Fluc Google's FLoC

by kingcoyote

If you're reading this magazine, you're probably aware of the oldest conflict playing out on the Web.

On one side, you have all the people (and companies) using this most amazing communication network to create and share great stuff.  Whether it's fan-fiction or software-as-a-service, these are people who wanna make cool stuff and people who want it.  It's a happy bunch.

On the other side, you got people (and companies) that want to use the Web to exploit others.  From the small-time scammer to the multinational corporation, they simply want a bigger slice of the pie without giving anything in return.

For a while now, it seems we've been in a sort of balance.  The average Joe Internet can buy stuff, find information, and share baby pictures easily and safely.  All of that thanks to the indefatigable people building tools and educating users.

But this balance is threatened.  A group of online advertisers, including Google, are mounting a new offensive.  Their goal?  To weave ads into the very fabric of the Internet: the web browser.  Their weapon?  A project called "Federated Learning of Cohorts."

What Is It?

Federated Learning of Cohorts - FLoC for short - is a new browser standard.  It defines a feature that analyzes a user's browsing habits, distills it into a cohort (I will use the term "label" from now on), and exposes it to advertisers.  With it, they can target ads more precisely and let go of the abomination that is the third-party cookie.

At the time of writing (mid April, 2021), the feature is in the experimental stage.  It has been rolled out to a small portion of Chrome users.  The labeling algorithm, which runs once per week, is simple and limited to scanning visited domains.  Similarly, the number of labels is limited to 256, which can only paint a fuzzy picture of the user.

The people behind FLoC have already expressed interest in swapping out the experimental algorithm for a more powerful one based on unsupervised machine learning.  They would also increase the number of possible labels to tens of thousands.  The last update would ensure cohort sizes of at most a few thousand users.

Why Does It Suck?

From a privacy perspective, the idea of getting labeled is awful.  Imagine wearing a list of your preferences on your forehead, so that marketers can walk up to you, read it, and say, "I see you like hamburgers!  Check out these Tasty-Snak burgers bla bla bla."  It's creepy and undignified.

Limiting labels to only a few thousand users each makes it easier to identify unique users.  Instead of being one amongst tens of millions of similar users, you would be one in a couple of thousand.  And because browsing habits don't change quickly, it would be possible for advertisers to "follow" a user across labels.

But the bigger threat here is that FLoC would expose a wealth of behavioral data.  It's every advertiser's, scammer's, and shady government's wet dream.

Just imagine how precise the labels must be if they group users by the couple-thousand.  You'd have stuff like "people-who-like-anime-and-hot-dogs-and-read-literature-and-live-in-Memphis-and-are-between-18-and-24-years-old-and-browse-the-web-2-hours-a-day-and..."

It's already scary that targeted ads can figure out you're pregnant before you do.  FLoC would make it even worse.

You think that's bad?  Consider how this would expose any kind of minority traits.  Don't limit yourself to just the ones we have in the U.S.  Think globally!  Imagine all the ethnic, sexual, and religious minorities.  Add to that all of the supporters of opposition parties that live under repressive regimes.  All of them would be instantly exposed by their own browser!

To this, Google has offered to act as a "benevolent" overseer.  They offered to keep an eye on minority groups and intervene if FLoC would lead to their harm.  But do we really want a corporation to act as global police?  They don't have a good track record.

Where Does it Fit in the Bigger Picture?

FLoC, if it were accepted and rolled out, would codify advertising into the Net's DNA.  As a consequence, it would be more difficult to try out different ways of creating and sharing content online.  It's a trap.  We would essentially be stuck where we are today, with multi-megabyte ads auto-playing annoying music.

And what better way to cement your company's position than to make its product a core part of the Internet?  Around 88 percent of Google's revenue comes from ads.  (For Facebook, that's over 98 percent).  If you already have enough power to push through technical standards FLoC, why not use that power to get more power?

I think that's what Google's and other advertisers' grand strategy is: literally become part of the Internet's infrastructure.  Then, dismantling (anti-trust law) or replacing (competition) you is too costly and too risky.

What Now?

We've been here before.  The Browser Wars of the early 2000s taught us what to watch out for and how to fight back.

Already, groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are speaking up and educating people about the risks associated with FLoC.  Other browser makers like Mozilla, Brave, DuckDuckGo, and even Apple have publicly expressed their opposition to the project.  Even WordPress, which powers around a third of the Web's sites, has a proposal for blocking FLoC.

What can a regular person do?  Apart from switching away from Chrome and supporting the EFF, I think education is the way to go.

Google and its gang are working hard to keep this quiet and to wrap it up in nice PR fluff.  Can you believe they describe FLoC as "This API democratizes access to some information about an individual's general browsing history?"  Well, in that light, I guess peeping Toms merely "democratize access" to individual's bodies.  Disgusting.

So talk with your friends and family.  Don't pressure - nobody likes a zealot.  Explain to them what's going on, why it matters for you, and why it matters for them.  Be ready to offer help too!  Many people don't know how to install another browser or an ad-blocker.

Good luck!