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Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

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Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#41

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

gleenn wrote: post #2

I'm all for blocking surveillance but how tiring is it to block JavaScript as suggested and then watch the majority of the internet not work?

Impossible to know because when I disable Javascript "the majority of the internet" works fine. As does a majority of the web.

I read HN and every site submitted to HN using TCP clients and a text-only browser, that has no Javascript engine, to convert HTML to text.

The keyword is "read". Javascript is not necessary for requesting or reading documents. Web developers may use it but that doesn't mean it is necessary for sending HTTP requests or reading HTML or JSON.

If the web user is trying to do something else other than requesting and reading, then perhaps it might not "work".

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#42

Post by throw123xz »

adamiscool8 wrote: post #28

I don't think this article makes a good case for why you should. >The more of us who incapacitate Google's analytics products and their support mechanism, the better. Not just for the good of each individual person implementing the blocks - but in a wider sense, because if enough people block Google Analytics 4, it will go the same way as Universal Google Analytics. These products rely on gaining access to the majori…

Analytics can have good uses, but these days it's mostly used to improve things for the operator (more sales, conversions, etc) and what's best for the website isn't always the best for the user. And so I block all that.

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#43

Post by cj »

genewitch wrote: post #32
chamomeal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now there’s a fun idea!! I wonder how difficult it would be to spoof events. Edit: looks like this might exist already: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

Since installing it on firefox on this computer (18 months ago or so) Ad Nauseam has clicked ~$38,000 worth of ads, that i never saw. Between this and "track me not" i've been fighting back against ads and connecting my "profile" with any habits since 2016 or so. I should also note i have pihole and my own DNS server upstream, so that's thiry-eight grand in ad clicks that got through blacklists . https://www.trackmen…

[Preface: I hate ads, I love uBlock origin, I use pihole, I'm a proponent of ad blockers]

I manage a Google Ads account with a $500,000 budget. That budget is spent on a mix of display ads, google search, and youtube ads.

If I knew that 10% of our budget was wasted on bot clicks, there's nothing I can do as an advertiser. We can't stop advertising... we want to grow our business and advertising is how you get your name out there. We also can't stop using Google Ads - where else would we go?

$38,000 in clicks boosts Google's revenue by $38k (Google ain't complaining). The only entity you're hurting are the advertisers using Google. Advertisers might see their campaigns performing less well, but that's not going to stop them from advertising. If anything, they'll increase budgets to counteract the fake bot clicks.

I really don't understand what Ad Nauseam is trying to achieve. It honestly seems like it benefits Google more than it hurts them. It directly hurts advertisers, but not enough that it would stop anyone from advertising.

Google has a system for refunding advertisers for invalid clicks. The $500k account that I manage gets refunded about $50/month in invalid clicks. I'm guessing if bot clicks started making a real dent in advertiser performance, Google would counter that by improving their bot detection so they can refund advertisers in higher volumes. If there's ever an advertiser-led boycott of Google Ads, Google would almost certainly respond by refunding advertisers for bot clicks at much higher rates.

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#44

Post by mlinsey »

aerzen wrote: post #20

Am I dumb or does this article fail to explain what does the tag manager actually do? And not just with a loaded word, such as surveillance or spying, but actually technically explain what they are selling for and why it is bad.

Google Tag Manager is a single place for you to drop in and manage all the tracking snippets you might want to add to your site. When I've worked on B2C sites that run a lot of paid advertising campaigns, the marketing team would frequently ask me to add this tracking pixel or another, usually when we were testing a new ad channel. Want to start running ads on Snapchat? Gotta ad the Snapchat tracker to your site to know when users convert. Now doing TikTok? That's another snippet. Sometimes there would be additional business logic for which pages to fire or not fire, and this would change more often. Sometimes it was so they could use a different analytics tool.

While these were almost always very easy tickets to do, they were just one more interruption for us and a blocker for the stakeholders, who liked to have an extremely rapid iteration cycle themselves.

GTM was a way to make this self-service, instead of the eng team having to keep this updated, and also it was clear to everyone what all the different trackers were.

