WordPress to Automatically Disable Google FLoC on Websites

WordPress announced that they may automatically block Google’s new FLoC tracking technology as a security concern for its users.

WordPress stated that they will be treating Google FLoC tracking like a security concern. This means in future releases of WordPress this issue will be addressed with a patch in the next minor release rather than waiting for a major release.

There is also the option to back-port the patch to previous versions of WordPress. The next version of WordPress 5.8 is scheduled for July 2021 while FLoC will likely be rolling out this month.

As stated, WordPress powers approximately 41% of the web – and this community can help combat racism, sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and discrimination against those with mental illness with four lines of code:

function disable_floc($headers) {
    $headers['Permissions-Policy'] = 'interest-cohort=()';
    return $headers;
  }
 
add_filter('wp_headers', 'disable_floc');

If admins want FloC they are likely to have the technical know-how to simply override the above proposed filter in Core.

When balancing the stakeholder interests, the needs of website administrators who are not even aware that this is something that they need to mitigate – and the interests of the users and visitors to those sites, is simply more compelling. As stated in this statement.

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