Live data from Hacker News

Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

janbambas.cz

1–10 of 266 posts

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#2
Interesting approach. I hope more browser vendors will adopt it. It comes with an additional advantage: if a website still needs to function when tracking domains are delayed a second or so, they likely will function too with said domain completely disabled (e.g. using extensions). Sounds like a win from a user perspective.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#3

Interesting approach. I hope more browser vendors will adopt it. It comes with an additional advantage: if a website still needs to function when tracking domains are delayed a second or so, they likely will function too with said domain completely disabled (e.g. using extensions). Sounds like a win from a user perspective.

Do you mean that browsers implementing this will force website owners to make their sites work with tracking domains delayed? This does seem like a nice side benefit.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#4

Interesting approach. I hope more browser vendors will adopt it. It comes with an additional advantage: if a website still needs to function when tracking domains are delayed a second or so, they likely will function too with said domain completely disabled (e.g. using extensions). Sounds like a win from a user perspective.

Do you mean that browsers implementing this will force website owners to make their sites work with tracking domains delayed? This does seem like a nice side benefit.

With tracking domains disabled!? Website operators will be annoyed by the delays, so they have an incentive to make the display of their website independent from tracking, which then also should make the website work just fine if tracking is blocked completely.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#7
While I like the idea, a potential problem comes to mind. A list of what domains are tracking domains will need to be maintained. The need to maintain that list will possibly move the cat-and-mouse game of ads vs ad-blockers to the tracking list as well. I could totally see Alphabet paying Mozilla to remove analytics.google.com from the tracking domain list (because "it's just analytics; it doesn't track you or infringe on your privacy at all") similar to advertisers paying to be on Adblock Plus' "Acceptable Ads" list.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#8
post #7

While I like the idea, a potential problem comes to mind. A list of what domains are tracking domains will need to be maintained. The need to maintain that list will possibly move the cat-and-mouse game of ads vs ad-blockers to the tracking list as well. I could totally see Alphabet paying Mozilla to remove analytics.google.com from the tracking domain list (because "it's just analytics; it doesn't track you or infri…

Google analytics tracks you and infringes on your privacy.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#9

Interesting approach. I hope more browser vendors will adopt it. It comes with an additional advantage: if a website still needs to function when tracking domains are delayed a second or so, they likely will function too with said domain completely disabled (e.g. using extensions). Sounds like a win from a user perspective.

Do you mean that browsers implementing this will force website owners to make their sites work with tracking domains delayed? This does seem like a nice side benefit.

Yes, that's my hope. For the income of website owners it is better if they all collectively block their site until the trackers are fully loaded. But if only a few do so, users might avoid their site, so individuals are still encouraged to support delayed loading.

I imagine Mozilla is in a similar situation: if too many websites block, they will have to disable the delay or start whitelisting trackers if they do not want to loose users. That is, unless other browsers follow their lead here.

Prisoner's dilemmas all around. It's going to be fun to see what we'll end up with, although I'm optimistic as I haven't heard complaints about this yet, but then again I wouldn't notice any difference myself as I'm already using NoScript.

Re: Firefox 57 delays requests to tracking domains

#10
post #7

While I like the idea, a potential problem comes to mind. A list of what domains are tracking domains will need to be maintained. The need to maintain that list will possibly move the cat-and-mouse game of ads vs ad-blockers to the tracking list as well. I could totally see Alphabet paying Mozilla to remove analytics.google.com from the tracking domain list (because "it's just analytics; it doesn't track you or infri…

Firefox's Tracking Protection just uses the list provided by Disconnect. I imagine this will do the same.
Post reply on HN