While I completely agree with your point, and the number required is probably pretty low, the point of FLOC is that no one will need to identify a real person for any “proper” reason.
Advertising rarely is about targeting “John doe” but usually about targeting “[men] && [in Springfield] && [searching for a baldness cures]”.
(I still will do everything in my technical power to disable floc, and still will never trust google). But I do think the implementation removes most of the advertising incentive to track on an individual person level.
Legitimate advertising. What about the other stuff? What about advertisers who want to swing very specific voters? What about nefarious people who want to put a malware link in front of a specific person. [active military]&&[over 55]&&[lives beside base X]&&[awake before 6am]&&[college education]&&[searched for "retirement planning"] will probably get you the most senior officer at a base/unit. Same too with senior politicians.
> Legitimate advertising.
> What about the other stuff?
Thats what makes FLOC tolerable. The legit stuff is enabled, and it makes it harder to get the other stuff (not impossible of course).
> What about nefarious people who want to put a malware link in front of a specific person.
It'll at least be harder than pre-floc (ideally).
The point is to remove the incentives to collect as much data about an individual (you don't need full profiles of someone) by creating even easier ways to get useful targeting without the direct individual identification.
---
(also, i'm broadly against tracking in general, just to be clear. The point you raised is very valid - esp with existing methods).
Advertising rarely is about targeting “John doe” but usually about targeting “[men] && [in Springfield] && [searching for a baldness cures]”.
(I still will do everything in my technical power to disable floc, and still will never trust google). But I do think the implementation removes most of the advertising incentive to track on an individual person level.