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Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

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Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#61

Post by aziaziazi »

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…

> 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.

GP fights agains ads, not Google. And not being able to win 100% of the gain shouldn’t restrain someone from taking action it they consider the win share worth the pain.

> $38,000 in clicks boosts Google's revenue by $38k

You should include costs here, and if (big if) a substantial part of the clicks comes from bots and get refunded, the associated cost comes on top of the bill. At the end the whole business is impacted. I agree 50/50k is a penny through.

> I hate ads […] I manage a Google Ads account

[no cynism here, I genuinely wonder] how do you manage your conscience, mood and daily motivation? Do you see a dichotomy in what you wrote and if so, how did you arrive to that situation? Any future plan?

I’m asking as you kind of introduce the subject but if you’re not willing to give more details that’s totally fine.

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#62

Post by reddalo »

1oooqooq wrote: post #11
rurban wrote: post #3

Just add the domain to your /etc/hosts as 0.0.0.0 Doing that for years

https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/

I feel like that document is seriously outdated.

This GitHub repo seems way more up-to-date: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#63

Post by dylan604 »

BurnerBotje wrote: post #22

I have an idea that another way of preventing being tracked is just massively spamming trash in the data layer object, pushing thousands of dollars worth of purchase events and such, pushing randomly generated user details and other such events. Perhaps by doing this your real data will be hard to filter out. A side effect is also that data becomes unreliable overall, helping less privacy aware people in the process.

I’d imagine that by this point in time, they are able to filter this specific type of noise out of the dataset. They have been tracking everyone for so long that I doubt there’s anyone they don’t know about whether directly of shadow profiles. These randomly generated users would just not match up to anything and would be fine to just drop

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#65

Post by TeMPOraL »

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…

> I really don't understand what Ad Nauseam is trying to achieve. It honestly seems like it benefits Google more than it hurts them.

Google is part of the problem, but they're neither the only ones nor best to target through bottom-up approaches.

> It directly hurts advertisers, but not enough that it would stop anyone from advertising.

You know the saying about XML - if it doesn't solve the problem, you are not using enough of it.

> there's nothing I can do as an advertiser. We can't stop advertising...

We know. The whole thing is a cancer[0], a runaway negative feedback loop. No single enlightened advertiser can do anything about it unilaterally. Which is why the pressure needs to go up until ~everyone wants change.

--

[0] - https://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2019-07-31-ads-as-cancer.html

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#66

Post by dylan604 »

pluc wrote: post #4
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?

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…

That’s my default as well. Self hosted/1st party scripts can load, but 3rd party scripts are blocked. The vast majority of sites work this way. If a site doesn’t work because they must have a 3rd party script to work, I tend to just close the tab. I really don’t feel like it has caused me to miss anything. There’s usually 8 other sites with the same data in a slightly less hostile site

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#68

Post by dylan604 »

michaelt wrote: post #60
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?

It depends. If you're spending 99% of your time on your favourite websites that you've already tuned the blocking on? Barely a problem. On the other hand if your job involves going to lots of different vendors' websites - you'll find it pretty burdensome, because you might end up fiddling with the per-site settings 15+ times per day.

If I’m at work using a work provided computer, I don’t bother with the blocking. They are not tracking me as I do not do anything as me. I’m just some corporate stooge employee that has no similarity to me personally.

My personal devices block everything I can get away with

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#69

Post by lazyeye »

reddalo wrote: post #62
1oooqooq wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/

I feel like that document is seriously outdated. This GitHub repo seems way more up-to-date: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Try pihole (self-hosted) or nextdns if you want something that stays up to date.

Re: Incapacitating Google Tag Manager (2022)

#70

Post by sneak »

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…

> I hate ads

> The only entity you're hurting are the advertisers using Google.

That’s fine. Advertising is cancer. Reducing advertisers’ ROI is good too.

You don’t hate ads if you’re spending $500k on them. You just hate receiving ads, which makes you hypocritical.

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