Google has for the first time added a toggle to Chrome that allows users to opt-out of the Federated Learning of Cohorts. The toggle is only available in the beta version of the browser. Users can also recover information about their ‘cohorts’.
The company is experimenting in the latest Canary version 93 of the browser with a toggle for FLoC, the Federated Learning of Cohorts system that should eventually replace third-party tracking in the browser. Google has already tested FLoC itself before, but did not give users any control over it. Users must manually bring up the FLoC toggle by enabling the flag chrome://flags/#privacy-sandbox-settings-2, Android Police notes .
Users who do this will see an additional option in the browser’s privacy settings that allows for testing functions for Privacy Sandbox to be controlled. FLoC is one of the components of Privacy Sandbox, and for now the only one actively tested in the browser. Users can enable via a toggle whether or not they want to be in a ‘cohort’. It is also possible to reset a group. With FLoC, users are divided into groups, but can therefore also leave them.
In 2019, Google introduced Privacy Sandbox, an initiative with which it wants to remove third-party cookies from Chrome in the long term. Privacy Sandbox consists of several APIs that provide advertisers with alternative methods of showing their ads to users. FLoC is one of them. With the FLoC api, Chrome shares users into cohorts based on interests that emerge from their local browser usage. Earlier this year Tweakers wrote a background piece on Privacy Sandbox
