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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)

#841

Post by jacquesm »

shadowgovt wrote: post #837
jacquesm wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would much sooner label 'the march of dimes' a charity and a PSA than marketing, but each to their own. Also: note that exactly those things are trotted out by the marketing people to prove that "hey, marketing isn't all evil" when actually they have to reach back decades into history for an example that people will recognize and that has nothing to do with selling un-necessary stuff, which is the thing they are as…

I mean, you can, but then you should probably tell Cindy Rahman, their SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, that her job title makes no sense. And the IRS that the 4.9 million-odd they claimed they spent on advertising on their Federal 990 form in 2020 was mis-labeled. The March of Dimes is and was in the marketing business. > actually they have to reach back decades March of Dimes is still here. It's a modern example as…

But: you are still stuck on the same theme: health related, charities and so on. The fact that charities have marketing is by itself a negative, often enough this translates into them spending a very large fraction of their donation on soliciting more donations. And there are quite a few examples of that being the larger part of the total collected, which shouldn't really happen.

We did not start the discussion about the march of dimes or any such project, that's just a convenient fig leaf, what matters here is companies selling commercial products and services that people don't need while using armies of psychologists and a continuous barrage of media expressions to battle down the natural defenses to get people to act against their own interest.

If you want to have a side discussion that there are some applications of those same techniques that may have positive effect then you're free to do so but preferably not with me.

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

#842

Post by shadowgovt »

jacquesm wrote: post #841
shadowgovt wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you can, but then you should probably tell Cindy Rahman, their SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, that her job title makes no sense. And the IRS that the 4.9 million-odd they claimed they spent on advertising on their Federal 990 form in 2020 was mis-labeled. The March of Dimes is and was in the marketing business. > actually they have to reach back decades March of Dimes is still here. It's a modern example as…

But: you are still stuck on the same theme: health related, charities and so on. The fact that charities have marketing is by itself a negative, often enough this translates into them spending a very large fraction of their donation on soliciting more donations. And there are quite a few examples of that being the larger part of the total collected, which shouldn't really happen. We did not start the discussion about…

Like I said, you don't hate marketing; you hate that most of what is marketed sucks.

Take away the marketing and we have a world where most products still suck, and when we seek one out at random we'd be statistically likely to lay hands on something we don't need.

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

#843

Post by themacguffinman »

Teever wrote: post #773
themacguffinman wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like ADT? Like a lot of security companies that offer monitoring solutions on behalf of clients, especially smaller businesses and individual homeowners? "gobbling all the data" is vaguely scary while being totally meaningless. GTM data is fully managed by the client, Google contractually does not randomly spy on it. Many businesses would argue that they do delete user data after they don't need it anymore, but analy…

How can you feign obliviousness so much that you can't see the difference between what ADT was doing in 1995 and what Google is doing in 2022?

I'm disappointed that you chose to respond in bad faith without any argument at all, I guess I shouldn't waste my time.

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

#844

Post by Y-bar »

Chris2048 wrote: post #612
Y-bar wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish people would stop attributing our attitude to nationalistic resurgences. Why should we stop? Where I live (NW Europe) this sentiment is almost exclusively echoed by members of the refreshed "neoconservative/nationalistic" right wing parties. Other parties also have their qualms about government institutions, of course, but for different reasons and expressed with different attitudes.

> but for different reasons and expressed with different attitudes What reasons / attitudes / sentiment are you referring to?

Two quick examples would be the left party consider the secret mass surveillance by government entities to be wrong on multiple levels and is continuously criticising the government for it. Another would be that the same group of parties consider the government being too slow to implement carbon taxation and other measures to prevent further damages due to climate change.

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

#845

Post by seandoe »

shafyy wrote: post #300
seandoe wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the same domain part. How are you going to block a request when you don't know the url?

You check the loaded script itself to see if it matches an expected pattern.

Does there need to be a loaded script with a certain fingerprint? What if they are just passing data from the browser to some random endpoint? I'm not sure, just thoughts.

