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Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
261–270 of 902 posts
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#262Disclaimer: I am a data analyst. I consult companies in regards to ethical data collection. But I also know of black sheep. I don't have a problem with websites measuring what I view, click, add to cart or buy. I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. And if they do marketing I even want them to be able to see from which source of traffic (aka marketing effort) how many conversions…
> the second essential condition that marketing departments act ethically
This seems like a pretty strong assumption, given that both an engrained culture, lived experience, and an analysis of the different parties' incentives stand against this.
Until we have strong (and crucially, really enforced) legislation against this, I'd say technical means (blocking JS mostly) will be the only thing I'd be willing to bet on.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#263God 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 don't have the time or energy to block JavaScript and/or manually inspect each domain's requests to figure out if they use server-side tracking or not." By default, I don't run JavaScript. I don't see blocking JS as a problem - in fact, it's a blessing as the web is blinding fast without it - and also most of the ads just simply disappear if JS is not running. On occasions when I need JS (only about 3-5% of sites)…
i used to have javascript turned off for a long time, but i've given up. you can't even search hacker news without javascript (for some reason).
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
Current GTM, configured (via the server UI) to inject tracker X: gtm javascript loads, pulls down the config, injects tracker X javascript into the browser new gtm: gtm javascript loads, pulls down config, streams events to google servers to fan out to tracker X as configured So blocking gtm.js off tagmanager.google.com / www.googletagmanager.com / the various other domains still blocks all gtm injected tags. The tl;…
This is not how GTM server side works. There is not a single call to Google domains from the client, when GTM server side is set up to its fullest. The config (gtm.js) will be loaded from my subdomain and not googletagmanager.com. Also gtm.js can be renamed.
Couldn't you still recognize the script by its content?
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#265If the standard deployment will be a separate IP in the same range (Google cloud) which is also bound to a subdomain of the site I’m viewing, isn’t that an easily identifiable situation? Couldn’t blockers like unlock just block the subdomain.site.com for every site.com? Or even block all subdomain calls to Google hosts?
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#266God 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 get privacy concerns and hate for ads, but what about "free" internet? Paywalls are a massive annoyance to me personally, and if ads were legislatively blocked, would I have to pay for each website I visit that previously relied on ads for $? Perhaps we could be making micro-transactions for each website visited via crypto (?)
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#267A great example of "surveillance too cheap to meter"
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#268God 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…
If it takes maintaining blocking scripts for individual websites, I'm pretty sure services will spring up to crowd source it.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#269Disclaimer: I am a data analyst. I consult companies in regards to ethical data collection. But I also know of black sheep. I don't have a problem with websites measuring what I view, click, add to cart or buy. I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. And if they do marketing I even want them to be able to see from which source of traffic (aka marketing effort) how many conversions…
Marketing is almost by definition not going to act ethically: their whole goal is to create a need where there isn't an organic one, and the KPIs by which marketing departments are run are proof positive of that. Nobody starts off with 'what would be the natural limit of our product sales', instead they start off with 'what is the total addressable market and how do we maximize our fraction of that' implying that if you are counted in their market that you are fair game whether you like it or not.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no way to fight this unless ... you pass legislation against it or comparable technologies, preferably at a policy level.
You can fight against it by refusing to use these websites? If you can't do this, perhaps because a big _majority_ of users don't care enough to support this kind of ecosystem shift, what makes you think a majority of voters would support this? (And if not, why would you want to force your view on them?) It's like legislating that people should only listen to Good Music and eat Healthy Food, as defined by some people…
Part of the job of lawmakers is, intriguingly enough, deciding what’s good for voters. This would be among those things. Would voters vote for this specific law? Probably not. But they probably wouldn’t vote out the representatives who wrote it either. And arguably privacy needs to be protected for the good of society.