Google’s FLoC Is a Terrible Idea

> Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC)

I hate the use of new/uncommon acronyms/initialisms without immediate clarification, a form of clickbait. So many paragraphs down to see what it's called. Expected more from EFF.

Come here to say the same, I actually had to click on the github link to learn what it meant first. Should've explained it the first time it's brought up instead.

In the case of reverse-engineered acronyms like this one, I think there's a judgment call that you need to make: in some cases it is simply not useful to expand the term. They explain what FLoC means very early on, but the expansion of the acronym conveys very little information since it is technical, somewhat nonspecific, and it's clear that the acronym was designed before its meaning.

Consider, for example, that it's uncommon to expand military program acronyms because their meaning is often less useful than saying "it's just a word."

The EFF is also milking the super creepy feeling from Google naming their technology for labeling humans, after the group noun for sheep.

Hello! Author here. thank you for raising that, this was an oversight (due to moving text around in the editing process) that has been fixed. Totally agree that acronyms should be defined on first use.