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

Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

peguero.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 140 posts

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#81

Post by Nextgrid »

mitchitized wrote: post #74
alpha_squared wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just that most companies are using crap ad tech. Including Facebook, apparently. About 90% of Instagram ads were irrelevant to me for about two years. Then I mentioned an interest in photography in a private conversation, now 75% of ads are photography-related.

I once let my then 13yo borrow my laptop to do some research as he wanted to start experimenting with modded minecraft. I sat next to him while he researched minecraft plugins - no opportunity for him to hit some cough other websites, it was totally legit browsing session. Let's just say the advertising bubbles that Google rammed me into literally forced me to install adblockers just to make my web browsing experienc…

The methodology is not completely crap. The role of the ad network is to get paid to display an ad. They aren't incentivised to ensure the ad is actually relevant - as long as they find some sucker to pay them to display the ad, they'll happily display it. Whether the mark then "converts" is not their problem.

The problem is that the entire advertising industry is crap and has successfully contaminated and taken over the tech industry. The only way out is regulation so that 1) advertisers are liable for what they display (to discourage scam or illegal ads - and in some countries NSFW content would fall into this category as you're supposed to ask or verify the user's age) and 2) privacy regulations that make targeted advertising opt-in so that overall the cost of advertising becomes too great and starts allowing alternative monetization models (such as actually asking the user to pay for the service) to compete.

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#82

Post by alpha_squared »

drdebug wrote: post #78
alpha_squared wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To address your breakdown: 1. I distinctly hadn't mentioned photography in private or public messages. Ever. Nor had I tagged any of my camera equipment in any of my posts. Hard to believe, I know, but I created and manage the account with explicit intent and action, preferring to move personal conversations off-platform. 2. I don't follow photographers, and prefer to only follow certain friends. While I don't go to…

If you are interested, you should know that it's possible to not be seeing any ads at all on a computer (phones are a different beast). It's a bit of a chore but it takes 3 things: firefox with ublock origin + noscript + delete cookies and history on exit. I haven't seen ads in years. You can go a step further and create startup profiles. It's a bit chore because you have to selectively allow domains for content to d…

Thanks! I rarely see ads on desktop because I use Firefox + ublock + Pi Hole. I do, unfortunately, have to whitelist the occasional domain because some sites that I need to access don't play well with that setup.

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#83

Post by Nextgrid »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #79
mitchitized wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once let my then 13yo borrow my laptop to do some research as he wanted to start experimenting with modded minecraft. I sat next to him while he researched minecraft plugins - no opportunity for him to hit some cough other websites, it was totally legit browsing session. Let's just say the advertising bubbles that Google rammed me into literally forced me to install adblockers just to make my web browsing experienc…

Might not be that strange. The Minecraft plugins community is the perfect group to trick into installing malware. There are shaders and extensions that are hosted on very shady website and people just act like it is no big deal.

A teenager searching for video game plugins is the perfect target for all kinds of scams - it is absolutely not strange, the system is working as intended within the constraints it's given. Change the constraints by introducing regulation (such as advertising networks being liable for the ads they display) and the problem will go away.

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#84

Post by google234123 »

samstave wrote: post #50
samhw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people like this see it as a 'win' – as if they, John Smith, have beaten the dastardly BigCorp. Whereas, in fact, the most that happens is a Junior Marketing Executive at BigCorp says "Right, that guy falls within the 0.5% of techy customers who make things difficult for us. Ah well, it's only been 80,000 of them, well within our margin for this month."

True - however, IMO, the value is in the awareness of tracking and the knowledge of how to block things as such. Its better to know how your network operates that you rely on for your daily life than to know nothing about its internals. My biggest issue as I age is that I FORGET how to do some of the higher level networking that I used to know innately - and I also lose interest in doing such things and become lazy,…

Who cares about the intricacies of building a pc? You do it every 5 years and it takes a few hours…

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#85

Post by cycomanic »

jklinger410 wrote: post #46
marketingtech wrote: post #7

This is cool, but not super useful in 2021. Google and Facebook have already moved their tracking technologies beyond frontend network calls due to a rise in browser-level blocking (browser security policies, international regulations, AdBlock, PiHole, etc). The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. It als…

As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingly unrelated data points to learn more about you than you could imagine. At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach y…

So how do you morally justify your work? Do you think this work is valuable? I know I sound confrontational, but I'm seriously wondering about this. In particular because the HN crowd in general has been so highly critical of most adtech, but at the same time a significant portion of people here probably works on it or for one of the companies which are behind it.

