Every Other Browser Maker to Google: Go FLoC Yourself

Dieter Bohn, also doing some real work at The Verge today:

Google is going it alone with its proposed advertising technology to replace third-party cookies. Every major browser that uses the open source Chromium project has declined to use it, and it’s unclear what that will mean for the future of advertising on the web. […]

One note I’ll drop here is that I am relieved that nobody else is implementing FLoC right away, because the way FLoC is constructed puts a very big responsibility on a browser maker. If implemented badly, FLoC could leak out sensitive information. It’s a complicated technology that does appear to keep you semi-anonymous, but there are enough details to hide dozens of devils.

Anyway, here’s Brave: “The worst aspect of FLoC is that it materially harms user privacy, under the guise of being privacy-friendly.” And here’s Vivaldi: “We will not support the FLoC API and plan to disable it, no matter how it is implemented. It does not protect privacy and it certainly is not beneficial to users, to unwittingly give away their privacy for the financial gain of Google.”

FLoC is a terrible idea. Google’s goal with FLoC, clearly, is to maintain its surveillance advertising hegemony while further obfuscating the privacy ramifications from today’s status quo. The rest of the industry, led by Apple, is moving toward giving users control over surveillance advertising; FLoC is an attempt to circumvent such control.

★ Friday, 16 April 2021