What’s Google FLoC?

Illustration: Sam Whitney; Getty Images. Article by David Nield. Wired –  May 9, 2021.

What’s Google FLoC? And How Does It Affect Your Privacy?

There’s a battle raging over how advertisers can target us on the web—or whether they should be able to target us at all.

GOOGLE WANTS TO change the way we’re tracked around the web, and given the widespread use of its Chrome browser, the shift could have significant security and privacy implications—but the idea has been less well-received by companies that aren’t Google.

The technology in question is FLoC, or Federated Learning of Cohorts, to give it its full and rather confusing name. It aims to give advertisers a way of targeting ads without exposing details on individual users, and it does this by grouping people with similar interests together: Football fans, truck drivers, retired travelers, or whatever it is. […]

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