FLoC, the new alternative presented by Google to replace navigation cookies, found a powerful potential obstacle in its way: WordPress.
The popular content manager, which gives life to a significant fraction of the portals present on the web, could treat this new technology as a security threat.
In general, online advertising bases its recommendations on information that it can capture through navigation cookies. Today, those who browse the web can have greater control over the flow of this information, being able to block the use of this data in advance in some cases.
FLoC, an acronym for Federated Cohort Learning, is the new proposal offered by Google, already implemented in its Chrome browser. Although it promises to be more respectful of the privacy of its users, by treating the information collected only as common groups and not individually, it has failed to gain the trust of the entire Internet.
First DuckDuckGo, a declared rival of Google, presented its blocking response to FLoC. Now, a similar proposal, but of an apparent greater scope, emerged from the WordPress developer forum.
Block FLoC, a suggestion for WordPress
A proposal emerged in the WordPress developer portal, presented an initiative to block this data tracking mechanism, through a function that can be enabled or disabled from the core of this CMS.
Proposed function for the WordPress core.
WordPress powers about 41% of the web, and this community can help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ + discrimination, and discrimination against people with mental illness with four lines of code,
This suggestion, presented by the user Carike of the aforementioned portal, also proposes to make this function retroactive, through an update released as backport for previous versions, making this possible implementation extensible not only for the future version 5.8 of this content manager, which is scheduled to be released for July of this year. If this initiative comes to fruition, it will be implemented in another month.
The justification behind this proposal is based on the right that users and website administrators have to align the operation of their portals with their principles and interests.
The origin of this initiative is based on the criticism that this new implementation has received from Google, even citing a report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which indicates that FLoC could lead to content that violates the rights of certain Internet users, even without express consent.
The impact that the realization of this initiative can have can be high, given the reach that this platform has on the web. It is not yet an official proposal, but the emergence of this movement is still interesting, which would pit one of the Internet giants against one of the most powerful independent forces for content management.
