for Google to "stop the system from grouping people by characteristics they wish to keep private, such as race or sexuality."[15]

Fingerprinting concerns edit

In May 2021, The Economist said some critics have suggested that the cohort system will facilitate fingerprinting of individual devices, compromising privacy.[15]

Wired magazine additionally reported that FLoC could "be used as a point of entry for fingerprinting".[14]

Mozilla, the creators of the Firefox browser, expressed concerns that FLoC can be used as an additional fingerprinting vector. Furthermore, they stated that a user's FLoC group can be tracked during multiple visits and correlated via different means and, based on a user's membership in multiple FLoC cohorts, a website might be able to infer information about the user which FLoC aimed to keep private. Since a FLoC cohort is shared across websites, its ID might be abused as an alternative to a unique cookie in third-party contexts.[49]

Antitrust response edit

In July 2020, the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority found that the FLoC proposal "place[s] the browser in a vital gatekeeper position for the adtech ecosystem."[20]

In March 2021, 15 attorneys general of U.S. states and Puerto Rico amended an antitrust complaint filed in December; the updated complaint says that Google Chrome's phase-out of third-party cookies in 2022[50] will "disable the primary cookie-tracking technology almost all non-Google publishers currently use to track users and target ads. Then [...] Chrome, will offer [...] new and alternative tracking mechanisms [...] dubbed Privacy Sandbox. Overall, the changes are anticompetitive".[51][52]

In June 2021, EU antitrust regulators launched a formal investigation to assess whether Google violated competition rules, with a focus on display advertising, notably whether it restricts access to user data by third parties while reserving it for its own use. Among the things that will be investigated is Google's plan to prohibit the placement of third-party cookies and replace them with the Privacy Sandbox set of tools.[53]

GDPR compliance edit

As of April 2021, Google was not testing FLoC in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area due to concerns about compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation and the ePrivacy Directive.[54][24][55]

Johannes Caspar, the Data Protection Commissioner of Hamburg, Germany, told Wired UK that FLoC "leads to several questions concerning the legal requirements of the GDPR," explaining that FLoC "could be seen as an act of processing personal data" which requires "freely given consent and clear and transparent information about these operations." A spokesperson of the French National Commission on Informatics and Liberty said that the FLoC system would require "specific, informed and unambiguous consent".[54]

As of April 2021, the Irish Data Protection Commission, which is the lead data supervisor for Google under GDPR,[24] was consulting with Google about the FLoC proposal.[54]

