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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?

#191
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.

The amount of client-side JavaScript code that inconspicuous Like button loads is unnerving.

Doesn't matter much. Now it'll just happen server side where the server sends the same types of data directly to facebook. See the facebook CAPI. Basically a server side implementation of DataLayer and such...

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

#192
post #84
post #51

Just in general look at those cookie consent dialogs at any site living on advertising or using it and really see the insanity of number of partners... That should show that we might actually need to burn it all down...

Just install uBlock on your friends and families browsers. Most people seems fine with being tracked if that means they get "offers" they don't want to miss. I however detest anything connected to advertisement to the level that I frequently hang up when our own sales people call me because I directly spot a salesperson, even before I recognize the voice... Quite embarrasing sometimes :-) So I install uBlock, uMatrix…

To add: the iPhone has no adblocker BUT nextdns gets rid of all ads on my non jailbroken iPhones. Except YouTube. So I don’t use the YT app.

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

#193
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,…

> it's really distasteful how privacy advocates always assume that everybody who doesn't feel the same way they do is uninformed

The problem with pervasive user tracking and surveillance capitalism is that is impossible to be informed. No user has any idea what happens to their data once it gets collected by a 3rd party, and there is zero way for them to know who has it now, how accurate that data is, or how it will be leveraged against them.

Increasingly the data being taken from us in secret is used in far reaching ways. It's not just about what ad gets pushed at us, but it's how much we pay for things, how long you wait on hold, what a company will tell you their policies are, what jobs you are offered, etc.

While you might find it distasteful, I can tell you that you yourself don't understand what data has been collected about you, who has it now, or what impacts it will have on your life and your future. You can't make an informed choice about what services to use because you aren't even allowed to know what the costs are, or will be. Jjust like how nobody who uses ubereats had any idea that data was being secretly collected by tiktoc or what it will be used for.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ads are fine You work for Google; of course you find them fine.

This comment adds little more than name calling. Can ads be annoying? Yes. So is paying money for the things you enjoy. Very few online businesses have been able to find a business model that does not amount to selling ads or selling links. Some people find ads more intrusive than others but personally I find paywalls to be much more of a nuisance than seeing a banner ad. If free as in beer comes at the cost of heari…

Ads aren't just annoying, they're often malicious and downright dangerous. Linking to apps with 0 click subscriptions, illegal porn or with recurring card payments and banking trojans. God forbid you're in the crypto space, every fucking ad is a scam or malicious, people lose their whole life savings to scams pushed through Google ads every day and there is no easy way to stop them. I run an ad blocker because Google is useless at stopping illegal scams and has been for a very long time. Google should have a policy to ban any crypto services name from adwords unless the ad is from verified from the service the word is about. It's not rocket science, but it'd hit the bottom line so until then eat adblock.

I've been a victim of google's vastly inadequate ad vetting on at least three occasions and I'm pretty savvy.

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

#196
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of people talk in broad strokes because if you use their marketing platforms you can see exactly what data is being mined. You can posit their ideological, political, and personal stances. Their friends, family, and pay more to reach people that are shown to influence them. You can choose their region, their income, their habits, hobbies, and kinks. You can quickly create an account and look at their self-serve…

Additionally, there are different means to the same end, so being vague is keeping the discussion focused by keeping it about the general practice instead offering details that could easily derail into unproductive commentary. The ad firms probably move things around all the time, but the gist of it is, if you browser requests a resource from a server with a little metadata, god knows what’s being done with that from there.

The ubiquity of user tracking is extremely useful yet culturally absurd. Now that’s ambiguous ;)

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

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. Really? I thought Apple's newly-implemented ATT was exactly what made attribution impossible for things like app store purchases.

https://webkit.org/blog/8943/privacy-preserving-ad-click-att...

This is the specific thing I'm referring to.

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

#198

Protip: if user privacy is a concern to you, then not supporting these companies (by handing them your data) is a good place to start.

Not handing your data to companies will result in poor data and bad decisions on their end, which is bad for them and the customers.

What's super idiotic in all this is that the "data companies bad" is often spread by the very companies which would rather have data themselves than their competitors.

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

#199
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hah, if you only had an idea of what the Facebook data faucet looked like in 2007-2017, your hairs would stand. 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. Instead it feels more like a brag. “I know something but I’m not telling” but in this case the comment…

It’s pretty straightforward and no secret. All those “share on Facebook” widgets you used to see everywhere are also tracking users. Since they’re embedded into basically every site ever, and each hit to the widget goes to facebook.com (so your browser helpfully sends their cookie along with it), that means Facebook knows who you are and what sites you visit without your consent or intervention, and uses that to sell…

Reminds me last week I was looking at parts on a chip makers website and wondering why page updates were taking so long. It's because at work facebook is blocked.

Frankly I do not know why corporations don't block facebook as a security risk. Seriously that stuff is bleeding info on what your employees are up to.

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

#200
post #134
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.

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

Any developer can still send almost any data they want into FB to track basically anything.

'offline conversion' still allows you to send in names, age, bday, gender, etc for matching, IP, UA.

Though now it's hashed before going to FB.

And you can pass almost whatever custom data you want in. So I can in my industry optimize for a long term political donor, or potentially an early vote. Or someone accidentally sends in 'this person bought hepatitis meds'

This still exists despite what someone below said, unless I'm totally missing or misunderstanding something.

However it is not as valuable, and shrinking audience able to do deliver to because of iOS restrictions. And likely with Chrome too eventually

FB used to have more detailed interest/demographic buckets to target that they supplied. Used to be able to type in basically anything from what someone likes ___ very niche page to engages liberal political. There are still interests but there are fewer of those 'sensitive' ones. Still lots of stuff like works at ___. of course age, gender, geo.

But more fine grained interest targeting seems like going away pretty soon it's just going to be broad demographics.

The ROI is just not as good without iOS fine grained targeting FB is having to do a bunch of tricks with AI/modeling to try and make it perform but it's not as good.

I'm for targeted advertising. I think what iOS is doing is uncompetitive and bad.

But I do think there should be some sensible regulation. Like no healthcare or sensitive topic data (LGBTQ, dating, etc).

** ADDITION sorry this is long but one additional thing I think people also confusing the ad product with the old FB api.

The old FB api was an absolute sieve you could get basically any data a person has on their profile and also their friend's data. This is what happened with Cambridge Analytics.

All that has been shut down even login with fb they are way more strict about actually testing sites etc

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