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

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

chromium.woolyss.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 902 posts

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

#201

Post by novok »

ec109685 wrote: post #36
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…

Apple’s Private Relay blocks this type of cross site tracking. Given this tracking is all server side, third party cookies across sites aren’t possible using this mechanism, and private relay cycles through your IP addresses frequently and uses common IPs across multiple users. Regarding your other point, unless Google execs want to be thrown in jail / sued, they can’t use things like first party cookies for their be…

How is private relay different from a vpn? A lot of fingerprinting scripts also can track you despite vpn.

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

#202

Post by Helmut10001 »

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…

IP blocking still seems a thing, even with this new feature - the ads need to be served from _somewhere_. I am using pfblocker-ng on pfsense, which uses giant IP blocklists to filter out all connections to spam and ad-servers. I haven't seen ads in 5 years and there is no need for client-side solutions (e.g. adblocker). The places where ads appear are just whitespace.

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

#203

Post by josephcsible »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #202
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…

IP blocking still seems a thing, even with this new feature - the ads need to be served from _somewhere_. I am using pfblocker-ng on pfsense, which uses giant IP blocklists to filter out all connections to spam and ad-servers. I haven't seen ads in 5 years and there is no need for client-side solutions (e.g. adblocker). The places where ads appear are just whitespace.

The idea is that this will be served from the same IP address that the site that you're trying to visit is.

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

#204

Post by FeepingCreature »

judge2020 wrote: post #189
Teever wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Are you asserting that it is your current opinion that slavery was morally OK in the US, because it was morally accepted at the time?

(Warning: this is a trap question, do not answer yes, the only socially accepted answer is no)

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

#205

Post by Helmut10001 »

josephcsible wrote: post #203
Helmut10001 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IP blocking still seems a thing, even with this new feature - the ads need to be served from _somewhere_. I am using pfblocker-ng on pfsense, which uses giant IP blocklists to filter out all connections to spam and ad-servers. I haven't seen ads in 5 years and there is no need for client-side solutions (e.g. adblocker). The places where ads appear are just whitespace.

The idea is that this will be served from the same IP address that the site that you're trying to visit is.

Thanks for the explanation - I understood this partly from the article and it is pretty worrying for the future.

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

#206

Post by drusepth »

misterbwong wrote: post #192
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…

Called it [1]. It's a cat-and-mouse game and, unfortunately, advertising is just _that_ lucrative. Privacy-minded browsing will help those that care (for now...), but that's an unsustainable option with the current monetization channels available. If a content publisher cannot monetize you, they will think nothing of blocking you. There will be some public backlash against companies that do so and there will be some…

>There needs to be a monetization channel that is 1) good for both users AND publishers and 2) pays just as much as current methods.

I agree, but what party would you like that money to originate from?

Ads work well right now for consumer-to-consumer (e.g. I create a blog and you view it) because there's a rich, third-party that money can flow from (a company running ads --> money to me) without having to charge you, the end-user who is more than likely significantly less well-off than a corporation.

To buck that pattern, you need the money to come from somewhere else. Subscriptions and direct payments are an obvious choice (see: the boom of SaaS over the past few years) but people are already complaining that they have so many subscriptions they lose track of them all, and spend too much money on what used to be a "free" internet.

So, I don't think there's a solution where the money comes from the end-user. However, any time you add in a third party for the money to flow from, they're going to want something in return. And unless you want that cash flowing from the site owner to that third party (...why would you?), they're gonna need to offer something else.

I don't see any solution other than "a third party pays for something users and/or the site can create for free". Is the answer to just find something free other than analytics/usage, or are there other approaches to monetize a site while still making it "free" to access?

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

#207

Post by KerrAvon »

l33t2328 wrote: post #153
paulryanrogers wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can it be legal for a government to make increasingly core services depend on these amoral, for profit monsters?

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?

Realistically, Congress could in fact mandate that government website implementations must be transferable between software vendors. That’s both technically feasible and in line with past government requirements for hardware procurement.

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

#208

Post by sdepablos »

bhauer wrote: post #107
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…

I think in the short-term the strategy is this from the article: > Or ... block all the IP addresses of Google App Engine, at the risk of blocking many applications. having nothing to do with tracking. Anyone hosting legitimate apps in the Google ecosystsm is indirectly complicit in this and at least for my personal network, I have no concern with blocking Google App Engine holistically. Additionally, I think it's im…

The thing is that you can host the server container also in AWS https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/deploy-server-side-googl... or Azure https://www.simoahava.com/analytics/server-side-tagging-azur...

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

#209

Post by gigel82 »

gzer0 wrote: post #88

Increasingly, the only solution I see to this is Apple's Private Relay [1]. "When Private Relay is in use, the user’s device opens up a connection to the first internet relay (also known as the “ingress proxy”). As the user browses, their original IP address is visible to the first internet relay and to the network they are connected to. However, the website names requested by the user are encrypted and cannot be see…

I don't trust Apple; they are shady AF and I'm convinced they are hard at work building an AD empire to rival Google and Facebook behind the scenes. Their so-called "privacy" moves are very clearly designed to limit Facebook's and Google's ability to profit off their platform giving themselves an advantage: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/08/07/apple-a...

That said, Private Relay has some interesting ideas, maybe a few trustworthy VPN providers adopt some of them.

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

#210

Post by snomad »

Teever wrote: post #30
croes wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most annoying part for me is getting tracked against my will. So now it's worse.

Isn't it so strange that if you or I were to do these kinds of things to an individual it would be considered creepy cyber stalking but when companies do it they are rewarded?

No reason ad tech companies should have freedom to associate real world data with online data. This seems like the perfect candidate for a US state proposition.. no company engaged in online ad tech may combine or allow any other entity to marry online identities with real life.
Post reply on HN