Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Rather than track you individually, Google's Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) puts you in a larger group of people who share your interests. This post from EFF argues that it's a bad idea. With FLoC, your browser does "the profiling that third-party trackers used to do themselves... boiling down your recent browsing activity into a behavioral label, and then sharing it with websites and advertisers." The problem, says EFF, is that you can't really turn it off. "Users begin every interaction with a confession: here's what I've been up to this week, please treat me accordingly." This enables 'fingerprinting' each individual user and removes your  "right to present different aspects of your identity in different contexts."

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Mar 28, 2024 5:26 p.m.

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