Should we block FLoC ?

[JorgeV]

Hello,

As a publisher, it's possible to add a HTTP header to block FLoC.

Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort=()

This is what Wordpress is doing [ [webmasterworld.com...] ], as well as GitHub, and certainly other sites.

Should we do it?

[RhinoFish]

Very good article on the details:
[beebom.com...]

Interestingly, pay close attention to the ads served up on this page to you, bahahhaaaa!

My opinion on whether to Block FLoC is... skip it for now, it's too early to tell. The browsers themselves may end up blocking FLoC in any case,
My justification for my position is this... 3rd party cookies track a lot more about you, so if you're not blocking those, there's no need to block FLoC at this time... it would be like being anti-weapon, saying you're good with everyone having guns, but you are going to block knives in your little corner of the world, to make it a safer place... :-)

[JorgeV]

Hello,

The browsers themselves may end up blocking FLoC in any case,

I believe that all browsers are planning on blocking FLoC, but of course not Chrome and Chromum, which still represents the higher market share.

My justification for my position is this... 3rd party cookies track a lot more about you, so if you're not blocking those, there's no need to block FLoC at this time...

With cookies, you can delete them, or browsers can delete them automatically , when closed. But what about FLoC, can you get removed from the cohorts in which you were profiled ?

[lammert]

FLoC cohorts are based on the browsing history of the last seven days. So I expect the FLoC IDs to be recalculated weekly.

It is not only likely that all browsers except Chrome will block FLoC as a default setting, but I expect also some major hurdles in countries where the GDPR and ePrivacy regulations are active. These are the EU countries and the UK, which has adopted laws very similar to the GDPR after brexit.

The EU and UK together represent a market of 800 million people. Combine that with the US market where a significant number of users will be opted auto automatically by third party browsers or will opt out manually, the target audience in the first world which can be reached with FLoC will be just a few hundred million people.

As publisher we can opt-out our websites with the header in the first post, but I still have a feeling the browser market and existing privacy regulations will take care of this terrible idea.

[GoneRogue]

Should we do it?

Maybe a better question would be, "Do I care about online privacy for people visiting my website(s) and has it ever been a good idea to depend on 'others' to lookout for my privacy concerns?"