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Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
691–700 of 902 posts
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#692Disclaimer: 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…
> I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. That's not what they're doing, at all. They want to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of maximising profits. That may correlate with good user experience sometimes, but more often it results in the opposite.
That's to easy IMHO. Yes, online marketing is about profit. But tracking is not always about profit. I work for a customer that offers kind of a job search engine. All they want to maximize is the rate of succesful employments. Yes, they need to optimize marketing budget. But not to sell useless stuff, but to reach out to potential employees.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#693Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Was telling people about trains and cars creating a need where there wasn’t one? That's a great example actually, because the reason you can't get anywhere without a car these days is marketing campaigns by the automobile and oil industry. First by suggesting the newly necessary road safety standards and ridiculing people for being in the street without a car ("jaywalking") to the point that it was criminalized, th…
> because the reason you can't get anywhere without a car these days is marketing campaigns by the automobile and oil industry We aren't all brainless automatons. Not everything is a giant conspiracy. Have you considered that there are people that actually like cars and find them convenient and useful? Cars and the highway system completely changed the course of commerce in this country. Sure, that has lead to some p…
I was about to reply that this is exactly what happened in L.A. in the 1940s and suggest that you look up the "Great American Streetcar Conspiracy", my favorite example of monopolistic conspiracy. But apparently much has changed since I last did that myself, and now the conspiracy seems to be little more than... fake news.
Unless of course we're in the midst of a "Great American Streetcar Conspiracy"-Conspiracy Conspiracy. ;-)
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#694This kind of data collection abuse is why I think we need more addons like AdNauseam [1]. Unlike uBlock Origin, it's not available from the Chrome web store anymore, which is a good sign that Google hates these types of addons more than they hate simple blockers. Blocking A/AAAA domains with custom URLs to prevent tracking is almost impossible, so instead let's flood the trackers with useless, incorrect data that's n…
Since this extension actively clicks on ads which may trigger payments, how do ad-fraud services classify endpoints running this extension? Could they consider this malware and add the client IP to blacklists?
With a bit of luck, it gets server owners banned from AdMob/MoPub/etc for fraudulent clicks.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#695Disclaimer: 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…
As a 'white-hat' marketer (I work for some place that's similar to Vote411/ The League of Women Voters and I initially started in library outreach; I don't think anybody would consider my work unethical), the issue is the need for constant growth and profits.
You can do cool and interesting things in marketing and outreach and there are actual use cases for them. For example, libraries often carry unconventional items, and making the community aware that they can borrow a sewing machine/get seeds to plant/get museum passes is technically marketing and 'creating' a need, but it's not exploitative.
It's a very similar situation to dev work in that if I were willing to chuck my ethics out the window, I would make a lot more money, and marketing people do also like money.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#696Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's a bit like arsenic: it doesn't have to be negative but usually it is This is a good analogy. In stories, arsenic is almost without fail evil. In reality, it has use in medicine, agriculture and ceramics [1]. > If 99% of the people engaging in an activity are doing it badly then I'm all for reigning them in We agree. And I have no horse in this race. But that 99% figure is largely confined to tech-based marketi…
> The people painting print ads and planning PR stunts aren’t hurting anyone. You must have missed the cosmetics industry.
And you might have missed how the cure for polio was rolled out so quickly.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/05/03/9887569...
Marketing is a tool. It can be misused. It can also be used for good. In fact, now that I raise the point, I wonder why nobody's thought to use ad microtargeting for COVID-19 vaccine campaigns yet.
They probably have and I just haven't noticed, because when good marketing's working it tends to be invisibly transparent.
If I may: I think your larger problem is really that most product is crap, and marketing's job is to put product in front of people whether or not it's crap. Maybe we should be doing something about crap product instead of advertising of crap product?
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#697Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. The problem is not that they measure things. The problem is that they enter the user's private area; they run code on the user's computer and probably grab information about the user too (I don't know exactly how tag managers work because I have never us…
No, you are voluntarily downloading and running their code on your computer. What you describe is hacking into somebody's computer, that is different. Stores take measurements about their customers, so do sites.
I'm also voluntarily running uBlock Origin whose entire purpose is to sanitize their borderline malware code into something that I can actually consume. As you said, it's my computer and they really need to submit to my will instead of finding creative new ways to work around it like some malware developer.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#698Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to speak of a promised sense of freedom you could only ever possibly obtain by driving around in the right kind of car and smoking the right brand of cigarettes.
> a promised sense of freedom you could only ever possibly obtain by driving around in the right kind of car You do realize that having the ability to hop in your car and drive wherever you want to go without having to report to anyone provides an incredible amount of freedom, right?
You don't need a car for this. You can use trains and other means of transportation.
Take a look at other countries. Japan, Singapore, France with cities like Paris, Netherlands with cites like Amsterdam, which transformed from a car centric city in the 1950s to now a very lively city with lots of bikes and public transport.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#699Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Or they slowly drifted towards anti-EU sentiment due to the EU. Poland, through 7 national and 17 regional programmes, benefitted from EU funding of EUR 91.3 billion under the 2014-2020 ESIF programmes (as of January 2022). This represented an average of 2 400 euro per person in the 2014 population they didn't drift they already had it in their belly, they simply hid it to take EU money and build their anti-democra…
I am not sure what are you getting at? Money is not significant factor in anti-EU sentiment, insisting it is only increases that sentiment.
Repetita Iuvant
they didn't drift
they already had it in their belly, *they simply hid it to take EU money and build their anti-democratic platforms*.
Money was the *most* important factor.
The anti-eu sentiment *was already there*
They simply did not have the money to lead, they were just some anti-communist nut.
Now they are uber rich nuts.
So yeah, in a way it was EU fault, because they invited them in and gave them a lot of money instead of leaving them in the good hands of uncle Putin.
Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)
#700This kind of data collection abuse is why I think we need more addons like AdNauseam [1]. Unlike uBlock Origin, it's not available from the Chrome web store anymore, which is a good sign that Google hates these types of addons more than they hate simple blockers. Blocking A/AAAA domains with custom URLs to prevent tracking is almost impossible, so instead let's flood the trackers with useless, incorrect data that's n…
Yup. I've used NoScript for years, and one of the most frequently appearing sites that remain blocked is googletagmanager.
I totally second the sentiment that this is merely minimal defense against hostile 'service providers'.
This avalanche of tracking libraries is now almost as toxic as email spam in its worst-controlled days. Much of the internet is literally unusable, as pages take dozens of seconds to minutes to load - on a CAD-level laptop that can rotate 30MB models with zero lag.
In fact, does anyone have a blacklist of trackers that we can just blackhole at the HOSTS file or router level? Maybe time to setup a pihole?