WordPress To Automatically Disable Google FLoC On Websites

AmiMoJo writes: WordPress announced over the weekend that they plan on treating Google's new FLoC tracking technology as a security concern and hence block it by default on WordPress sites. For some time, browsers have begun to increasingly block third-party browser cookies used by advertisers for interest-based advertising. In response, Google introduced a new ad tracking technology called Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLoC, that uses a web browser to anonymously place users into interest or behavioral buckets based on how they browse the web. After Google began testing FLoC this month in Google Chrome, there has been a consensus among privacy advocates that Google's FLoC implementation just replaces one privacy risk with another one.

"WordPress powers approximately 41% of the web -- and this community can help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code," says WordPress. WordPress states that this code is planned for WordPress 5.8, scheduled for release in July 2021. As FLoC is expected to roll out sooner, WordPress is considering back-porting this code to earlier versions to "amplify the impact" on current versions of the blogging platform. Further reading: Nobody is Flying To Join Google's FLoC.

Not fair

[cantsleep]

This is not fair... I'm furious! Google is a private company with the right to do what they want with the internet! /s

Re:Not fair

[DamnOregonian]

Aren't they?
It appears that WordPress is exercising their right to do the same.

See how that works?

Re:

[higuita]

Hey, vote with your main power, stop using chrome (and watch out for those chrome based alternatives, many are just plain chrome with a new name, firefox is the best option here), stop using their services (specially do not login to any google services and clean all cookies and offline storage... if you really need, open a firefox container just for that, so your google login is apart from all other sites), stop using their search engine (several alternatives, even several that use google in background, but

Re:

[computererds]

Please share these other google backed searches. I find Duckduckgo and Startpage results lacking, and really miss scroogle plugin being functional.

Re:

[gweihir]

Sure. On their servers. Not on my clients. There _I_ can do what I want. (Both subject to legal limits, of course.)

Maybe I'm overlooking something

[OrangeTide]

I don't understand how picking between two different browser tracking technologies can "help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code,"

Because, Jesus if it were that easy why didn't we solve racism and sexism decades ago?

Re:Maybe I'm overlooking something

[ThomasBHardy]

I can only speculate, but I believe the issue is that FLoC will start categorizing people by their browsing habits at the browser level. So within a period of time, the browser will know which groups you belong to and start showing you tailored content. As they state it's a privacy concern, I assume the issue is something like this:
1) Your browser figures you you are in a group such as LGBTQ+ and start tailoring your ad/news content accordingly.
2) Through means undefined, a bad actor finds this out (or maybe it's just your dad borrows your PC/Phone and sees the ad content tailored for you) and uses this information in a negative way.

There may be other security implications, but as I saw it described in one article, they summarized FLoC as starting every session with a website as beginning with your browser telling it all of your habits/interests/preferences right up front, so the site could use that data to tailor ads/content. I can see where this might raise a few eyebrows.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

FLoC will categorize a young black single man so that he sees a lot of black singles dating web sites. It will also not show him ads for engineering jobs or mortgage lenders.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you look for engineering jobs enough for your history to skew that way Or are these presented to people based on inferred demographics from browsing habits?

Re:

[higuita]

can be applied for whatever they want, discounts, services, products, politics, etc

one politic can run ads saying they will defend LGBT people and send then to the LGBT people only and the do ads that will fight LGBT and send them to radical religious people. By having clear profiles of each user, people that sell and buy ads can make whatever they want with the data, even abuse it... and you have zero control on that

Re:

[cygnusvis]

This would also cause the web to be one big echo chamber.

Re:Maybe I'm overlooking something

[AmiMoJo]

FLoC assigns users to "cohorts" based on their perceived interests. The cohort is then reported to websites so they can target ads, as an alternative to them tracking you online to figure out your interests.

Google claims this is better for privacy because all the interest tracking is done in the browser and kept local to your computer. The website only gets a general cohort identifier, and cohorts will contain thousands of users so are supposed to be of limited use in tracking individuals.

There are numerous problems. For a start the implementation is half baked, with the cohort generation system not being sufficiently resistant to deanonymization. An adversary could simulate thousands of browsing sessions and observe which cohorts result from them, or if they control a number of popular sites use those to force users towards selected cohorts.

