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Culling the FLoC: Market forces, regulatory regimes and Google’s (mis)steps on the path away from targeted advertising1

Culling the FLoC: Market forces, regulatory regimes and Google’s (mis)steps on the path away from... This paper analyzes the short history of Google’s AI-driven data collation and marketing technology, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which was designed to replace third-party cookies, the technology at the heart of “surveillance capitalism.” Using publicly available data such as patents, investor calls, public filings, github accounts, and presentations, this paper explores FLoCs and its immediate replacements, The Topics API and FLEDGE, and contests claims that Google’s new marketing technologies are both ‘privacy-centric’ and as effective as surveillance-driven targeted advertising. The paper argues that Google’s parent company, Alphabet is starting on a path away from being an advertising and information company to being an “AI-first” company, and sees FLoC as one (mis)step on this path. The paper shows how an combination of interacting factors – corporate ideology, market forces, regulatory responses, and internal cultural conflict – are driving this transformation, but concludes that surveillance will continue to be at the heart of any AI-first economy. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Information Polity IOS Press

Culling the FLoC: Market forces, regulatory regimes and Google’s (mis)steps on the path away from targeted advertising1

Information Polity , Volume 27 (2): 16 – Jul 26, 2022

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References (31)

Publisher
IOS Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2022 © 2022 – The authors. Published by IOS Press.
ISSN
1570-1255
eISSN
1875-8754
DOI
10.3233/ip-211535
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This paper analyzes the short history of Google’s AI-driven data collation and marketing technology, Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which was designed to replace third-party cookies, the technology at the heart of “surveillance capitalism.” Using publicly available data such as patents, investor calls, public filings, github accounts, and presentations, this paper explores FLoCs and its immediate replacements, The Topics API and FLEDGE, and contests claims that Google’s new marketing technologies are both ‘privacy-centric’ and as effective as surveillance-driven targeted advertising. The paper argues that Google’s parent company, Alphabet is starting on a path away from being an advertising and information company to being an “AI-first” company, and sees FLoC as one (mis)step on this path. The paper shows how an combination of interacting factors – corporate ideology, market forces, regulatory responses, and internal cultural conflict – are driving this transformation, but concludes that surveillance will continue to be at the heart of any AI-first economy.

Journal

Information PolityIOS Press

Published: Jul 26, 2022

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