How to fight back against Google FLoC
On March 30, 2021, Google launched trials of something called “Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC)” in the USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, and several other countries for millions of users. This was shipped in version 89 of the chrome browser. They did so without asking Chrome users first and turned it on by default.
In their press release, they called it “a privacy-first future of web advertising.” Here is how Google describes it.
FLoC is a way for Google to collect and sell your recent internet browsing activity using their Chrome browser (and other browsers that may adopt FLoC too).
The web is evolving with government regulations and increasing demand from internet users for privacy and security of their data companies like Apple is pushing a privacy-first approach from its operating systems and Safari. Services like DuckDuckGo and HEY give people competitive alternatives to the surveillance capitalism-funded products.
Cross-site tracking using tools such as Google Analytics and third-party cookies is being phased out. Safari, Firefox, and Brave are leading the way. And legislation like GDPR has proven that if you give people a choice to opt out of personalized advertising, most of them will. No one wants to be tracked as they use the internet.