Google claims that it will make sure that sensitive cohorts are blocked, so e.g. there will be no religious ones, nothing to do with sexual orientation or the like. Again though the problem is that their list, which they already use for other purposes, is incomplete and mostly based around Western taboos and social problems. It's very likely that abusive cohorts will be created, putting e.g. LGBTQ+ people in danger in countries where that is illegal, or by outing them.

FLoC also breaks private browsing mode. By default FLoC sends a null when there isn't enough data to assign a user to a cohort, or when they are in private browsing mode. That gives adversaries a way to detect private browsing.

This happened rather famously

[rsilvergun]

with Target [forbes.com], so I suppose I can see the risk.

Re:

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

They can put me into whatever "buckets" they like and I won't care, because I use an ad-blocker.

I occasionally do my part mess with ad data, like suddenly spending a day browsing baby clothes, cribs, formula...then the next time browsing for race car parts...the next day it's mountain climbing gear....then wheelchairs and canes.

So if this comes to pass I'll end up in the "we have no fucking clue what he likes" bucket.

Re:Maybe I'm overlooking something

[Waccoon]

I want tailored ads about as much as I want tailored prices and tailored legal eligibility.

LGBTQ+ is the least of our concerns. Sometimes I just want to know what it's like to exist in society as someone else or understand how other people are treated. The idea of a "personalized experience", everywhere I go, is pretty frightening.

Re:

[sabbede]

Or, and this is really more likely, WP is just full of it and thinks such wild claims will translate into compliance and/or more users. They're using a ridiculous (and empty) social/political claim to make a technical argument, and in my view it just makes them look like arrogant idiots or con-men. They invented a problem that might exist in the future, act like it already exists, inflate the f-k out of it, and then claim to be able to fix it.

Re:

[SirSlud]

*help*

You can't entirely eliminate murders and you can't entirely eliminate racism. But you can *help* reduce them. It's so very telling when people reframe efforts to make improvements as claims of 100% effective solutions.

Re: Maybe I'm overlooking something

[deepthought90]

How does any of this reduce racism, which would require it to change what's in peoples' hearts. All this and the other crap that social companies do is push it somewhere else.

Re:

[SirSlud]

This isn't about reducing people being racist, this is about reducing systemic bias in advertising which is one way in which racism manifests itself in our organization of society and economics.

Also, you're on /. What the fuck is this about what's in peoples hearts? People have brains, and the ideas in those brains can be changed. I don't know if you're saying nobody has ever become less or more racist with the passage of time, but it sounds like that. And that's dumb, it happens all the time. Non racist pe

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand how picking between two different browser tracking technologies can "help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code,"

Because, Jesus if it were that easy why didn't we solve racism and sexism decades ago?

Ironically, you've been taking your own sig to heart here.

Please do not find yourself falling for lame-ass crap like racism and mental illness discrimination. Statements like these are meant to fool those who have no cognitive thinking skills, which unfortunately now represent the majority. This is why we now see this kind of shit "justification", everywhere.

Re:

[higuita]

quick summary:

site cookies -> can be use either to configure things for sites, but can also be abuse for tracking. Massive tracking via site cookies is harder and require lot more work

thrid party cookies -> allow tracking companies, like google know exactly who you are and what are you doing in the internet (with google, even outside, thanks to their phones)

FLOC -> tracks what you do on the browser side and assigns you to "buckets id"... this is more anonymous than the above, as only google will h

Re:

[Straumli Perversion]

I actually like the "cohort" idea, just not the tracking and auto-assigning involved with it. Give me a page with a bunch of checkboxes and I'll self-select which cohorts I choose to see ads for. I'll of course keep them all off most of the time, but if I'm actually looking for (for example) shoes, I might let ads through for that category for a while. This will never happen, though, so I'll continue blocking all ads.

Re:

[ljw1004]

I don't understand how picking between two different browser tracking technologies can "help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code."

That comes directly from the linked EFF article https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/... [eff.org]:

For example, a particular cohort may over-represent users who are young, female, and Black; another cohort, middle-aged Republican voters; a third, LGBTQ+ youth.

You wrote, "Because, Jesus if it were that easy why didn't we solve racism and sexism decades ago?". I don't think that makes sense. Here the EFF is arguing that FLoC will make such discrimination more likely, and that's one of the reasons why FLoC should be opposed. Which part of this do you disagree with?

Hey WordPress, privacy is a universal concern

[vux984]

"this community can help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code"

Privacy is in everyone's interest and is a fundamental requirement for freedom.

