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Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

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Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it and is how the online advertising industry has worked for over 25 years. In its simplest form the pixel is used to attribute an ad view/click to a conversion event. At the beginning of the online ad industry that’s all it did, advertisers for the first time had the ability to directly, in real time, see the effectiveness of their ads. The economic value and GDP generated due to this innovation is immeasura…

This is also why even Apple and Mozilla (companies with a vested interest in harming the ad ecosystem) are pushing for various privacy-preserving ad attribution technologies. Nobody objects to UberEats knowing that their Tiktok ads are working or not - they object to Tiktok cross-referencing the data from UberEats and everywhere else to build an interest profile on them.

As a user I have the complete opposite objections: I do not see why I would have Uber run JavaScript on my machine just for them to know how well their campaigns are working, while I totally want advertisement that is highly targeted to me.

Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose isn't to spy on you. It's to track the performance of an ad shown to you on tiktok.

Which collects data on you and creates a profile. Whether it's currently used to increment an impression counter doesn't mean it can't be used for something more nefarious down the line.

Collecting data about what you did is not necessarily spying. If a game keeps tracks of my wins. That's not spying even though it's collecting data on what I did.

Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it and is how the online advertising industry has worked for over 25 years. In its simplest form the pixel is used to attribute an ad view/click to a conversion event. At the beginning of the online ad industry that’s all it did, advertisers for the first time had the ability to directly, in real time, see the effectiveness of their ads. The economic value and GDP generated due to this innovation is immeasura…

> It’s the innovations since that ... Nice illustration of how "innovation" != "progress"

Innovation is simply building something better. (Societal) progress is subjective, which is why you could probably run a survey and any respondents with marketing degrees would likely indeed call this "progress" towards a better-understood society..

Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#64
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNT is not the solution though. DNT status is not readable by JS (by design), so DNT cannot be implemented in the client. So all tracking calls are still made over the network. It is then up to the server processing those calls to drop them if the DNT header is present. Thus, there is no way for a user to verify that DNT is actually honored. Hotjar is probably the only one (claiming to be) honoring DNT consistently.…

If DNT is sent when loading the initial page it is totally possible to serve HTML that doesn't include the tracking scripts. If you load your tracking scripts you've already gone against your objective since even the initial HTTP request that loads the tracking library leaks the user's IP address and browser fingerprint back to the tracker. This is not a defense of DNT by the way - it has other problems such as the i…

You are right, didn't think of that

Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#65
post #60
post #13

As someone that has spent a sizable amount of my career in ad products, the outrage here is kind of (sadly) funny. A conversion pixel? Hah, if you only had an idea of what the Facebook data faucet looked like in 2007-2017, your hairs would stand. Pretty sure they were breaking all kinds of PII laws.

What happened in 2017?

I would guess that's when the Cambridge Analytics thing became well known, where they were using Facebook's network/data graphs to compile their own compiled and targeted data.

Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#66
post #8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. The list of companies to avoid is pretty long.

All you need to do is unplug your modem and you're good to go.

Credit card companies sell your data, too. You basically have to use cash and not have a cell phone.

Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#67
post #60
post #13

As someone that has spent a sizable amount of my career in ad products, the outrage here is kind of (sadly) funny. A conversion pixel? Hah, if you only had an idea of what the Facebook data faucet looked like in 2007-2017, your hairs would stand. Pretty sure they were breaking all kinds of PII laws.

What happened in 2017?

GDPR maybe

Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#68
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't know why you are upset that I'm stabbing you when I've been poisoning your all these years ha ha ha".

Not really accurate analogy. More like “you’re only finding out today that I’ve been poisoning you the entire time?”

pedantic

Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#69
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people who don’t know what’s happening can’t make informed choices. it's really distasteful how privacy advocates always assume that everybody who doesn't feel the same way they do is uninformed. the average person has a basic understanding that companies keep track of them online. everybody who's spent more than five minutes online without an adblocker understands retargeting. it's not that people don't understand,…

Informed or not, they were not allowed to give consent. No problem with people consenting to be tracked.

Please, no more annoying popups asking me if i want to accept cookies or be tracked. I am in the ‘do not care’ camp and i just want to be able to visit sites without having to click accept every time.

These consent banners are a false sense of privacy. People who “dont know” are most likely just going to give consent anyway. It’s the same thing as TOS consent.

Re: Why is there a TikTok tracking pixel on UberEats what is this crap?

#70
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they are criminal why would you use them? People don’t give money to scammers because they know their scammers. It’s the same with privacy issues, people who don’t know what’s happening can’t make informed choices.

>people who don’t know what’s happening can’t make informed choices. it's really distasteful how privacy advocates always assume that everybody who doesn't feel the same way they do is uninformed. the average person has a basic understanding that companies keep track of them online. everybody who's spent more than five minutes online without an adblocker understands retargeting. it's not that people don't understand,…

Yes, everyone knows. That's why there are people in this thread and others like it, on a website catering to highly technical people, who are surprised at how deep the tracking goes and what it is used for.

Surely then, the average person is much more informed!

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