Overly long article (as usual for EFF), but it’s worth reading, especially if you have been involuntarily opted in to the trial. (Does anyone in this forum use Chrome?!)
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This makes me miss ads being targeting based on the page/site content instead of the user.
During the trial, trackers will be able to collect FLoC IDs in addition to third-party cookies.
Of course they are, why not give both while they still can?
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Apparently they’re not testing in the EU at the moment because it’s unclear whether it would violate GDPR.
Well, if ya have to ask…
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Holy fù$%!g s%*t !
In their code of conduct, google started with
Don’t be evil
which they replaced with
Do the right thing
I think the right thing to do would be to be honest and replace it with
Do it… but creepier
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Or just give up and rename themselves Evil Corp. Officially.
I imagine we’ll start to see more and more websites nagging us to “upgrade” to Chrome because our browser of choice isn’t good enough for them.
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omg 
I was thinking the same thing
I was also thinking some worst cases, how sites would be able to show different version of the same thing (news articles?) or charge you more if you are not on their prefered FLoC groups… there is a lot of way to be creative here 
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Here’s a really good analysis:
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That’s both horrible and fun that they now openly call the groups of their users “the flocks”.
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Pink Floyd’s “Sheep” comes to mind…
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I use the Tor Browser (based on Firefox ESR), which happens to be endorsed by the EFF.
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I use ungoogled chrome and brave and firefox and tor and ice cat depending upon what my use case is.
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I very occasionally use Chrome if both Firefox and Chromium are misbehaving with a given web site.
Other users of this forum have stated that they use Chrome because they are web developers and it is necessary to test their web sites with a variety of web browsers on a variety of platforms, which seems reasonable.
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That replacement is a bit ironic given that in the movies, evil geniuses think that they are doing the right thing, from their own perspective.
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Web devs should run it through vms for each type of system or run malware such as chrome on an alt computer all together.
they already did
and for those that didn’t get it yet
while simulatenously attacking LBRY crypto
Well, they seem to come close to actually addressing the problem google is exacerbating by doing this.
It doesn’t seem like there’s much of a difference between this what I believed google already did. The difference is that now it’s reflected in the ads you see more often, and by going public with this, google can sell more information about you.
The problem is this: to sort you into these categories, google must judge you.
And google is obviously going to be judging you according to the criteria of it’s ad space customers (i.e. not you), not necessarily on organically developed or time-tested moral grounds.
And some of what it sorts you into are going to be considered bad categories to be in, which may invite life getting very difficult should you be on the bad list.
This is normal in any society, but I was taught that normally the sudden difficulty is supposed to follow due process of law. I’m increasingly seeing this without any due process, and they usually get away with it since you agreed, automatically, to a vaguely worded contract that can change any time and waived your right to sue in the process (why is this legal?), and people can now be intimidated away from defending you.
Google isn’t, at the moment, doing anything to those who don’t upload content to services they own, but they can start this at any time. I’m sure other social media sites might be interested in seeing what groups google put its users into and in using that in promoting or demoting their user’s posts and content.
I am reluctant to actually NAME any of the groups google might consider bad, as this thread will inevitably devolve into unfruitful arguments as to if those groups are actually bad or just “tolerable” (no one would dare risk saying they’re good), and because, given the number of categories, you should assume you’re in a “bad” group anyway.
Remember: any action you might take WILL be interpreted as evil, by someone, somewhere on this planet, given sufficient or sufficiently little context.
That can include even your next breath.
They mention vulnerable groups. That’s groups google considers vulnerable. I want to point out that just about any group can become vulnerable for various reasons, whether it’s acknowledged or denied. Especially if it’s denied.
I may have a less clear idea of the significance of this change because I’ve been blocking ads for years. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know, just how judgemental, invasive, cruel, and undignified ads are now. The existence of any targeted ads (beyond rough geographic location and website I suppose) is enough to justify blocking them; I know I wouldn’t want people to base their opinions of how horrible I am on the ads in my browser as they look over my shoulder.
I’m sure plenty of people will find this method less annoying, ads for things you just bought or just mentioned in a conversation were unreliable and actually let you know that google was tracking you! But I’m also sure that this tracking and categorization will also influence youtube’s algorithm, changing what google promotes to you verses what it promotes to someone else.
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That replacement is just a change of wording, given that from someone’s own perspective, right and good are the same.
If you’re using Chrome and want to see if Google is currently experimenting on you: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/am-i-floced-launch
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DuckDuckGo has an anti-FLoC extension now: https://www.ghacks.net/2021/04/10/duckduckgo-extension-blocks-google-floc-in-latest-update/