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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?

#181
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They don't have to run some weird JS, it's often just a 1px img with some query params loaded at the confirmation screen. In itself nothing annoying, the problem is how that data is combined with other data and profiling users.

I haven’t seen any codebase with an actual tracking pixel in my entire career. (11 years at this point) It’s always some massive javascript file doing God-knows-what on the page.

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

#182
post #128
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they know how their campaigns are doing -> they can target better and earn more money and in turn give you more discounts. So it’s just good karma to let them run the tiny js script which does no more harm than 100 other services running on your machine, which you never used either.

> they can target better

I don't want to be targetted.

> So it’s just good karma to let them run ...

No. It's my machine, not theirs, they don't get to use it to track me. Not one single cycle. It certainly isn't "good karma" to allow advertisers free reign like that, it's letting the fox loose in the hen-house.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Ads themselves might be fine to you (I disagree). Breaking privacy laws, spying on users, and dark patterns to trick user into "consent" is not.

Alas, the modern ad industry

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

#184
post #69
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> These consent banners are a false sense of privacy.

They are also a set of dark patterns. They annoy you so you just click OK, they make it sound like if you want to opt out you're the unreasonable one, and they hide the options as best they can. Sometimes they hide them entirely.

If they weren't intent on tracking and reselling that data, they wouldn't need to ask. They don't need to have these dialogues, that is their choice.

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

#185
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We used to have access to individual demographic data for breaking down your analytics and ad targeting, as well as being able to target users based on their specific email address or phone number. We could also target your friends. From memory this has now all been rolled up into cohort demographics and 'look-a-like' audiences so you can no longer break your data down by specific users demographic attributes or targ…

That's... not that interesting? At least not on the Facebook side of things. Why shouldn't I be able to advertise to people who have recently marked themselves as married, or who liked the Yankees facebook page?

You should be able to advertise to people that are Yankee fans on facebook, but you shouldn't be able to get John Doe's email address from the Yankees fan club directory (not on facebook) and directly target them with ads if they have zero relationship to your business.

You also shouldn't be able to upload a list of email addresses, target your ads to them, and then use Facebook's analytics to see how many of those people have divorces or an investment property via the segmentation analysis. Depending on how small that list is, a lot of that data starts getting very specific to an individual.

Facebook obviously also thought you shouldn't be able to do this since now you can't. Everything is now cohort and look-alikes.

Additionally your acting like Facebook is only putting you in the ‘recently married’ bucket if you marked yourself as married. Facebook is smarter than that, they are putting you in these buckets based on your messages, instagram activity, and browsing behaviour, not necessarily based on public information you expose in your profile.

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

#186
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I am ready for my hairs to stand up. What did the data faucet contain?

Not OP, but somewhere around 2010 I tinkered with creating a game for Facebook. I signed up for a developer account, spent some time with the docs and built a toy app. It was a straightforward call to get info about the user, including name, email, interests, etc. Their friends list. Info about all their friends, including all the same details. And so on. There was a EULA where the developer had to promise to delete…

This is all true, but to get that data you had to run an app on Facebook. To my recollection, you could not grab this level of data with a Facebook JavaScript tag on 3rd party websites. Facebook offered this data on-platform to convince organizations to drive their audiences to Facebook.com instead of their own site.

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

#187
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.

I used to tell people if they know how ad tech worked it would be banned tomorrow.

I doubt it's on FB during that period though?

I would guess though that a bunch of health tech sent (perhaps accidentally just not understanding) a bunch of patient data though. Seems they are the responsible party.

There's been other examples beyond FB of 'auto track' too. devs just don't know or forget to turn it off.

Not to mention for some reason at that time putting a FB like button on all the porn. Who clicks that?!?!

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

#188
post #24
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. This needs to be criminalized. Not liking a good or service is one thing. Having things done to you or your information without consent for the purpose of spying on you is stalking with extra steps. Many of these companies still deprive you of your privacy even without using their services by developing shadow profiles on you.

This is an image that loads from a different host. Neither of these companies will create a shell profile if you never visit them. If they are criminal why would you use them?

>This is an image that loads from a different host.

False. It's a pixel. It's not visible to the user from whom its existence and purpose is being deliberately concealed.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re giving Meta a break with best intention operation. I really think web tracking is much more nefarious than you are giving credit to.

I really don’t understand the goal with vague statements like this that can’t even provide even the slightest hint of specifics. What specific data? Even a single example would make this anecdote useful.

[deleted]

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

#190
post #156
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I am ready for my hairs to stand up. What did the data faucet contain?

We used to have access to individual demographic data for breaking down your analytics and ad targeting, as well as being able to target users based on their specific email address or phone number. We could also target your friends. From memory this has now all been rolled up into cohort demographics and 'look-a-like' audiences so you can no longer break your data down by specific users demographic attributes or targ…

>- Ethnicity - Life events - Politics - Pages (so other businesses) they had liked

The above, is all frowned up (for the record, I 100% agree) what is interesting is, our civilization has evolved to frown up the above "categorizing" of people, but from that list (only ethnicity) is not "choose able" by the person.

I.e I can mostly choose when I get married and to whom and which party I support but I def cannot choose my race. Yet the above is all considered 'equally bad'.

Just something I noticed.

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