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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)

#371

Post by habosa »

zwaps wrote: 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…

> the only possible reason this exists at all is to illegally circumvent privacy preferences.

The article gives multiple other reasons why this exists.

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

#372

Post by ThalesX »

saiya-jin wrote: post #359
prox wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> Most often such comments come from eastern parts of Europe, where nationalistic movements have a nice resurgence in past few years.

I wish people would stop attributing our attitude to nationalistic resurgences.

I’m a globalist and think nationalism and regionalism should be relics of the past and I keep getting put in the same box as nationalists because I am Euro-realist.

With this frame of mind I think the EU politicians are shit at building the foundations for a truly globalized civilization and the current system devalues entire areas of the continent both of natural resources as well as human resources.

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

#373

Post by mingusrude »

raspberry1337 wrote: post #356
dxdm wrote: 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.

>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 fr…

I am not denying that there are problems for truckers in Sweden caused by open borders to other EU-countries and that those problems should be fixed. However, without EU there would probably be a lot less stuff to truck around.

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

#374

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #306
chickenimprint wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it safe to assume you've never had to deal with those downright malevolent dark patterns and button labyrinths, designed to make it extremely unlikely for anyone in the general population to actually reject tracking?

Those patterns are more and more being punished by GDPR enforcement. Companies may try playing around the letter of the law, but Europe runs pretty solidly on the spirit of the law. See events like these: https://www.iccl.ie/news/gdpr-enforcer-rules-that-iab-europe...

And American companies are absolutely dumbfounded when they try to play the “misplaced comma” card in the EU and they still get slapped down. It is a very American attitude — I always wondered what ST:TNG would have been like if Picard wasn’t always able to save the day by invoking some obscure sub paragraph of some obscure treaty. Note to Elon that if he launches lawyers into space it doesn’t kill them, he just ends up with a lot of lawyers in space.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ensigns_of_Command

The other aspect of EU law that always gets US companies is that penalties are large enough to actually be penalizing. In the US companies can basically ignore the law until they get caught, pay a token $100,000 or $1,000,000 fine (which sounds impressive in all the papers), then invent a new interpretation of the law and go do it again. In the EU the regulators start looking at percentages of income during the entire time the illegal activity occurred, so again the US companies are caught completely off guard when they get asked to forfeit billions of dollars.

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

#375

Post by fxtentacle »

zwaps wrote: 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…

I'd say when it comes to privacy laws, the EU is actually doing better than almost any other countries. Yes, they could be faster, but the GDPR is still a big win for users everywhere. And a pita for Facebook / Google, which is intentional.

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

#376

Post by jsiepkes »

raspberry1337 wrote: post #356
dxdm wrote: 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.

>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 fr…

> who also fill the tank in countries with far cheaper gas

So we are talking here about inter-country transport, right? Because I don't think it's very econimical to fill up your gastank in Poland if your driving deliveries locally inside Sweden? That will probably not be a net-win.

If you are a Swedish company importing from for example Poland you could always let a Polish transport company handle the transport. The EU didn't change much about that. A Swedish trucker driving to Poland could also fill up it's truck in Poland with cheap gas.

So what did the EU do that made cheaper gas more of an competitive advantage then it was before?

BTW gas prices are something that Swedens goverment themselve handle...

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

#377

Post by raspberry1337 »

hilbert42 wrote: post #361
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's another, indirect benefit to blocking JavaScript. Over time I have noticed a strong correlation between sites which don't work right without JS and low-quality content which I regret having spent time reading. Most of the time I encounter one of these sites I now just close the tab and move on with a clear conscience.

"Over time I have noticed a strong correlation between sites which don't work right without JS and low-quality content...." Absolutely true, I can't agree with you more. I've reached the stage where if I land on a site and its main content is blocked if JavaScript is disabled then my conditioned reflex kicks in and I'm off the site within milliseconds. Rarely is this a problem with sites that I frequent (and I too do…

Any tips for high quality content sites? It truly is hard to find these days

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

#378

Post by GrifMD »

noduerme wrote: post #365

Ok. MotherFuckers be pirates. Does this affect me? I have a dozen or so websites for clients running the normal google analytics script on those pages. This article is hard for me to parse, but, it just sounds like the idea of keeping some session alive and serving it off the same backend (if the same backend is calling google...?) I'm probably not understanding what's going on here or how it would affect independent…

I’m actually in this industry! So Server Side GTM (SS-GTM) is still relatively new and a bit limited in the number of integrated partners.

GTM in itself doesn’t do any tracking, not even Google tracking, its just a manager. So hypothetically you could use GTM or SS-GTM to listen for clicks on a purchase button and then send a hit to your own URL with your own user identifier (or none at all). Google wouldn’t record this anywhere. If you add Google Analytics or Google Marketing tags into your GTM container, then Google would store that data in their platforms.

The real concern with privacy advocates is that you lose transparency with SS-GTM. When you run client side GTM, you can see hits going off to Google Marketing, Facebook, etc when a site has implemented those tags, and you could use ad block to prevent those network requests.

SS-GTM would only show a request going to client.com/track (or wherever GTM has been set). The privacy benefit is that Facebook and the like cannot set their own 3rd party cookies to track you across the web, however Facebook allows advertisers to pass in hashed PII (like email addresses) to match with users in their database, so if you’re logged in via email, hypothetically Facebook could be linking interactions to you. I have seen very few companies do that yet though, as it’s more complicated to setup that most things and marketing teams aren’t usually made up of engineers.

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

#379

Post by zambal »

raspberry1337 wrote: post #356
dxdm wrote: 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.

>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 fr…

I'm not sure this is a convincing example of policy that results in a net negative? It seems to be a positive for truck drivers from other parts of Europe. Maybe for most EU citizens too if it leads to lower transport prices?

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

#380

Post by hilbert42 »

mderazon wrote: post #315
hilbert42 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 don't know which web you're viewing that only needs JS for 3-5% of websites

Read my reply to paulryanrogers about whether one's a JavaScript or a non-JavaScript type person.

The 3-5% of sites I'm referring to are ones where I have to enable JS to view them. In by far the vast majority of the sites that I frequent I do not have to enable JS to view them.

Also note my reply to forgotmypw17, one doesn't need JS if one avoids low quality dross.

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