Absolutely, and I'm not even sure it's a good thing that we are removing third-party cookies. I mean, if we take a step back: why should I even hate them? Yes,

Absolutely, and I'm not even sure it's a good thing that we are removing third-party cookies. I mean, if we take a step back: why should I even hate them? Yes, there are problems with them, there have been exploits using them and all that, but I'm pretty confident there will be similar problems with pretty much anything, because there's always a clever way to abuse some technology that was created with the best intentions in mind. And cookies, at least in theory, mean that you are putting me in charge of whatever tracking token you assigned to me: I can open my browser settings and clear it at any time. It's a good thing. Of course, there are reasons why they aren't such a good thing as I make them sound to be. And the fact that you don't feel in charge of them should rather emphasize, than negate my point: if such a simple thing turns out to be something you learn to hate, don't you ever dream of something more complicated and less transparent to be your salvation. And ever since federated learning became "the next big thing" I was arguing here on HN (rather unsuccessfully, I feel) that this doesn't mean that there's suddenly "no tracking", buying into that is just naïve. I'm not directly commenting on FLoC API, both because I don't know it well and because it's usually about making a stronger point anyway: that performing learning client-side and then submitting some sort of "depersonalized data" means better privacy and essentially is having your cake and eating it too. But I think it's just misleading to describe things this way. The idea that "sensitive data" is your document id, your name/surname and such is hopelessly outdated. In fact, it's funny that anyone even believes that, because if you are not a complete bureaucrat, it should be clear that you are not your name or some other sort of ID number, you are your behaviour. It's just that people are used to the idea, that Big Brother needs that simple ID number to keep you in line. But perhaps he doesn't anymore. What I'm saying is essentially that sending "depersonalized data" is just obfuscating which personal & sensitive data is actually exchanged. And (again, not in the context of FLoC API, but more generally) it can be any data: I think we all remember funny stories how completely impartial GPT-3 learns someone's phone number and such. So, this, and all of what you already said about the monopolization of people-tracking market.