Hello Class,
Earlier this week, Google announced that it intends to move away from third-party cookie trackers in response to an “erosion of trust”. This move will fundamentally impact digital advertising. Where current practices allow companies to track a user’s online activity to the extent of collecting their personal information, Google now strives to achieve a balance between providing relevant advertisements to users and respecting the privacy of users. Google attempts to utilize a “Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) API” system which preserves user privacy while enabling interest-based advertising. From what I understand, this new development aims to generate cohorts based on similar interests, thus hiding an individual’s information or online activity by inserting their data into a group of individuals with similar interests. Enclosed you will find Google’s announcement by David Temkin, Google’s Director of Project Management, Ads Privacy and Trust as well as Google’s research into FLoC API.
https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/a-more-privacy-first-web/
https://github.com/google/ads-privacy/blob/master/proposals/FLoC/FLOC-Whitepaper-Google.pdf