To start today’s show, let’s check in with the cookie jar. Well, someone certainly stole all the cookies from the cookie jar. Hi, I’m Will from Creative Team and for all you beautiful new people subscribe to the channel, like this video, and let’s just jump right into the mess that is this cookie jar! 

Last week we talked about the war for the future of what is to replace third party cookies. It has become a battle of which recipe is better at this point. But one thing is for sure now, Google is quickly making problems for many companies with their alternative. 

After Google announced that they were turning off third party cookies on the Chrome browser, they revealed their replacement. The Federated Learning of Cohorts or FLoC for short. The FLoC is based on machine learning and will allow any browser to basically study you and then group you into a ‘cohort’. Once in a cohort, you will be served ads based on your cohort and not individual data. So, they are still watching, just from a further distance. 

That stalking significant other bit from last week really is starting to hit home now. Can I trade these cookies in? I didn’t ask for oatmeal raisin! 

Speaking of trading them in, privacy-focused browsers like DuckDuckGo, Brave and Vivaldi have all decided to block FLoC on their end. This decision comes from a series of privacy concerns that the FLoC brings about. Luckily only Chrome has shown intent to use FLoC and no other browser has decided to jump on the bandwagon. 

The big news comes from WordPress though as they too have announced that they may block FLoC by default on WordPress Sites. Google began testing the FLoC and several privacy advocates have determined that they are trading one privacy risk with another with FLoC. And with WordPress powering approximately 41% of the web, this poses a problem for a good portion of the web. So WordPress is planning to release the block during a planned 5.8 update in July 2021. 

Are you for or against the FLoC? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Thank you guys for watching. Subscribe to the channel to stay up to date. And as always, I’ll see you guys in the next video.