References edit

  1. ^ a b c d Bohn, Dieter (March 30, 2021). "Privacy and ads in Chrome are about to become FLoCing complicated". The Verge. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  2. ^ a b Burgess, Matt (March 24, 2021). "Google's rivals are fighting back against Chrome's big cookie plan". Wired UK. ISSN 1357-0978. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  3. ^ Lomas, Natasha (March 24, 2021). "Google isn't testing FLoCs in Europe yet". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  4. ^ a b Geradin, Damien; Katsifis, Dimitrios; Karanikioti, Theano (November 25, 2020). "Google as a de facto Privacy Regulator: Analyzing Chrome's Removal of Third-party Cookies from an Antitrust Perspective". Tilburg Law and Economics Center. Rochester, NY (DP2020-038). doi:10.2139/ssrn.3738107. ISSN 1572-4042. S2CID 234583355. SSRN 3738107.
  5. ^ "Evolution from FLoC". GitHub. March 24, 2022. FLoC didn't actually use Federated learning
  6. ^ a b c "Federated Learning of Cohorts - Chrome Platform Status". chromestatus.com. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  7. ^ a b Karlin, Josh. "Evolution from FLoC". GitHub. Retrieved January 26, 2022. FLoC ended its experiment in July of 2021.
  8. ^ Xiao, Yao (July 26, 2021). "[floc] Disable floc computation. Remove fieldtrial testing config. · chromium/chromium@5d059e4". GitHub. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
  9. ^ a b "Issue 1230149: Disable floc computation". bugs.chromium.org. August 26, 2021. Retrieved September 29, 2023.
  10. ^ a b Roth, Emma (January 25, 2022). "Google abandons FLoC, introduces Topics API to replace tracking cookies". The Verge. Retrieved January 25, 2022.
  11. ^ a b Li, Abner (January 25, 2022). "Google drops FLoC and proposes new Topics API for replacing third-party cookies used by ads". 9to5Google. Retrieved January 25, 2022.
  12. ^ a b Cyphers, Bennett (March 3, 2021). "Google's FLoC Is a Terrible Idea". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
  13. ^ a b Geradin, Damien; Katsifis, Dimitrios (February 19, 2020). "Taking a Dive Into Google's Chrome Cookie Ban". Tilburg Law and Economics Center. Rochester, NY (DP2020-042). doi:10.2139/ssrn.3541170. ISSN 1572-4042. S2CID 216269022. SSRN 3541170.
  14. ^ a b Nield, David (May 9, 2021). "What's Google FLoC? And How Does It Affect Your Privacy?". Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  15. ^ a b c d e "Why is FLoC, Google's new ad technology, taking flak?". The Economist. May 17, 2021. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  16. ^ a b Morris, Ian (April 1, 2021). "Google Chrome FLoC is replacing cookies — what it means for your privacy". Tom's Guide. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  17. ^ "1158851 - chromium - An open-source project to help move the web forward. - Monorail". bugs.chromium.org. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  18. ^ Dutton, Sam (March 22, 2022). "Clarify interest-cohort Feature Policy directive in Browser Topics API". GitHub. Retrieved May 24, 2022. if EITHER the interest-cohort OR the browsing-topics directive turns off the API, then the API is off
  19. ^ Karlin, Josh (August 22, 2019). "Update README.md · WICG/floc@a263efa". GitHub. Retrieved January 29, 2022.
  20. ^ a b "Appendix G: the role of tracking in digital advertising" (PDF). Online platforms and digital advertising: Market study final report (Report). Competition and Markets Authority. July 1, 2020. p. 116.
  21. ^ Bruell, Alexandra (March 16, 2021). "Five Things We Know About Google's Ad Changes After Cookies". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  22. ^ Amadeo, Ron (June 24, 2021). "Google delays FLoC rollout until 2023". Ars Technica. Retrieved June 29, 2021.
  23. ^ Clark, Kendra (May 17, 2021). "DuckDuckGo, Firefox & GitHub say 'no FLoCing way' to Google's privacy updates". The Drum. Retrieved May 19, 2021.
  24. ^ a b c Lomas, Natasha (March 24, 2021). "Google isn't testing FLoCs in Europe yet". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 1, 2021.