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#86

Post by nawgz »

cycomanic wrote: post #85
jklinger410 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingly unrelated data points to learn more about you than you could imagine. At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach y…

So how do you morally justify your work? Do you think this work is valuable? I know I sound confrontational, but I'm seriously wondering about this. In particular because the HN crowd in general has been so highly critical of most adtech, but at the same time a significant portion of people here probably works on it or for one of the companies which are behind it.

Isn't it basically known that FAANG pays the most because they have the most invasive & powerful adtech, and adtech is actually just a euphemism for outreach and control?

And I hate to say it, but they justify their work really easily: they get paid very well for it and someone else would if they didn't anyways

The real battles were fought and lost long ago in this domain, and the chances of success were never high. Power is an addiction and powerful people are the most addicted, they always have and always will aim to subjugate and control, to be a pawn of such a person is definitely sad but maybe worth the lofty goal of having true financial independence

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#87

Post by NoGravitas »

jklinger410 wrote: post #46
marketingtech wrote: post #7

This is cool, but not super useful in 2021. Google and Facebook have already moved their tracking technologies beyond frontend network calls due to a rise in browser-level blocking (browser security policies, international regulations, AdBlock, PiHole, etc). The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. It als…

As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingly unrelated data points to learn more about you than you could imagine. At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach y…

> As someone who works in ads

Perhaps you should consider a career change?

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#88

Post by gibs0ns »

jklinger410 wrote: post #46
marketingtech wrote: post #7

This is cool, but not super useful in 2021. Google and Facebook have already moved their tracking technologies beyond frontend network calls due to a rise in browser-level blocking (browser security policies, international regulations, AdBlock, PiHole, etc). The next generation of tracking tech relies on the backend transfer of data between a website and the ad platform, which is invisible to your own network. It als…

As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingly unrelated data points to learn more about you than you could imagine. At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach y…

Either ethical or otherwise, what are some not-crap ad tech companies, that sell their services?

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#89

Post by [deleted] »

cycomanic wrote: post #85
jklinger410 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who works in ads, this is a spot-on summation of the current state of tracking. And that's without getting into how machine learning can use seemingly unrelated data points to learn more about you than you could imagine. At this point if you have even the most basic connections (US bank account, home owner, gps, insurance, a car) the more sophisticated tracking methods can still learn about you and reach y…

So how do you morally justify your work? Do you think this work is valuable? I know I sound confrontational, but I'm seriously wondering about this. In particular because the HN crowd in general has been so highly critical of most adtech, but at the same time a significant portion of people here probably works on it or for one of the companies which are behind it.

[deleted]

Re: Sirubo: Packet filtering to block Google and Facebook tracking

#90

Post by brightball »

Y_Y wrote: post #75
_jal wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone wants to convince me FB, et al are doing this, they can show me packet traces of audio being uploaded for analysis, or in the alternative (if the theory is on-phone analysis) resource consumption data from the phone doing it. There's been so much discussion of this theory that we'd have seen one of those by now. I have zero love for the surveillance shops, but there's just no real evidence this happens.

I'd be satisfied with a "beyond a reasonable doubt"-type argument. Somebody pre-registers some hypotheses, like "I've never thought about beanie babies in my life, but I'm going to talk about them in front of my phone. I expect I'll start seeing ads for them at a noticably higher rate then before.". Such an experiment wouldn't be difficult to conduct, but I've never heard of it being done methodically, only noticed a…

My wife and I did this. We don’t watch pro baseball at all and we live in the southeast. Had a 10 minute conversation about the Cincinnati Reds and within a few minutes we were seeing MLB ads on Facebook.

I don’t know how they are doing it…but it happens.

Post reply on HN