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#45

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

roywiggins wrote: post #13
pluc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't. I've been blocking all JavaScript for years now, selectively allowing what is essential for sites to run or using a private session to allow more/investigate/discover. Most sites work fine without their 30 JS sources, just allowing what is hosted on their own domain. It takes a little effort, but it's a fair price to pay to have a sane Internet. The thing is - with everything - it's never easy to hav…

It's certainly not that bad if you have uMatrix to do it with, but I haven't found a reasonable way to do it on mobile. uMatrix does work on Firefox Mobile but the UI is only semi functional.

uMatrix is fully-functional on Nightly.

Using Firefox Add-Ons on a "smartphone" sucks because one has to access every Add-On interface via an Extensions menu.

In that sense _all_ Add-Ons are only semi-functional.

I use multiple layers: uMatrix + NetGuard + Nebulo "DNS Rules", at the least. Thus I have at least three opportunities where I can block lookups for and requests to Google domains.

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#46

Post by Finnucane »

xiande04 wrote: post #27
aerzen wrote: post #20

Am I dumb or does this article fail to explain what does the tag manager actually do? And not just with a loaded word, such as surveillance or spying, but actually technically explain what they are selling for and why it is bad.

There's a section in the article titled, "WHAT DOES GOOGLE TAG MANAGER DO?": > Whilst Google would love the general public to believe that Tag Manager covers a wide range of general purpose duties, it's almost exclusively used for one thing: surveillance.

the "general public" probably has no idea that Tag Manager is a thing that exists.

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#47

Post by mystified5016 »

cj wrote: post #43
genewitch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since installing it on firefox on this computer (18 months ago or so) Ad Nauseam has clicked ~$38,000 worth of ads, that i never saw. Between this and "track me not" i've been fighting back against ads and connecting my "profile" with any habits since 2016 or so. I should also note i have pihole and my own DNS server upstream, so that's thiry-eight grand in ad clicks that got through blacklists . https://www.trackmen…

[Preface: I hate ads, I love uBlock origin, I use pihole, I'm a proponent of ad blockers] I manage a Google Ads account with a $500,000 budget. That budget is spent on a mix of display ads, google search, and youtube ads. If I knew that 10% of our budget was wasted on bot clicks, there's nothing I can do as an advertiser. We can't stop advertising... we want to grow our business and advertising is how you get your na…

The point is to poison your ad tracking profile so that advertisers can't figure out who you are and what you'll buy.

No matter how secure your browser setup is, Google is tracking you. By filling their trackers with garbage, there's less that can personally identify you as an individual

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#48

Post by connicpu »

slow_typist wrote: post #36
9dev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean technically you can use it to manage HTML tags to inject into a site.

Well I can inject HTML tags (or elements) with native JavaScript. Or manage them. Why would I want a bloated third party piece of software doing that?

So that your sales and marketing team can add the third-party tracker for a new ad campaign service without bothering the engineering team.

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#49

Post by freeone3000 »

cj wrote: post #43
genewitch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since installing it on firefox on this computer (18 months ago or so) Ad Nauseam has clicked ~$38,000 worth of ads, that i never saw. Between this and "track me not" i've been fighting back against ads and connecting my "profile" with any habits since 2016 or so. I should also note i have pihole and my own DNS server upstream, so that's thiry-eight grand in ad clicks that got through blacklists . https://www.trackmen…

[Preface: I hate ads, I love uBlock origin, I use pihole, I'm a proponent of ad blockers] I manage a Google Ads account with a $500,000 budget. That budget is spent on a mix of display ads, google search, and youtube ads. If I knew that 10% of our budget was wasted on bot clicks, there's nothing I can do as an advertiser. We can't stop advertising... we want to grow our business and advertising is how you get your na…

Hopefully it puts my browsers on an bot blocklist, which then invalidates the tracking profile and eliminates targeted advertising entirely.

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#50

Post by [deleted] »

connicpu wrote: post #48
slow_typist wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I can inject HTML tags (or elements) with native JavaScript. Or manage them. Why would I want a bloated third party piece of software doing that?

So that your sales and marketing team can add the third-party tracker for a new ad campaign service without bothering the engineering team.

[deleted]
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