<story><title>How to fight back against Google FLoC</title><url>https://plausible.io/blog/google-floc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eterevsky</author><text>While I do understand that some people may not like it, I don&amp;#x27;t see how FLoC is particularly harmful. I&amp;#x27;ve read several articles about it, and most of them just say something like &amp;quot;you are being put in a advertising cohort -- see how creepy it is&amp;quot;, which doesn&amp;#x27;t really prove anything.&lt;p&gt;One more specific argument against FLoC is that it will make help tracking users via fingerprinting. I don&amp;#x27;t really buy it. First of all, the estimations from [EFF article](&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eff.org&amp;#x2F;deeplinks&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;googles-floc-terrible-idea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eff.org&amp;#x2F;deeplinks&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;googles-floc-terrible-...&lt;/a&gt;) are just plainly wrong. They are talking about narrowing down to thousands of users, while in fact if Chrome has on the order of a billion users, and if FLoC has only 8 bits of entropy, the actual number of users in a cohort is on the order of millions. Secondly, from my understanding this cohort is based on your recent activity, so it will change over time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>papaf</author><text>&lt;i&gt;and if FLoC has only 8 bits of entropy&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;From the EFF article that you don&amp;#x27;t like:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Google’s experiment used 8-bit cohort identifiers, meaning that there were only 256 possible cohorts. In practice that number could be much higher; the documentation suggests a 16-bit cohort ID comprising 4 hexadecimal characters.&lt;p&gt;Also, its since someone can belong to more than 1 cohort, the 8bits is a bare minimum and not a maximum. For instance, techie who likes hiphop, buys whisky and is looking for a washing machine is 32bits of entropy and covers the billion users with ease.</text></comment>
<story><title>How to fight back against Google FLoC</title><url>https://plausible.io/blog/google-floc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>eterevsky</author><text>While I do understand that some people may not like it, I don&amp;#x27;t see how FLoC is particularly harmful. I&amp;#x27;ve read several articles about it, and most of them just say something like &amp;quot;you are being put in a advertising cohort -- see how creepy it is&amp;quot;, which doesn&amp;#x27;t really prove anything.&lt;p&gt;One more specific argument against FLoC is that it will make help tracking users via fingerprinting. I don&amp;#x27;t really buy it. First of all, the estimations from [EFF article](&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eff.org&amp;#x2F;deeplinks&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;googles-floc-terrible-idea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.eff.org&amp;#x2F;deeplinks&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;googles-floc-terrible-...&lt;/a&gt;) are just plainly wrong. They are talking about narrowing down to thousands of users, while in fact if Chrome has on the order of a billion users, and if FLoC has only 8 bits of entropy, the actual number of users in a cohort is on the order of millions. Secondly, from my understanding this cohort is based on your recent activity, so it will change over time.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kemonocode</author><text>&amp;gt; While I do understand that some people may not like it, I don&amp;#x27;t see how FLoC is particularly harmful.&lt;p&gt;Sure, I can give an example: it goes beyond simple basic fingerprinting, it allows you to be associated with a group of &amp;quot;others&amp;quot; (your cohort) in ways that can be dangerous to you.&lt;p&gt;Suppose you live in a country where you may not enjoy certain freedoms or some behaviors may be outlawed; end up in the wrong cohort(s) and a state actor will be able to know these things rather easily, this is not to say there aren&amp;#x27;t already means to do it today, but why make the job even easier for them?</text></comment>