I first published a few weeks ago on What the FLoC? and since then, major projects have pushed back against the CASH scheme.

From TechRadar, GitHub is blocking FLoC: “In addition to disabling FLoC in GitHub Pages, GitHub’s main website also now uses this new HTTP header according to BleepingComputer. This means that the company doesn’t want its users to be added to Google’s cohorts when they visit its website.”

Also reporting, “Although we’ve yet to hear from Google regarding whether or not its roll out of FLoC has been a success yet, so far Brave, Vivaldi, the EFF, DuckDuckGo and WordPress have all openly voiced their concerns surrounding this new advertising technology.”

But wait, there’s more, open source content management system Joomla, in the April 22 2021 board meeting minutes has already put on the table a plan to disable FLoC by default, “Google is looking to introduce Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) as an “alternative” / complement to cookies. The Production Department is looking into a way to support this feature but have it disabled by default for a release of Joomla! 3.9.27.” Joomla is the second largest, behind WordPress, open source CMS. So even though any CMS is a fraction of the size of WordPress, it is a significant move.

I’m guessing that WordPress will follow a similar path at some point this year.