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Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

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Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#181

Post by EE84M3i »

booleandilemma wrote: post #68
gigel82 wrote: post #25

God damn... this is it, this is the end-game. There's no way to fight this unless you customize and maintain blocking scripts for each individual website. Yes, websites could always have done this, but the REST (CDN-bypassing) requests' cost and the manual maintenance for the telemetry endpoints and storage was an impediment that Google just gives them a drop-in solution for :( I think Google is happy to eat some of…

Simpler protocols (Gemini, Gopher...), outright refusing to use what the modern web has become. I only use HN and a few select sites. You don't need an ad-blocker if there are no ads in the first place.

HN is a link aggregator for HTTP(s) links. How do you read them?

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#182

Post by GekkePrutser »

gaius_baltar wrote: post #163
propogandist wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

use uMatrix or uBlock and block individual domains https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix

Proud uMatrix user here. Sadly, just noticed that the repo is now archived and I don't know if it will be maintained. Could not find any fork either. I'll miss this extension.

I liked this a lot but I don't see how someone without a computer science degree will use it successfully..

I think this is why Raymond gave up on it.. I think for the masses his time is better spent on uBlock Origin.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#183

Post by arvindamirtaa »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #40
nostromo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use Brave and you won’t see any YouTube ads at all. It even works on mobile.

Youtube via Brave on my iPad refuses to stream anything above 720p most of the time. As a result I just use it less.

Frankly, that's a win IMHO

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#184

Post by akkartik »

Nursie wrote: post #174
akkartik wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It provides a modicum of social and legal enforcement. A website with any sort of brand risks legal and PR costs if they violate DNT. I'm happy for them to take that risk. Though I see now that the whole thing has fallen through since around 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track . Oh well. Going back to my original comment, if there's a better way to read say the NYTimes without being tracked by the NYTime…

Legal risks? I'm unaware that it's ever been enforceable anywhere, and I don't think there's ever been enough awareness of its existence to cause reputational damage. Personally I think the whole thing fell through the moment it was conceived in 2009. We're going to ask nicely that people who are tracking us, who know that we don't want to be tracked anyway, kindly refrain? The whole idea was laughable. Its advocates…

This is all valid. But like I said, it was always about social and PR pressure (edit with reputable sites). (I was mistaken earlier when I thought it also had the force of law behind it.) That still has some, depreciating, value. To repeat my question, what else is there?

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#185

Post by josefx »

quambene wrote: post #171
bentcorner wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to run NoScript then at some point (maybe switched browsers?) I stopped using it. You've persuaded me to re-enable it. Also - Firefox on mobile supports NoScript!

Concerning noscript, is this [1] still a thing? [1] NoScript is harmful and promotes malware - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12624000

Can't find any ads on NoScript.net with uBlock running and uniblue.com seems to have expired. However it is hilarious that the complaint comes from Ad block Plus, their entire business model is build around bypassing EasyList. For a generous fee they make sure that your ads are "acceptable".

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#187

Post by antattack »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #53
antattack wrote: post #15

I just use different browser for different activities. I search with Firefox (w/ Ublock, Adblocker) - when I'm ready to buy I use Chrome.

What do you think this buys you?

Financial transactions provide more (precise) telemetry for fingerprinting.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#188

Post by efitz »

HWR_14 wrote: post #161
l33t2328 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure if this is a serious question, but what would this imaginary law say? The government can only do business with companies who aren’t in it for the money?

The US government isn't shy about adding rules for its contractors. It should be trivial for them to demand (or provide) dedicated IPs for their sites. Then they won't get caught up in the IP address blocking of GCP.

The big tech companies have all built out lobbying capabilities; such a law would end up helping big tech and harming small companies because the big companies would be involved in authoring the law and would be contributing to the sponsors and committee chairs and members to get their favorable language included. And it would all be legal and business as usual.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#189

Post by judge2020 »

Teever wrote: post #179
judge2020 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is only a problem if the person thinking of visiting their neighbors' or friends' house has an issue with it. Why can't I install such a system if I want to? Why does it matter that 90% of households use this system? In fact, because 90% of households use this system, doesn't that mean society at large agrees that this is an OK thing to have? We all opt for wearing clothes only because society at large has ag…

> because 90% of households use this system, doesn't that mean society at large agrees that this is an OK thing to have? And if 90% of households have slaves doesn't that mean that society at large agrees that this is an OK thing to have?

Yes. Slavery was OK in the US for a long while. If things hadn't been done to get this changed in the US, it would still be seen as an OK thing to do, and in reality no higher power or law of nature would stop that, even in $current_year - evidenced by how worldwide modern slavery/forced labor is still going strong[0].

My point is that there is no correct moral compass, no general rule as to what behavior is good or evil and no arbitrator that will correct the wrongs humans are doing in the world. Society is only governed by itself, and thus a 'supermajority' of ideals is what will reign over the superminority in terms of law and general consensus. If society accepts and encourages one company to control an absolute record of human movement and presence, it's not going to be stopped and that majority isn't going to cater to the small portion of society that doesn't agree.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#St...

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#190

Post by philliphaydon »

So if the script comes from the owners site instead of Google. And all the rest requests are proxied via the owners site. Would this not result in people forking a browser that looks at http requests before they are packaged and issued to remove tracking data or block the request?
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