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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)

#352
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Block the code that they suggest changing the name, domain, and function signatures of? How?

If the loops, if statements, and block scopes are similar then the graph can be fuzzily identified. They’ve had anti-plagiarism software for years.

Annoyingly that would still require downloading them, which I'd definitely prefer not to. It's bloat that serves me no purpose.

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

#354

Stupid question: What value, if any, does "Google Tag Manager" offer the end user? By "end user" I do not mean website operator or advertiser. I never ran this stuff. There is no Javascript engine available, there is no DNS and the local forwarding proxy does not forward traffic to Google domains. I am not asleep at the wheel and probably not the target end user. But I always wondered why any end user would want to a…

It benefits the end user by them "hopefully" getting an improved product in the future.

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

#356
post #289
post #228

Crazy how evil Google is. Just wow. Since this runs entirely on the domain of the website, it can easily ignore your privacy rights, with Google more or less washing their hands clean of it. Indeed, if we take blocking trackers as expression of consent, the only possible reason this exists at all is to illegally circumvent privacy preferences. In other words, if you work for Google, you are literally working for a cr…

> our ineffectual administration It always saddens me to see EU citizens talk in absolutes like that. With some exceptions, and by comparison, we have some of the best governments in the world, and, for all its faults, the EU has been a huge net positive. Perpetuating these overly negative stereotypes just aids populists in replacing our good governance with the other kind that we see all over the world.

>a huge net positive

A huge net positive for buisness, that's for sure. There are currently over 25,000 lobbyists in Brussels and Berlin [1]. As for the citizens, that is up to debate, and highly individual.

Truckers in Sweden, for example, that currently find themselves competing with truckers from all over europe who also fill the tank in countries with far cheaper gas, cant really be said to enjoy positive gain from the EU [2].

[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2021/05/13/the-power-of-l...

[2] https://www.transportarbetaren.se/lavinartad-okning-av-tredj...

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

#357
post #228

Crazy how evil Google is. Just wow. Since this runs entirely on the domain of the website, it can easily ignore your privacy rights, with Google more or less washing their hands clean of it. Indeed, if we take blocking trackers as expression of consent, the only possible reason this exists at all is to illegally circumvent privacy preferences. In other words, if you work for Google, you are literally working for a cr…

Not taking a moral stance here, just curious what laws you think have been broken in this instance?

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

#358
post #228

Crazy how evil Google is. Just wow. Since this runs entirely on the domain of the website, it can easily ignore your privacy rights, with Google more or less washing their hands clean of it. Indeed, if we take blocking trackers as expression of consent, the only possible reason this exists at all is to illegally circumvent privacy preferences. In other words, if you work for Google, you are literally working for a cr…

> Of course, there is little hope.

I think our hope are technical solutions:

- No 3rd party cookies or equivalents, fully compartmentalized browsing, no automated cross-domain GETs/POSTs, no domain can leak data to another domain without manual intervention

- No User-Agent leak, just a standards compliance level ex. HTML/5.0

- No Java-Script leaks, fonts or any other way to do client fingerprinting

- Cycle your IPv6 addresses or even use persistent IP-domains binding, with OS support, in a Tor-like manner.

- & Many more

It will break the current web yes, but the web needs a do-over, it has become a toxic soup of massive surveillance.

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

#359
post #307
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our ineffectual administration It always saddens me to see EU citizens talk in absolutes like that. With some exceptions, and by comparison, we have some of the best governments in the world, and, for all its faults, the EU has been a huge net positive. Perpetuating these overly negative stereotypes just aids populists in replacing our good governance with the other kind that we see all over the world.

I agree. I understand people like to talk in this way to show their emotional connection to the topic, but it’s not very helpful and like you mention, too absolute. It’s a system in progress, and we need to be invested in its ideals (fair, just, democratic)

Most often such comments come from eastern parts of Europe, where nationalistic movements have a nice resurgence in past few years. A prime example is Czech republic, a very euro-skeptical nation despite all the benefits it brought them. Hungary would be another one.

That being said, as somebody coming from east too and seeing clearly all the direct and indirect benefits of EU, its far from ideal. The whole concept of central planning resembles old east communist block when soviets forced down our throats whatever they pleased (we had to refuse Marshall's plan, they took all of our uranium reserves for free for which more appropriate term is stealing, and many many other cases) and that's an association many older people have knee-jerk reaction of.

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

#360
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I co-develop an open source firewall for Android, which most of our users use for ad-blocking purposes. The community has known about server-side collection for quite sometime now. You could run Google Analytics on any of the serverless environments since a year or two ago (I noted this on news.yc a year back [0][1]). Tag Manager server-side is Google throwing its own solution in to the mix. DNS based content blockin…

I really don't know much about this space, but do you think server-side tagging could be more or less susceptible to user resistance attacks like what Adnausium[0] does? Can we spam them into futility? [0] https://adnauseam.io/

Adnauseam's offensive tactics can still confuse these server-side implementations. That said, if Google et al figure a way out to defeat it, pretty sure they'd not be blogging or talking about it, at all, for us to know.
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