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Companies must stop using Google Analytics

imy.se

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Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#61

Post by victorNicollet »

Pannoniae wrote: post #49
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Roll your own" is hubris, unless you have the time, energy, inclination, theoretical knowledge, etc; I wouldn't try and solve solved problems if you can help it. But, host your own is definitely recommended IMO; a lot of the GDPR issues are resolved if you just host your own, because no data is shared to a 3rd party. Then you only need to worry about getting some approval and data retention. I'm sure data retention…

I'm much more productive since I realised I don't have to use "standard" tools. It saves me so much time. With that being said, I don't make everything myself, but just the thought that I'm not obliged to use the best-practice standard solution to the problem is liberating to me and it makes me so much more productive in actually doing stuff.

Besides, even if you use the standard tool today, five years from now this will be "the tool that was standard five years ago" unless you actively migrate every so often. There are a few domains where the standard tools remain the same for a long while (Google Analytics being one), but often the standard tooling shifts more frequently than that.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#62

Post by LudvigHz »

j-a-a-p wrote: post #38
deofoo wrote: post #10

For those who look for an alternative https://plausible.io is a great replacement.

Great for plausible.io of course. But what is the difference for the end user? - GDPR: hosted in EU vs US, so your data is traveling less far. The things the plausible can do with the data is more or less the same. - No cookies: don't see the point of that tbh, they will probably perform even more invasive tricks like finger printing to replace the cookie requirement Bottom line, the website visitors data is still lo…

> they will probably perform even more invasive tricks like finger printing to replace the cookie requirement

It's clear you didn't even bother to look at plausibles data policy [1] before assuming what it does and doesn't collect. The TL;DR: it does not fingerprint, and it does not collect any identifiable information, be it about your device or your person.

> Bottom line, the website visitors data is still logged, stored and tracked - only now with a different actor.

Only basic device info is logged (not even IP addresses are stored). And it's very easy to self host so that different actor may be yourself.

[1]: https://plausible.io/data-policy#first-thing-first-what-we-c...

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#63

Post by Pannoniae »

vntok wrote: post #52
gsatic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unless you have the time, energy, inclination, theoretical knowledge Why does anyone need all that?

Because setting up useful analytics for almost any definition of "useful" is not a trivial "I could do this in a WE" project.

The better question is.... what analytics do you actually need? I don't think cross-page tracking of the user is something most websites need...

Useful information is more like, what users clicked, what platform did they use, how much time they spent on the website and things like that. Those aren't that hard to just track yourself.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#64

Post by znpy »

dijit wrote: post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

what you wrote is mostly true but also partially incorrect: many competencies are transferrable.

there are privacy-compliant products in that sense, unless you've been literally told "click here and click there" you should be able to employ old concepts with new tools.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#65

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

hamasho wrote: post #50

I've finally come to the conclusion that user tracking is generally a poor practices and should be regulated. As a web developer, I didn't see it as a big problem. We always do it to maximize ad revenue, find out where users leave to increase conversion rate, and simply to improve UX. But even when the intent is to improve UX, tracking is inappripriate. Imagine if a robot vacuum recorded videos of your home and uploa…

Advertising is the big gotcha here. What I think we need is for more and more companies to own their advertising rather than farming it out to third parties. We'd get better advertising AND it would be less intrusive.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#66

Post by piva00 »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #42
suddenclarity wrote: post #24

This case is about the old Analytics that was replaced with Google Analytics 4 in 2020. So they must stop using a version that Google definitely killed July 1 this year. There are arguments that GA4 would fail the same requirements. Denmark hold that view but it hasn't been tried. Their argument is that a EU-citizen that goes to Asia and visits a site there, will have his information sent to US servers and not EU ser…

The result is the balkanization of the internet, although most folks in the EU want that for nationalistic reasons and to prop up their own industries, under a thin veneer of opposing US imperialism (but being unable to do anything with respect to the things which actually threaten the EU, such as an over dependence on Russia.)

> although most folks in the EU want that for nationalistic reasons and to prop up their own industries

Sources for this extraordinary claim, please.

As an EU citizen I'm interested in the EU protecting my privacy, not for nationalistic reasons, not to prop up EU's industries. I care that my data isn't willy-nilly given away under some opaque mechanisms controlled by large corporations, because as many here on HN like to remind me: capitalism is amoral, this is some regulation instilling morals into the system.

I want to be aware and protected about where my data is being used, for what purposes, and I want to have the power to control how corporations can use my data, or if they can use it at all. This kind of data can be modeled into a version of what a system sees as "me", through the interactions I had with it, building a profile of what moves, and interests me, I want to be able to know and control who can know, and to what degree, who I am.

If you are against that, please explain why.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#67

Post by supriyo-biswas »

foepys wrote: post #51
supriyo-biswas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The result is the balkanization of the internet, although most folks in the EU want that for nationalistic reasons and to prop up their own industries, under a thin veneer of opposing US imperialism (but being unable to do anything with respect to the things which actually threaten the EU, such as an over dependence on Russia.)

I don't want my data in the hands of the NSA as much as you don't want yours in the hands of the BND, FSB, or the People's Liberation Army.

Fair enough, but this were actually the reason, simply adding a statement such as “if a non-EU member state wants to request data about an EU national and said data cannot be released to the law enforcement of the non-EU member without a MLAT being served to the EU national’s government” would have been enough. However, I don’t see that, and many Europeans do give “dominance of Americans” as the reason, so I simply go by the information available to me.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#68

Post by pelasaco »

happymellon wrote: post #32
Hamuko wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or if you're after free analytics, Cloudflare has something. Should be GDPR compliant since they don't use cookies or local storage.

GDPR has nothing to do with cookies or local storage. They are just mediums that are potentially impacted by GDPR. GDPR simply makes collecting personal data without consent illegal. This is why a lot of American centric sites block us from accessing them, they want your data, and they don't want to ask for it.

> This is why a lot of American centric sites block us from accessing them, they want your data, and they don't want to ask for it.

Or they just think that the costs to adapt their solution, or any law infringement implications don't worth the effort.

Re: Companies must stop using Google Analytics

#69

Post by pmontra »

dijit wrote: post #34

My sister-in-law (girlfriends brothers girlfriend, not that it matters) recently studied for a data analytics certification. Actually several. The entire course (located on here: https://medieinstitutet.se ) is based on Google Analytics. Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant, nobody would want to retrain for 6…

> Now her entire value is tied to the use of Google Analytics, she will almost certainly fight very hard to ensure that these skills remain relevant

Or this could be the right time to check one of the self hosted alternatives (Matomo, Snowplow, etc), apply what she learned about Google Analytics, learn how to do it on those systems and sell her skills on two different classes of customers: the ones that will keep using Google Analytics, the ones that will try alternatives, at least not to be fined if not out of genuine compliance with the local laws.

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