  25. ^ "Remove FLoC code · chromium/chromium@9255aec". GitHub. Retrieved September 18, 2023.
  26. ^ "component:Blink>InterestCohort". Chromium issue tracker. Retrieved March 15, 2022.
  27. ^ Peter, Snyder (January 26, 2022). "Google's Topics API: Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues". Brave Browser. Retrieved March 16, 2022.
  28. ^ "Evolution from FLoC". GitHub. March 24, 2022.
  29. ^ Schiff, Allison (January 26, 2021). "The Industry Reacts To Google's Bold Claim That FLoCs Are 95% As Effective As Cookies". AdExchanger. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  30. ^ "Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC)". GitHub. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
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  32. ^ Cyphers, Bennett (March 30, 2021). "Google Is Testing Its Controversial New Ad Targeting Tech in Millions of Browsers. Here's What We Know". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  33. ^ Lekach, Sasha (April 11, 2021). "Chrome users, check if Google is tracking you with new targeted advertising". Mashable. Retrieved April 11, 2021.
  34. ^ Davis, Wendy (March 17, 2021). "Google Plan For Cookie-Less Targeting Is Anticompetitive, States Claim". MediaPost. Retrieved April 10, 2021.
  35. ^ Doctorow, Cory (April 21, 2021). "Fighting FLoC and Fighting Monopoly Are Fully Compatible". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved May 1, 2021.
  36. ^ a b "DuckDuckGo is asking people to block Google's new tracking method". Hindustan Times. April 10, 2021. Retrieved April 11, 2021.
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  39. ^ Thurrott, Paul (April 12, 2021). "Brave is Blocking Google FLoC". Thurrott.com. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
  40. ^ Varghese, Sam. "Brave browser chiefs slam Google's new experimental ad-targeting tech". IT Wire. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
  41. ^ Snyder, Peter; Eich, Brendan (April 12, 2021). "Why Brave Disables FLoC". Brave blog. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
  42. ^ Carike (April 18, 2021). "Proposal: Treat FLoC like a security concern". WordPress. Retrieved April 20, 2021.
  43. ^ Schoon, Ben (April 19, 2021). "WordPress could turn FLoC off by default". 9to5Google. Retrieved April 20, 2021.
  44. ^ "GitHub disables Google FLoC user tracking on its website". BleepingComputer. Retrieved June 2, 2021.
  45. ^ "GitHub Pages: Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=() Header added to all pages sites". The GitHub Blog. April 27, 2021. Retrieved June 2, 2021.
  46. ^ "Add Permissions-Policy header to block Google FLoC". Drupal.org. April 19, 2021. Retrieved March 9, 2022.
  47. ^ "Amazon is blocking Google's FLoC — and that could seriously weaken the system". Digiday. June 15, 2021. Retrieved July 17, 2021.
  48. ^ Bohn, Dieter (April 16, 2021). "Nobody is flying to join Google's FLoC". The Verge. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
  49. ^ Rescorla, Eric (June 10, 2021). "Privacy analysis of FLoC". The Mozilla Blog. Retrieved June 12, 2021.
  50. ^ Robertson, Adi (March 16, 2021). "Google antitrust suit takes aim at Chrome's Privacy Sandbox". The Verge. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
  51. ^ Holt, K (December 16, 2020). "Texas announces a multi-state antitrust suit against Google". Engadget. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
  52. ^ Masnick, Mike (March 16, 2021). "Google's Efforts To Be Better About Your Privacy, Now Attacked As An Antitrust Violation". Techdirt. Retrieved April 13, 2021.
  53. ^ Brodkin, Jon (June 22, 2021). "EU antitrust regulators launch probe into Google's FLoC plan". Ars Technica. Retrieved June 22, 2021.
  54. ^ a b c Burgess, Matt (April 29, 2021). "Google's plan to eradicate cookies is crumbling". Wired UK. ISSN 1357-0978. Retrieved May 1, 2021.
  55. ^ Lepitak, Stephen; Southern, Lucinda; Shields, Ronan (March 24, 2021). "Google's Post-Cookie Targeting Plans Hit GDPR Hurdle". AdWeek. Retrieved May 1, 2021.

