It could always end up being just fluff, but given it's an active research area and they've open sourced a framework based on the concept already, plus the fact

It could always end up being just fluff, but given it's an active research area and they've open sourced a framework based on the concept already, plus the fact the model is cost-advantageous given you get to offload training to a fleet of customer devices instead of paying for your own servers, it could be the real deal. I started reading it looking at it from a cynical view, but ended it with a "hmm... this could actually work," especially after reading about Secure Aggregation. That's badass.