Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

plausible.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 710 posts

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#151

Post by belter »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #15

There is a German movie about the system that is used to gather TV ratings. It's a special box that some users get which reports what they are watching. Small sample size goes into a big statistic (not sure how accurate the portrayal of the system in the movie is). These boxes are given to the people who pay the German public TV fee, which excludes i.e. students (they don't have to pay) and some other groups. This gr…

Is this the fee you have to pay even if you are blind or deaf, or do not have a Radio or TV? Gives you the most boring TV News in the world, plus 600 movies per year nobody wants to watch, because they are horrible? But they collected the tax and they have to spend it, as the German actors guild is worst than a cartel? :-)

https://www.german-way.com/germanys-tv-tax-the-debate-over-t...

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#152

Post by throwawayswede »

scrollaway wrote: post #51
throwawayswede wrote: post #40

The fact that it's so low (yes imo 58 is pretty low) speaks volumes to the attitudes of the "tech-savvy crowd" towards tracking and data mining.

Including Reddit's audience as "tech savvy" is an outright lie. Reddit is one of the most popular websites in the world. (And even if it weren't, it doesn't take much browsing to see how non-tech-savvy its audience is. It's basically Facebook at this point.)

While I agree with you, unfortunatley that is still technically considered the tech-savvy crowd, amongst others at least.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#153

Post by quickthrower2 »

thinkingemote wrote: post #58

One of the reasons for mobile apps is that adblocking is disabled. Explains why Reddit promotes it so much. Similarly, wrapping websites like Discord or Slack in Electron also gives the website owners full telemetry and tracking that they can't get in a tech savvy browser. Would an always on VPN, a remote pihole be the only way for privacy?

I use a third party Reddit app! No ads and better experience than web

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#154

Post by turbinerneiter »

Freak_NL wrote: post #131
turbinerneiter wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I.e. ads, facebooks feed, endless scrollers like 9gag -> they like to use dark patterns and exploit tricks against the human mind to keep and guide your attention. The harm if targeted ads depends on your viewpoint. A targeted ad might serve you something you were looking for anyway, or it might manipulate you into spending on something you don't actually need. I.e. look at Instagram influencers, showing off their fa…

I think you might have the meaning of 'i.e.' ( that is, namely ) confused with 'e.g.' ( for example ).

Thank you very much, I am proud to say that I did this wrong for at least 10 years :D

Thanks!

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#155

Post by 8fingerlouie »

jerrre wrote: post #134
8fingerlouie wrote: post #79

I used to have Google Analytics blocked on my home networks (through Pihole/Adguard Home) with the exception of one network which my wife uses. She works with SoMe so not having access kinda interferes with her job. I've since moved to NextDNS.io to have network agnostic ad/malware filtering. Still keep a "special" configuration for my wife :)

what is SoMe?

Social Media manager.

I was as confused when i first saw job postings for "SoMe experience", and figured it was a MeToo thing :)

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#156

Post by Cyberdog »

scrollaway wrote: post #48
superasn wrote: post #45

That's why I prefer goaccess(1) over any other tool that uses client side Javascript. It's basically a real time website log analyser which gives you enough information to know whats happening on your website but doesn't require any pesky Javascript etc to do it. Also since it is works by analysing your log files it can never be blocked. (1) https://rt.goaccess.io/?20210826211303

By nature it won't filter out bots, however. One of my clients' website traffic is composed of over 75% bot traffic. Server-side logs are unusable for anything other than site performance.

> One of my clients' website traffic is composed of over 75% bot traffic. Server-side logs are unusable for anything other than site performance.

I'm unclear how broad you intend that second sentence to be, but there's still a ton of info you can glean just from server-side logs:

- Referrer info, and, by extension, popular search terms being used to find your site;

- Paths on your site causing 5xx errors (so pages which might be triggering an error in a server-side script)

- Paths on your site causing 4xx errors, and associated referrers (might be broken links on your own site; might be stale search engine indexing)

- Mobile vs desktop access statistics

Finding this data among a bunch of bot-induced noise might be annoying, but if they're good bots and sending proper UA headers specifying their botness, it's easy enough to filter out. Even otherwise there might be typical bot-like behavior you can find and account for such as not sending a referrer header or trying to access known exploitable PHP scripts (in which case you should block that IP address for a few hours or days - there are programs which can do this sort of thing automatically but frustratingly I can't recall the name of one off the top of my head right now).

Granted, a lot of this can be spoofed, but I'm pretty sure the number of people sending spoofed referral or UA headers is dwarfed by the number of those (like me) who block Google Analytics and similar cruft entirely.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#157

Post by cblconfederate »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #15

There is a German movie about the system that is used to gather TV ratings. It's a special box that some users get which reports what they are watching. Small sample size goes into a big statistic (not sure how accurate the portrayal of the system in the movie is). These boxes are given to the people who pay the German public TV fee, which excludes i.e. students (they don't have to pay) and some other groups. This gr…

.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#158

Post by turbinerneiter »

belter wrote: post #151
turbinerneiter wrote: post #15

There is a German movie about the system that is used to gather TV ratings. It's a special box that some users get which reports what they are watching. Small sample size goes into a big statistic (not sure how accurate the portrayal of the system in the movie is). These boxes are given to the people who pay the German public TV fee, which excludes i.e. students (they don't have to pay) and some other groups. This gr…

Is this the fee you have to pay even if you are blind or deaf, or do not have a Radio or TV? Gives you the most boring TV News in the world, plus 600 movies per year nobody wants to watch, because they are horrible? But they collected the tax and they have to spend it, as the German actors guild is worst than a cartel? :-) https://www.german-way.com/germanys-tv-tax-the-debate-over-t...

Not a big fan of the GIS either, but my stance is not as extreme. I see benefits, but there is problems as well. It could be a good system if there was a proper reform and if you get politicians out of the system.

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#159

Post by cnxsoft »

erdii wrote: post #18
turbinerneiter wrote: post #15

There is a German movie about the system that is used to gather TV ratings. It's a special box that some users get which reports what they are watching. Small sample size goes into a big statistic (not sure how accurate the portrayal of the system in the movie is). These boxes are given to the people who pay the German public TV fee, which excludes i.e. students (they don't have to pay) and some other groups. This gr…

You mean something like AdNauseam? https://adnauseam.io/ Edit: it's an adblocker that is supposed to click on EVERY ad that it blocks.

Maybe that's where all the invalid clicks came from last year...

Re: Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics

#160

Post by turbinerneiter »

mortenlarsen wrote: post #138
turbinerneiter wrote: post #15

There is a German movie about the system that is used to gather TV ratings. It's a special box that some users get which reports what they are watching. Small sample size goes into a big statistic (not sure how accurate the portrayal of the system in the movie is). These boxes are given to the people who pay the German public TV fee, which excludes i.e. students (they don't have to pay) and some other groups. This gr…

The movie is "Who Am I (2014)".

I meant Free Rainer, didn't know that who am I had similar themes. Is it good?
Post reply on HN