External links edit

  • Am I FLoCed?—EFF website reporting to users if FLoC is enabled[1]
  • FLoCs explained at the Privacy Sandbox Initiative website
  • More detailed
  • FLoC Origin Trial & Clustering – infos from the Chromium project
  1. ^ Lekach, Sasha (April 11, 2021). "Chrome users, check if Google is tracking you with new targeted advertising". Mashable. Retrieved April 11, 2021.

December 15, 2023
federated, learning, cohorts, floc, redirects, here, other, uses, floc, disambiguation, floc, type, tracking, groups, people, into, cohorts, based, their, browsing, history, purpose, interest, based, advertising, floc, being, developed, part, google, privacy, . FLoC redirects here For other uses see Floc disambiguation Federated Learning of Cohorts FLoC is a type of web tracking It groups people into cohorts based on their browsing history for the purpose of interest based advertising 1 2 FLoC was being developed as a part of Google s Privacy Sandbox initiative 3 which includes several other advertising related technologies with bird themed names 1 4 48 Despite federated learning in the name FLoC does not utilize any federated learning 5 Federated Learning of CohortsAbbreviationFLoCStatusReplaced by Browsing Topics APIYear started2019OrganizationGoogleSeriesPrivacy SandboxWebsiteprivacysandbox wbr com wbr proposals wbr floc wbr Google began testing the technology in Chrome 89 6 released in March 2021 as a replacement for third party cookies By April 2021 every major browser aside from Google Chrome that is based on Google s open source Chromium platform had declined to implement FLoC The technology was criticized on privacy grounds by groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and DuckDuckGo and has been described as anti competitive it generated an antitrust response in multiple countries as well as questions about General Data Protection Regulation compliance In July 2021 Google quietly suspended development of FLoC 7 Chrome 93 8 released on August 31 2021 became the first version which disabled FLoC but did not remove the internal programming 9 On January 25 2022 Google officially announced it had ended development of FLoC technologies and proposed the new Topics API to replace it 10 11 Media and competitors e g Brave criticized Topics API as a rebranding of FLoC with only minor changes and without addressing any main concerns Contents 1 Function 1 1 Opting out of cohort calculation 2 Timeline 2 1 Initial prototype 2 2 Testing 2 3 FLoC shutdown 2 4 Rebranding as Topics API 3 Reactions 3 1 Fingerprinting concerns 3 2 Antitrust response 3 3 GDPR compliance 4 References 5 External linksFunction edit nbsp FLoC in Google Chrome components The Federated Learning of Cohorts algorithm analyzes users online activity within the browser and generates a cohort ID using the SimHash algorithm 12 to group a given user with other users who access similar content 13 9 Each cohort contains several thousand users in order to make identifying individual users more difficult 14 and cohorts are updated weekly 15 Websites are then able to access the cohort ID using an API 13 9 and determine what advertisements to serve 16 Google does not label cohorts based on interest beyond grouping users and assigning an ID 1 so advertisers need to determine the user types of each cohort on their own 4 47 Opting out of cohort calculation edit FLoC experiment was active only in Google Chrome browser and ran from Chrome 89 6 inclusive to Chrome 93 not inclusive Modern browsers do not support FLoC While the experiment was active users could opt out of FLoC experiment by disabling third party cookies Website administrators could opt out from cohort calculation via special HTTP headers It can be accomplished with a new interest cohort permissions policy or feature policy the default behavior is to allow cohort calculation To opt out of all FLoC cohort calculations a website could send either of the following HTTP response headers 17 Permissions Policy browsing topics or Feature Policy browsing topics none Google Chrome applies interest cohort Feature Policy restrictions to Browsing Topics API as well 18 Timeline editInitial prototype edit On August 22 2019 Google Chrome developers coined the term FLoC and first started discussing the upcoming replacement for cookies 19 In July 2020 the United Kingdom s Competition and Markets Authority found the FLoC proposal to be anti competitive since it would place the browser in a vital gatekeeper position for the adtech ecosystem Instead the authority recommended adoption of a competing proposal called SPARROW which maintains the same privacy enhancing objectives but creates a different completely independent Gatekeeper which does not have any other role in the adtech ecosystem and does not have access to user level information 20 Testing edit Google began testing FLoC in the Chrome 89 6 released in March 2021 15 as a replacement for third party cookies 21 which Google plans to stop supporting in Chrome by mid 2023 22 Initially Google announced plans to remove third party cookies by late 2021 16 then postponed it to early 2022 2 and then to 2023 due to delay of FLoC technology The initial trial turned on FLoC for 0 5 of Chrome users across 10 countries 15 the United States Australia Brazil Canada India Indonesia Japan Mexico New Zealand and