GitHub joins the list of companies opposing Google's upcoming changes. Earlier this year, Google announced that it would stop tracking people through ads and implement a new system called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).
FLoC is a newer technology being released by Google, aiming to replace third-party cookies used by ad networks and analytics platforms to track users across the web. FLoC, which focuses on protecting privacy, aims to replace tracking technologies like third-party cookies and localStorage with so-called “cohorts.
Read also: DuckDuckGo, Brave and Vivaldi block Google's FLoC
Unlike servers (or ad networks) that track users across the world wide web and record their browsing history, FLoC hands this responsibility over to the user's individual web browser.
For example, each Google Chrome web browser instance selected as part of the FLoC test would be populated with specific “cohorts,” or groups that most closely represent recent web browsing habits. Thousands of browsers with identical browsing history (belonging to the same “cohort”) stored locally would have a shared “cohort” identifier, which would be shared with a site when requested.
Specifically, Google noted in a blog post: “FLoC does not share your browsing history with Google or anyone else. It is different from third-party cookies, which allow companies to track you individually across different sites. FLoC works on your device without sharing your browsing history. It is important that everyone in the advertising ecosystem, including Google’s advertising products, have the same access to FLoC.”
See also: WordPress: Added to the list of those opposing Google FLoC
However, the implementation of FLoC does not seem to have gone as planned by Google. Earlier this month, DuckDuckGo – a privacy-focused search engine – announced an update to its Privacy Essentialsto block FLoC. Additionally, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published an article calling FLoC a “terrible idea. Vivaldi and Brave, announcing that they would not enable FLoC in their respective browsers. Last week, WordPress decided to join the list, stating its intention to address FLoC as a “security threat.
Now, GitHub to block FLoC. Specifically, the company published an article in which it confirms its intention to add an HTTP header to block FLoC on its platform. Today, Bleeping Computer noticed that both github.com and github.io return the header “Permissions-Policy: interest-cohort = ()”. As described in the FLoC documentation, companies can use this header to block FLoC on their respective sites. Interestingly, GitHub did not mention anything about FLoC or the reason why it wants to oppose this innovation of Google.
Suggestion: Chrome: How to find out if Google FLoC is tracking you
FLoC would allow Google to categorize users into a cohort based on their online activities, preserving their anonymity, while still serving them targeted ads. However, as the EFF noted in its article, FLoC would likely lead to various types of discrimination.
According to Google, FLoC is expected to be available, for now, to a small percentage of users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the U.S.
