Reaction against Google's Federated Learning of Cohorts (flock) continues, with a suggestion from WordPress Core developers. WordPress will block the controversial alternative ID in third party cookies by default.
"WordPress has about 41% of the internet - and this community can help fight racism, sexism, LGBTQ discrimination and discrimination against people with mental illness with four lines of code." he says.
For users who want to enable FLoC (yes there are), the suggestion states that a little more code could be added to allow FLoC to be enabled and disabled by the settings of each blog.
To make the patch available to users in a timely manner, WordPress developers will treat FLoC as a security issue, rather than waiting for the next major release in July.
"Currently, version 5.8. "is scheduled for July 2021. FLoC will probably be released this month," they say.
FLoC has received strong criticism, especially for the way it communicates a summary of its recent browser history to advertisers.
"Its basic design involves sharing new information with advertisers," Chromium-based browser maker Vivaldi said last week.
"You may visit a site for a very personal topic that may use FLoC ads, so any other site you visit is updated with this FLoC ID, which indicates that you have visited that site type."
So the FLoC will have a very serious impact on people living in an environment where they are being persecuted for their personality traits, such as their sexuality, political views or religion.
"Everyone can become part of your FLoC ID. This is no longer about privacy, but it goes further. It touches the line for personal safety. "
The Electronic Frontiers Foundation stated that the era of third party cookies is over and the decision is now whether users will be allowed to decide what information to share or to have a behavioral ID linked to other users.
"Users start each interaction with a confession: I've been here this week, please treat me accordingly."