the Philippines 23 Users were automatically placed in the trial and were not notified but could opt out by turning off third party cookies Furthermore site administrators could disable FLoC and opt out from interest calculation via a Feature Policy header citation needed The initial trial did not include users in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area due to concerns about legality under the area s privacy regulations 24 FLoC shutdown edit In July 2021 Google quietly suspended development of FLoC Chrome 93 released on August 31 2021 became the first version which rendered FLoC feature void but did not remove the internal programming 9 7 As of March 2022 the underlying FLoC implementation is still shipped in Chrome and can be observed on internal page chrome components citation needed Chrome 100 released on March 29 2022 removed most of old FLoC code 25 Rebranding as Topics API edit On January 25 2022 Google officially announced it had ended development of FLoC APIs and proposed a new Topics API to replace it 10 11 However Topics API still retains most of the design of FLoC Chrome still uses the FLoC name internally and Topics API bugs are tracked under the label InterestCohort 26 Developers of the Brave web browser called Topics API a rebranding of FLoC without addressing key privacy issues 27 Despite this designers of Topics API made an attempt to address some of the concerns about FLoC 28 Reactions editGoogle claimed in January 2021 that FLoC was at least 95 effective compared to tracking using third party cookies but AdExchanger reported that some people in the advertising technology industry expressed skepticism about the claim and the methodology behind it 29 As every website that opts into FLoC will have the same access about which cohort the user belongs to the technology s developers say this democratizes access to some information about a user s general browser history in contrast to the status quo where websites have to use tracking techniques 30 12 The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized FLoC with one EFF researcher calling the testing of the technology in Chrome a concrete breach of user trust in service of a technology that should not exist in a post on the organization s blog 31 32 The EFF also created a website which allows Chrome users to check whether FLoC is being tested in their browsers 33 The EFF criticized the fact that every site will be able to access data about a user without having to track them across the web first 34 Additionally on the EFF blog Cory Doctorow praised Chrome s planned removal of third party cookies but added that just because FLoC is billed as pro privacy and also criticized as anti competitive it doesn t mean that privacy and competition aren t compatible stating that Google is appointing itself the gatekeeper who decides when we re spied on while skimming from advertisers with nowhere else to go 35 On April 10 2021 the CEO of DuckDuckGo released a statement telling people not to use Google Chrome stating that Chrome users can be included in FLoC without choosing to be and that no other browser vendor has expressed interest in using the tracking method 36 The statement said that there is no such thing as a behavioral tracking mechanism imposed without consent that respects people s privacy and that Google should make FLoC explicitly opt in and free of dark patterns 37 DuckDuckGo also announced that its website will not collect FLoC IDs or use them to target ads 38 and updated its Chrome extension to block websites from interacting with FLoC 36 On April 12 2021 Brave a web browser built on the Chromium platform criticized FLoC in a blog post and announced plans to disable FLoC in the Brave browser and make company s main website opt out of FLoC 39 The blog post co written by the company s CEO Brendan Eich described Google s efforts to replace third party cookies as Titanic level deckchair shuffling and a step backward from more fundamental privacy and user focused changes the Web needs 40 41 Tech and media news site The Verge noted that not all possible repercussions of FLoC for ad tech are known and that its structure could benefit or harm smaller ad tech companies noting specifically that larger ad tech companies may be better equipped to parse what FLoCs mean and what ads to target against them 1 On April 18 2021 a WordPress development team proposal suggested disabling FLoC by default on WordPress websites over possible privacy issues The proposal stated that WordPress powers approximately 41 of the web 42 43 On April 27 2021 GitHub disabled FLoC on their websites including github com and GitHub Pages domain github io by introducing HTTP header Permissions Policy interest cohort However GitHub Pages websites with custom domains are not affected 44 45 In April 2021 Drupal disabled FLoC by default in their products 46 In June 2021 Amazon disabled FLoC on all websites of its companies including its online store amazon com Whole Foods Zappos and Woot Specialists speculated that Amazon staff might have decided to block FLoC not out of concern for user privacy but rather as a strategic move to keep user data away from Google 47 Every major browser based on Google s open source Chromium platform other than Google Chrome had declined to implement FLoC including Microsoft Edge Vivaldi