That's not to say that the groups you identified don't need privacy but if that's the reason you are doing this, then I'm glad you made the right decision and made it for a good intention, but you really missed the boat.

Re:

[alvinrod]

Or it's just a convenient way to avoid having to provide any other kind of justification. As in: How could you argue against them combating racism? Don't you want to combat racism? What are you, some kind of a bigot? Burn him, he's a witch!

People will always seek to control the mob to suit their own interests.

Re:

[cygnusvis]

Privacy is in everyone's interest and is a fundamental requirement for freedom.

So their 4 lines of code is in the interests of the fascists and communists too?

Re:

[vux984]

"So their 4 lines of code is in the interests of the fascists and communists too?"

Yes. Everyone means everyone.

Re:

[higuita]

Any way to classify people is useful for people that want to control others, what ever politic side, religious side, ideological side you or them are.
Sooner or later, that info can and will be abused.

Wow

[nagora]

That's a bit up themselves.

I mean, good that they're doing it but they're going to sprain something with all that virtue signalling.

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

It's not quite virtue signalling (at least it doesn't have to be... The people who came up with it- who knows. They very well could have been)

One of the problems with FLoC is that it can pinhole you into a stereotype of you.
Systemic pressures toward stereotypes are one of the things making change hard.

Re:

[cygnusvis]

Systemic pressures toward stereotypes are one of the things making change hard.

The first thing I have heard on the subject that makes sense.

Re:

[alexgieg]

Systemic pressures toward stereotypes are one of the things making change hard.

Particularly when people don't understand they're doing that. A recent example, from a few days ago, had a TV network informing scriptwriters and directors that they need to make their scripts more diverse by, for example, having ethnic minority actors consuming more foods, taking part in more entertainment, and dressing in ways more typically associated with their groups, as well as having more on screen friends from their own ethnic backgrounds, in short, by increasing the stereotyping of those characters

Re:

[nagora]

It's not quite virtue signalling (at least it doesn't have to be... The people who came up with it- who knows. They very well could have been)

One of the problems with FLoC is that it can pinhole you into a stereotype of you.

Systemic pressures toward stereotypes are one of the things making change hard.

I don't see how that's restricted to the groups they picked out; it's a universal problem.

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

I don't see how that's restricted to the groups they picked out; it's a universal problem.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this isn't an "All Lives Matter" thing.

The effects of systemic stereotype pressures are quantifiable among... let's call them cohorts for the sake of synchronizing terminology with FLoC.
While the average person may also suffer this effect as well, it's much less quantifiable than recognized protected classes. Which is of course why they are protected classes.

Re:

[nagora]

The think about "the average person" is that it's a chimera that squeezes many people from different backgrounds and social classes into a bag marked "Not obviously classifiable by looking at them so I don't need to care about their problems".

I don't know. Maybe it's an American thing.

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

The think about "the average person" is that it's a chimera that squeezes many people from different backgrounds and social classes into a bag marked "Not obviously classifiable by looking at them so I don't need to care about their problems".

It's not that their problems aren't cared about. It's that they're, as a population doing as well as the statistics suggest.

They may find it unfair that other people feel "catered" to, but that's only because they're blind to the advantages they already have (and take advantage of, statistically speaking)

If you're trying to suggest that we need to start enacting policy to account for every individual person, I'd love to hear how we do that.

Re:

[nagora]

They may find it unfair that other people feel "catered" to, but that's only because they're blind to the advantages they already have (and take advantage of, statistically speaking)

The advantages you assume they have because of their skin colour?

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

The advantages you assume they have because of their skin colour?

There are many studies advantages to having white skin color in American society.
This isn't an assumption. No matter how you swing it, no matter what individual differences exist, you have advantages as a caucasian vs. certain other ethnicities in the US.
This exists for people who may be homosexual or sexually different as well.

When you use words like "assume", it leads one to conclude you're a troll.
Some reading material for you. [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[nagora]

The advantages you assume they have because of their skin colour?

There are many studies advantages to having white skin color in American society.

This isn't an assumption. No matter how you swing it, no matter what individual differences exist, you have advantages as a caucasian vs. certain other ethnicities in the US.

This exists for people who may be homosexual or sexually different as well.

When you use words like "assume", it leads one to conclude you're a troll.