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

#846

Post by Chris2048 »

Y-bar wrote: post #844
Chris2048 wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but for different reasons and expressed with different attitudes What reasons / attitudes / sentiment are you referring to?

Two quick examples would be the left party consider the secret mass surveillance by government entities to be wrong on multiple levels and is continuously criticising the government for it. Another would be that the same group of parties consider the government being too slow to implement carbon taxation and other measures to prevent further damages due to climate change.

I mean the original ones, that you consider right-wing.

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

#847

Post by forgotmypw17 »

IHLayman wrote: post #780
hilbert42 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, read HN! There are stacks and stacks of them here on HN that are of excellent quality - I use HN as my 'quality' filter (and I reckon I'm not alone). Moreover, if one doesn't run JS like me then it's dead easy to avoid problematic sites as HN lists them (Twitter, etc. - and it doesn't take long to get to know the main offenders, thus avoid them). :-) BTW, I agree with you it is hard to find good sites these day…

A pedantic note that follows from this particular thread: HackerNews’s search capabilities are powered by Algolia and require JavaScript to work (turn off all JS and the HN branded Algolia page will not load). The reason I bring this up is that even good websites sometimes lean on free or free-ish services to provide extra functionality (such as calendars, discussion boards, issue tracking, or search) without realizi…

It's true, there are some decent sites out there which use JS legitimately to add features. And there are some sites which require JS without really needing to, but still have good content and do not have unnecessary annoyances and performance problems.

Lucky for me, I can toggle on JavaScript for them individually and continue with my general policy.

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

#848

Post by jacquesm »

shadowgovt wrote: post #842
jacquesm wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But: you are still stuck on the same theme: health related, charities and so on. The fact that charities have marketing is by itself a negative, often enough this translates into them spending a very large fraction of their donation on soliciting more donations. And there are quite a few examples of that being the larger part of the total collected, which shouldn't really happen. We did not start the discussion about…

Like I said, you don't hate marketing; you hate that most of what is marketed sucks. Take away the marketing and we have a world where most products still suck, and when we seek one out at random we'd be statistically likely to lay hands on something we don't need.

'You don't hate guns, you just hate what they are used for' -> No, sorry, I really do hate guns and I have a very low opinion of everything related to marketing.

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

#849

Post by strogonoff »

themacguffinman wrote: post #501
strogonoff wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual businesses aren’t stalking anyone if their CCTVs are watching out for themselves. But as soon as there is a centralized company offering the service and gobbling all the data, and that company acts like Google does with regards to web tracking, then it’d be in some sense no better than stalking (or even worse, stalking at scale). If it only obtains the data to provide you the service of knowing who comes i…

Like ADT? Like a lot of security companies that offer monitoring solutions on behalf of clients, especially smaller businesses and individual homeowners? "gobbling all the data" is vaguely scary while being totally meaningless. GTM data is fully managed by the client, Google contractually does not randomly spy on it. Many businesses would argue that they do delete user data after they don't need it anymore, but analy…

Key difference is one’s revenue stream (do you profit by selling security system or through data accumulated from your customers).

> Google themselves deletes user data on their first party products after 18 months by default (referring to things like Web & App activity and Location history) and users can set it as low as 3 months, approximately the same amount of time as security footage.

Security footage is not the problem, after all you may want to look back a few days to see who was around at the time something went missing. The problem would be processing footage into data on where each individual goes, storing that and finding various ways to profit off of it. This is not necessary for the core value proposition, and in my opinion is ethically questionable.

Sure, if they don’t store it for long, and especially if they comply with GDPR, that would help. However, I’m not deeply familiar with this, but I suspect they can easily claim that they don’t store data on you and don’t need to delete it simply by storing it in a way not obviously connected to your identity—even if this connection is very easy to make at any point.

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

#850

Post by fartcannon »

Const-me wrote: post #782
jeroenhd wrote: post #646

This 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…

Interesting idea, installed the addon. I’m using MS Edge BTW, Microsoft doesn’t care about Google’s advertisement revenue, the addon is available in their marketplace.

Microsoft doesn't care because they collect everything through their desktop environment. That's why you need an email to set windows up now.
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