Brave and Opera 48 In May 2021 The Economist reported that it may be hard for Google to stop the system from grouping people by characteristics they wish to keep private such as race or sexuality 15 Fingerprinting concerns edit In May 2021 The Economist said some critics have suggested that the cohort system will facilitate fingerprinting of individual devices compromising privacy 15 Wired magazine additionally reported that FLoC could be used as a point of entry for fingerprinting 14 Mozilla the creators of the Firefox browser expressed concerns that FLoC can be used as an additional fingerprinting vector Furthermore they stated that a user s FLoC group can be tracked during multiple visits and correlated via different means and based on a user s membership in multiple FLoC cohorts a website might be able to infer information about the user which FLoC aimed to keep private Since a FLoC cohort is shared across websites its ID might be abused as an alternative to a unique cookie in third party contexts 49 Antitrust response edit In July 2020 the United Kingdom s Competition and Markets Authority found that the FLoC proposal place s the browser in a vital gatekeeper position for the adtech ecosystem 20 In March 2021 15 attorneys general of U S states and Puerto Rico amended an antitrust complaint filed in December the updated complaint says that Google Chrome s phase out of third party cookies in 2022 50 will disable the primary cookie tracking technology almost all non Google publishers currently use to track users and target ads Then Chrome will offer new and alternative tracking mechanisms dubbed Privacy Sandbox Overall the changes are anticompetitive 51 52 In June 2021 EU antitrust regulators launched a formal investigation to assess whether Google violated competition rules with a focus on display advertising notably whether it restricts access to user data by third parties while reserving it for its own use Among the things that will be investigated is Google s plan to prohibit the placement of third party cookies and replace them with the Privacy Sandbox set of tools 53 GDPR compliance edit As of April 2021 update Google was not testing FLoC in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area due to concerns about compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation and the ePrivacy Directive 54 24 55 Johannes Caspar the Data Protection Commissioner of Hamburg Germany told Wired UK that FLoC leads to several questions concerning the legal requirements of the GDPR explaining that FLoC could be seen as an act of processing personal data which requires freely given consent and clear and transparent information about these operations A spokesperson of the French National Commission on Informatics and Liberty said that the FLoC system would require specific informed and unambiguous consent 54 As of April 2021 update the Irish Data Protection Commission which is the lead data supervisor for Google under GDPR 24 was consulting with Google about the FLoC proposal 54 References edit a b c d Bohn Dieter March 30 2021 Privacy and ads in Chrome are about to become FLoCing complicated The Verge Retrieved April 10 2021 a b Burgess Matt March 24 2021 Google s rivals are fighting back against Chrome s big cookie plan Wired UK ISSN 1357 0978 Retrieved April 10 2021 Lomas Natasha March 24 2021 Google isn t testing FLoCs in Europe yet TechCrunch Retrieved April 10 2021 a b Geradin Damien Katsifis Dimitrios Karanikioti Theano November 25 2020 Google as a de facto Privacy Regulator Analyzing Chrome s Removal of Third party Cookies from an Antitrust Perspective Tilburg Law and Economics Center Rochester NY DP2020 038 doi 10 2139 ssrn 3738107 ISSN 1572 4042 S2CID 234583355 SSRN 3738107 Evolution from FLoC GitHub March 24 2022 FLoC didn t actually use Federated learning a b c Federated Learning of Cohorts Chrome Platform Status chromestatus com Retrieved February 10 2022 a b Karlin Josh Evolution from FLoC GitHub Retrieved January 26 2022 FLoC ended its experiment in July of 2021 Xiao Yao July 26 2021 floc Disable floc computation Remove fieldtrial testing config chromium chromium 5d059e4 GitHub Retrieved September 29 2023 a b Issue 1230149 Disable floc computation bugs chromium org August 26 2021 Retrieved September 29 2023 a b Roth Emma January 25 2022 Google abandons FLoC introduces Topics API to replace tracking cookies The Verge Retrieved January 25 2022 a b Li Abner January 25 2022 Google drops FLoC and proposes new Topics API for replacing third party cookies used by ads 9to5Google Retrieved January 25 2022 a b Cyphers Bennett March 3 2021 Google s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea Electronic Frontier Foundation Retrieved April 13 2021 a b Geradin Damien Katsifis Dimitrios February 19 2020 Taking a Dive Into Google s Chrome Cookie Ban Tilburg Law and Economics Center Rochester NY DP2020 042 doi 10 2139 ssrn 3541170 ISSN 1572 4042 S2CID 216269022 SSRN 3541170 a b Nield David May 9 2021 What s Google FLoC And How Does It Affect Your Privacy Wired ISSN 1059 1028 Retrieved May 19 2021 a b c d e Why is FLoC Google s new ad technology taking flak The Economist May 17 2021 ISSN 0013 0613 Retrieved May 19 2021 a b Morris Ian April 1 2021 Google Chrome FLoC is replacing cookies what it means for your privacy Tom s Guide Retrieved April 10 