Some reading material for you. [wikipedia.org]

Thanks. I know racism when I see it just fine.

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

Hahaha,
Yes. Calling anyone who recognizes racism a racist. Super clever.
You fucks never were very smart.

Re:

[nagora]

Hahaha,

Yes. Calling anyone who recognizes racism a racist. Super clever.

You fucks never were very smart.

Your whole thread of argument has been textbook racism - you're rating individuals' value using a classification based on skin colour. Grandmother been shot dead? No problem - you're white! Driven out of your home because of your religion? No problem - you're white! etc.

Skin colour is irrelevant. You end discrimination by not discriminating.

You need to look in the mirror and ask yourself "when did I become a racist?". I'm sure it was by accident, but it's still where you've ended up.

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

Your whole thread of argument has been textbook racism

Sure hasn't.
You're redefining that word to mean something it does not. By your definition, even acknowledging that one has color is racist.
Racism (n):
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

Try again, Tucker.

You're rating individuals' value using a classification based on skin colour.

I did no such thing.
Feel free to point out where I did though. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Grandmother been shot dead? No problem - you're white!

Driven out of your home because of your religion? No problem - you're white!

As I suspected. This *is* some "All Lives Matter" drivel

Re:

[thegarbz]

Oh FFS, doing *something* is not virtue signaling. There's so much to criticise about this and you go for that stupid meme. Open a book at some point. Preferably a dictionary.

Re:

[nagora]

Oh FFS, doing *something* is not virtue signaling.

Doing something is not virtue signalling. Doing something and then shouting about how you're the great white knight rescuing gay people from the evil corporation is virtue signalling.

There's so much to criticise about this and you go for that stupid meme. Open a book at some point. Preferably a dictionary.

I think you probably mean a thesaurus.

It's a _request_ to disable, not actual disability

[Sloppy]

Looks like this just sends a header to the browser, which expresses a desire that FLoC be disabled for that request. That's not really quite the same as disabling.

Heh, in a way it's the flipside of the browser Do Not Track header, where instead of a browser requesting an unverifiable behind-the-scenes behavior from the server, it's the server requesting an unverifiable behind-the-scenes behavior from the browser.

Does anyone happen to know, to what degree Google's webservers respect DNT request headers? Their behavior there, should tell you how much Google intends for Chrome to respect these response headers.

Re:It's a _request_ to disable, not actual disabil

[AmiMoJo]

Google ignores DNT on its servers.

Re:

[sound+vision]

Ah yes. Google, the epitome of unbridled capitalism, that dangerous far-left ideal.

Combat what?

[cygnusvis]

combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and discrimination against those with mental illness

how does blocking tracking combat any of this? If it actually DOES protect them, then they are also protecting the faschists and ocmmunists too, aren't they?

Echo Chambers

[cygnusvis]

Stopping FLOC will stop the web from being one big echo chamber. How bad would the world be if people got online and only ever say things supporting their beliefs (like fascisism/communism)?

Re:

[geekmux]

How bad would the world be if people got online and only ever say things supporting their beliefs (like fascisism/communism)?

Uh, IF people got online? Wow. You really must be new here.

Planet Earth I mean.

Re:

[alvinrod]

How bad would the world be if people got online and only ever say things supporting their beliefs (like fascisism/communism)?

Unless you're playing devil's advocate, don't you only ever say things supporting your own beliefs? If you wouldn't allow someone to advocate for pedophilia are you just creating an echo chamber on the internet?

Yes, my example is quite hyperbolic, ridiculous, and unnecessarily incendiary, but I don't think you had a very good point. Even if you'll agree that the problem isn't what people say, but rather what they're shown, in a free internet people will be free to self-segregate into communities where th

Re:

[JMZero]

All it takes for echo chambers to develop is people having the ability to select what they want to read and who they want to interact with.

Overall, people will tend to pick sources they agree with, and will choose to interact with people who value the same things. Mostly what has changed with the internet is there's a lot more granular choices, and your choices don't need to be local. You can connect efficiently with the pockets of people who agree with you anywhere around the world.

Unless you actively b

Re:

[geek]

Stopping FLOC will stop the web from being one big echo chamber. How bad would the world be if people got online and only ever say things supporting their beliefs (like fascisism/communism)?

