What is FLOC
FLOC is a technology from Google, this stands for Federated Learning of Cohorts, and has been in the news because of the privacy and security concerns tied to it. Let's dive deeper into this in this blog post and see what's coming in Google's new advertising model. Read on for all the information necessary to know!
The basis of FLOC
FLOC is an initiative of Google, this is a new advertising model that allows Google to group people based on interest, browsing habits and personal information. This profile is then passed on to third parties, including Facebook, to offer you ads based on your search behavior, surfing habits and internet use. Privacy-sensitive information from medical websites, for example, can also be viewed by FLOC through third parties and account information that should not be shared. Are seen by FLOC as interesting for advertisers.
The previous technology that is still used for displaying advertisements and other means are the third party cookies. This technology and way of working is already 20 years old and badly needed to be replaced. The limitation of this technology and all the news surrounding it have already scared off users. Google is therefore working on a replacement for this. To start with a clean slate. FLOC is a way of using the browser itself to build up your online profile instead of local cookies. You get a label and then this is used by advertisers to show you ads. However, this model is prone to Discrimination and making you prey for advertisers.
FLOC makes it possible to group users with similar browsing behavior together into a Group or Cohort. This gives you profiles that are labeled as low income, for example, or otherwise have less value for advertisers.
For example, any website where you log in with Sign in with your Google Account, can find out the following with your FLOC ID or cohort ID:
- Specific information of your browsing habits and your browsing history. Trackers could find out which websites you have visited.
- General information about demographics and interests. For example, different cohorts might be created of LGBTQ+ individuals, Young men in their early 20s, women around their 30s, skin color, political affiliation, and so on.
So any website you come into contact with will have no trouble at all knowing right away what kind of person you are, without having to track you with cookies across the internet. A medical website that you visit and leave information with does not need to know what your political affiliation is. And the same goes for a retail website and your request for therapy for depression on a medical website.
Brave browser statement
The internet browser Brave, also popular with us, does not have a positive opinion about this. And will therefore block FLOC by default. Below in the source section you can see the article by Brave about this, and we recommend you to read it.
Brave also describes another situation that can harm you as an entrepreneur with a small webshop. By sharing user information and applying the new learned information, parties like Amazon can serve your niche audience of your webshop with lower prices, faster delivery and the Prime guarantee. Since Amazon also has access to the ad profiles or interests.
WordPress is going to block this automatically
WordPress sees FLOC as a privacy violation and is going to block it by default with WordPress version 5.8. So for 41 percent of all websites, this will not work. And will be a thorn in Google's plan to make FLOC the new default way of showing ads.