2021 1158851 chromium An open source project to help move the web forward Monorail bugs chromium org Retrieved February 10 2022 Dutton Sam March 22 2022 Clarify interest cohort Feature Policy directive in Browser Topics API GitHub Retrieved May 24 2022 if EITHER the interest cohort OR the browsing topics directive turns off the API then the API is off Karlin Josh August 22 2019 Update README md WICG floc a263efa GitHub Retrieved January 29 2022 a b Appendix G the role of tracking in digital advertising PDF Online platforms and digital advertising Market study final report Report Competition and Markets Authority July 1 2020 p 116 Bruell Alexandra March 16 2021 Five Things We Know About Google s Ad Changes After Cookies Wall Street Journal ISSN 0099 9660 Retrieved April 10 2021 Amadeo Ron June 24 2021 Google delays FLoC rollout until 2023 Ars Technica Retrieved June 29 2021 Clark Kendra May 17 2021 DuckDuckGo Firefox amp GitHub say no FLoCing way to Google s privacy updates The Drum Retrieved May 19 2021 a b c Lomas Natasha March 24 2021 Google isn t testing FLoCs in Europe yet TechCrunch Retrieved May 1 2021 Remove FLoC code chromium chromium 9255aec GitHub Retrieved September 18 2023 component Blink gt InterestCohort Chromium issue tracker Retrieved March 15 2022 Peter Snyder January 26 2022 Google s Topics API Rebranding FLoC Without Addressing Key Privacy Issues Brave Browser Retrieved March 16 2022 Evolution from FLoC GitHub March 24 2022 Schiff Allison January 26 2021 The Industry Reacts To Google s Bold Claim That FLoCs Are 95 As Effective As Cookies AdExchanger Retrieved April 10 2021 Federated Learning of Cohorts FLoC GitHub Retrieved April 13 2021 EFF technologist cites Google breach of trust on FLoC key ad tech change agent departs IAB Tech Lab Information Trust Exchange Governing Association Retrieved April 10 2021 Cyphers Bennett March 30 2021 Google Is Testing Its Controversial New Ad Targeting Tech in Millions of Browsers Here s What We Know Electronic Frontier Foundation Retrieved April 10 2021 Lekach Sasha April 11 2021 Chrome users check if Google is tracking you with new targeted advertising Mashable Retrieved April 11 2021 Davis Wendy March 17 2021 Google Plan For Cookie Less Targeting Is Anticompetitive States Claim MediaPost Retrieved April 10 2021 Doctorow Cory April 21 2021 Fighting FLoC and Fighting Monopoly Are Fully Compatible Electronic Frontier Foundation Retrieved May 1 2021 a b DuckDuckGo is asking people to block Google s new tracking method Hindustan Times April 10 2021 Retrieved April 11 2021 Saroha Aditya April 12 2021 Google s new ad tracking tool called into question by rival search engine The Hindu ISSN 0971 751X Retrieved April 12 2021 Khan Sieeka April 10 2021 Google to Launch Replacement for Third Party Cookies and DuckDuckGo Wants to Block it Tech Times Retrieved April 12 2021 Thurrott Paul April 12 2021 Brave is Blocking Google FLoC Thurrott com Retrieved April 13 2021 Varghese Sam Brave browser chiefs slam Google s new experimental ad targeting tech IT Wire Retrieved April 13 2021 Snyder Peter Eich Brendan April 12 2021 Why Brave Disables FLoC Brave blog Retrieved April 13 2021 Carike April 18 2021 Proposal Treat FLoC like a security concern WordPress Retrieved April 20 2021 Schoon Ben April 19 2021 WordPress could turn FLoC off by default 9to5Google Retrieved April 20 2021 GitHub disables Google FLoC user tracking on its website BleepingComputer Retrieved June 2 2021 GitHub Pages Permissions Policy interest cohort Header added to all pages sites The GitHub Blog April 27 2021 Retrieved June 2 2021 Add Permissions Policy header to block Google FLoC Drupal org April 19 2021 Retrieved March 9 2022 Amazon is blocking Google s FLoC and that could seriously weaken the system Digiday June 15 2021 Retrieved July 17 2021 Bohn Dieter April 16 2021 Nobody is flying to join Google s FLoC The Verge Retrieved April 17 2021 Rescorla Eric June 10 2021 Privacy analysis of FLoC The Mozilla Blog Retrieved June 12 2021 Robertson Adi March 16 2021 Google antitrust suit takes aim at Chrome s Privacy Sandbox The Verge Retrieved April 13 2021 Holt K December 16 2020 Texas announces a multi state antitrust suit against Google Engadget Retrieved April 13 2021 Masnick Mike March 16 2021 Google s Efforts To Be Better About Your Privacy Now Attacked As An Antitrust Violation Techdirt Retrieved April 13 2021 Brodkin Jon June 22 2021 EU antitrust regulators launch probe into Google s FLoC plan Ars Technica Retrieved June 22 2021 a b c Burgess Matt April 29 2021 Google s plan to eradicate cookies is crumbling Wired UK ISSN 1357 0978 Retrieved May 1 2021 Lepitak Stephen Southern Lucinda Shields Ronan March 24 2021 Google s Post Cookie Targeting Plans Hit GDPR Hurdle AdWeek Retrieved May 1 2021 External links editAm I FLoCed EFF website reporting to users if FLoC is enabled 1 FLoCs explained at the Privacy Sandbox Initiative website More detailed FLoC Origin Trial amp Clustering infos from the Chromium project Lekach Sasha April 11 2021 Chrome users check if Google is tracking you with new targeted advertising Mashable Retrieved April 11 2021 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Federated Learning of Cohorts amp oldid 1182742493, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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