You're giving these cunts too much credit. They couldn't get their algo's that good if they tried. I mean, holy fuck, I searched for a Minecraft thing once on the web for my son who was sitting with me and now my entire fucking Youtube feed is nothing but fucking Minecraft videos. Oh and a smattering of pregnancy reveal videos, still haven't figured that shit out yet.

They are so beyond incompetent it's astounding. The fact they have convinced retailers they can actually accomplish what they claim is the onl

I can already see it now...

[DontBeAMoran]

Chrome: FLoC detected you are Canadian. Would you like to buy maple syrup?
Me: Why the hell would I want to b... yeah, okay sure.

Google as a legacy corporation

[edi_guy]

After reading this FLOC stuff I began to think of Google similar to an oil company (Exxon, BP, Shell, etc). That is to say that their existing business is built atop something that's a necessary evil. For BP it's hydrocarbons drilled out of the ground, for Google it's ad data.

But it doesn't take much imagination to see those two things slowly being replaced by something else. Hydrobcarbons will slowly be replaced by solar, maybe biofuels, etc. Ad data...I'm not sure, but I think companies are beginning to see that the value of ads, even targeted ads, is far less than what they are paying. Once that data and wisdom matriculates further and further, Googles revenue will come under pressure.

I'm not speculating timing, who knows how long the slide will be, when it will start, and what the slope will be.

Re:Google as a legacy corporation

[geek]

built atop something that's a necessary evil

Necessary to who? I've lived comfortably without advertising of any kind for the better part of 10 years and haven't been happier.

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

Have you though?
Have you lived without using a service that is directly funded by advertising (that you then blocked, assuming that service pays for itself?)

Note: I'm not justifying that model. I fucking hate it.
But it exists, just about everywhere.

It seems to me that it would be very hard to avoid using any service that isn't paid for by advertising.

Re:

[dotancohen]

I think companies are beginning to see that the value of ads, even targeted ads, is far less than what they are paying.

Quite the opposite. Targeted advertising is lucrative precisely because it reliably, demonstrably leads to increased sales or other KPIs. Furthermore, the increase is sales (or other KPIs) is far more predictable than many other forms of traditional advertising.

Letâ(TM)s start enforcing integrity hashes

[martynhare]

For all elements which are sourced/referenced, hashes should be provided (within the code of the page itself) to make sure none of the dependencies are compromised. This would begin the long march towards a more secure Internet as all advertising scripts and images would need to be supplied by the website youâ(TM)re viewing (rather than shady ad exchanges) in order for the hashes to consistently match.

This would eat into a good chunk of the tracking and render it useless...

There's competing interests here

[JMZero]

It's tempting to just say "no third party cookies and no FLOC anywhere"... and wow, we're done, private web. Great.

The reality is that, if that's the approach taken by browsers/users/content-platforms, this will get pushed back the other way. FLOC isn't perfect, but it's better than cookies, and I think it's at least the right general idea for a solution that could keep the "ad supported web" rolling, while avoiding the most egregious privacy issues.

If users/browsers/content-platforms can't come to some k

Ha ha

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"uses a web browser to anonymously place users into interest or behavioral buckets"

"Anonymously"... ha ha sure whatever.

WordPress don't give a...

[kmoser]

"Look at WordPress flaunting Google. WordPress doesn't care. WordPress doesn't give a FLoC."

A security concern?

[ayesnymous]

Isn't WordPress one of the least secure sites out there? That is very rich.

Google can easily penalize sites that do this.

[h33t l4x0r]

Wordpress thinks they're holding all the cards, but they're not.

That's why Cookie laws are b*llshit.

[Qbertino]

Nobody gives a damn about cookies. What people do give a damn about is tracking.

It was only a matter of time until someone came up with something like this. This is Googles way of offloading their tracking work to the browser and selling it as a privacy win. Nice try but as an expert I'm not falling for it. The legislators have to ban tracking, it's that simple.

So this FLoC thing ...

[Qbertino]

... is basically a group identity cookie?

Guess I'm definitely deleting those. Always and automatically.

And I like to thank Google for making a Cookie that's basically useless for anything other than consumer-tracking, so I can delete it without thinking twice.

Wow, that's some ego you have there Wordpress

[sabbede]

Claiming you can wipe out bigotry and prejudice (at least the kinds you care about) worldwide with just 4 lines of code? Must be some pretty important lines.

Personally though, I think I can do it in just one.

set location = utopia;