WEBVTT

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google is trying to change something big about the internet the way websites

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track our activity google says it'll be a more robust way to protect user

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privacy but how much can we trust a company whose main source of revenue is

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you guessed it advertising so here's the deal google is putting a new tracking

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scheme into their chrome browser called flock no not that one nah not that one

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either flock stands for federated learning of cohorts which surprisingly

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is not the name of an academy from star trek instead flock is meant to be a

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replacement from the much maligned and frankly super annoying third-party

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cookie system we use today third-party cookies are from sites other than the

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one you're using and are very common tools for advertisers to track what

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sites you visit and serve you relevant ads based on your browsing habits but

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because it's rather easy for websites to personally identify users with the help

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of third-party cookies there's been growing concern about them from both

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consumers and governments which led google to announce in early 2020 that

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these cookies would be phased out of chrome enter flock the idea here is that

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instead of allowing advertisers to track users individually users will instead be

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assigned to cohorts made up of several thousand people by default chrome will

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track your browsing habits and once it comes up with a list of topics that

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thinks you're interested in the browser will put you in a cohort with people who

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share the same interests each cohort will get an id number which

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is then shared with third-party advertisers so the idea is that if your

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browsing habits put you in a cohort that enjoys ice cream pc building and

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renaissance era art you'll get ads geared toward those things but they

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won't be as specific to you so the advertisers won't know that you like

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eating butter pecan ice cream while screwing in a cooler master aio and

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staring at the mona lisa so less targeted to one person but still

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specific enough for advertisers to use and although this is obviously a

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lighthearted example the hope is that flock will prevent advertisers

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especially the more unscrupulous ones from discovering sensitive personal

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details by forcing them to target thousands of people at once rather than

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just you additionally chrome will auto-generate cohorts and is supposed to

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assign you to a new one each week hopefully making it even more difficult

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to track users but flock has plenty of detractors who are warning that it isn't

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a panacea for privacy issues there are other ways for sites to figure out who

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you are other than just browsing habits and one big concern is that flock gives

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sites another data point the cohort id that could be used in conjunction with

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identifiers like your ip address your screen size and even the way your

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specific machine handles audio in order to work out who you are and even though

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flock is supposed to discourage this sort of behavior by making it unnecessary there's no guarantee that

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the ad industry is going to be happy with this form of less specific

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targeting and since it isn't clear how complicated the flock algorithm is

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there's also the possibility that the whole thing could be reverse engineered

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allowing advertisers and miscreants to work out your browsing history

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backwards now google has tried to mitigate concerns in a few ways although

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chrome won't show you a list of interests flock has collected it will

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give you an option to opt out of it altogether google has also said it will

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not serve any generated cohort ids that correlate with sensitive topics like

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domestic abuse mental health or politics nevertheless much remains to be seen

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regarding flock's staying power and whether it will actually end up making

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browsers more private other major browsers have no plans to implement

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flock but with how much market share chrome enjoys it may still have a

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profound impact on privacy flock is already rolling out to a small

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percentage of chrome users so remember to check to opt out if you don't want to

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take part or of course you could just try living off the grid

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hoping that no one sends you ads for the camping equipment via drone drop big

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techquickie so thanks for watching guys if you like this video hit like hit

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subscribe and hit us up in the comment section with your ideas for topics that

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we should cover in the future