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The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

uk.businessinsider.com

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Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#21

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

throwaway900 wrote: post #10
troels wrote: post #8

Funny how the tone suggests that this is something malicious being done to the guardian.

It kind of is. The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story. As the article points out, the main beneficiary of this is Google - who are essentially competing with the Guardian for ad sales. I don't always agree with the Graun, but I believe in plurality rather than a Google-dominated world. Throwaway because of inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd.

> The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story ... inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd.

The privacy crowd are right; and so are you. This is a huge internal conflict the web today - how do you make it pay, keep it free and not have it track users?

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#22

Post by crdoconnor »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #21
throwaway900 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of is. The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story. As the article points out, the main beneficiary of this is Google - who are essentially competing with the Guardian for ad sales. I don't always agree with the Graun, but I believe in plurality rather than a Google-dominated world. Throwaway because of inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd.

> The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story ... inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd. The privacy crowd are right; and so are you. This is a huge internal conflict the web today - how do you make it pay, keep it free and not have it track users?

This presumes that 'keep it free' is actually desirable. Free journalism means the person reading it is the product. Perhaps the less of that, the better.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#23

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #21
throwaway900 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of is. The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story. As the article points out, the main beneficiary of this is Google - who are essentially competing with the Guardian for ad sales. I don't always agree with the Graun, but I believe in plurality rather than a Google-dominated world. Throwaway because of inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd.

> The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story ... inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd. The privacy crowd are right; and so are you. This is a huge internal conflict the web today - how do you make it pay, keep it free and not have it track users?

Pick two.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#24

Post by throwaway900 »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #21
throwaway900 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It kind of is. The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story. As the article points out, the main beneficiary of this is Google - who are essentially competing with the Guardian for ad sales. I don't always agree with the Graun, but I believe in plurality rather than a Google-dominated world. Throwaway because of inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd.

> The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story ... inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd. The privacy crowd are right; and so are you. This is a huge internal conflict the web today - how do you make it pay, keep it free and not have it track users?

Indeed. I think we need to be a bit more nuanced about what we ask for.

Simple referrer information is very valuable to the Guardian (and others who sell ads), and is in most circumstances not a significant privacy leak. Cross-site tracking via third-party cookies, however, has significant privacy implications.

I would like to see a user/advertiser understanding of "this far and no further". But unfortunately the debate is sufficiently polarised I can't see any change to the current situation, where the tech-savvy disable everything and the less experienced stick with their defaults, which effectively reduces it to an arms race between the big browser manufacturers and a handful of ad networks.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#25

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #23
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Guardian is funded by advertising and this limits their ad sales story ... inevitable downvotes from the privacy crowd. The privacy crowd are right; and so are you. This is a huge internal conflict the web today - how do you make it pay, keep it free and not have it track users?

Pick two.

It has been the "not track users" that has suffered; the other two have been picked.

The gist of this article is that users have found ways to not be tracked: this was inevitable, the person running the browser has a lot of control over what the browser sends and where.

So, that pick isn't working all the time any more.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#26

Post by viraptor »

randunel wrote: post #3

I built my personal extension which blocks all the traffic from Dan Pollock's list [1], then blocks all the traffic from major service providers (google analytics, etc) and social networks (fb, tw, google, etc) when not on their website. Referral and user agent headers removed, I haven't found the need to remove other headers. Currently working on preventing (and manually allowing) all xhr/script/image requests 2 sec…

Do you do anything about plugins sharing your fonts list? I found it to be the least known / most creepy way to identify a big number of users. Unfortunately i don't know of any extensions that would block that information.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#27

Post by DanBC »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #20

This is another reason why a lot of links to certain pages have the referral or campaign information hardcoded into their URLs, which removes the need for a referral header. I guess if the Guardian really wants that information they can make a deal with app publishers or Reddit or whoever to add a header like that. But on the other hand, given how it was the Guardian that published all of the original Snowden article…

> So the Guardian's a bit inconsistent here, On the one side they go "Big Brother is watching you!", on the other (in this article) they go "We're Big Brother and we can't see you anymore!"

Like spam it's only bad when other people are doing it.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#28

Post by higherpurpose »

anewhnaccount wrote: post #4

"""The Atlantic first identified "dark social" traffic back in 2012 to describe traffic coming messaging apps that had been stripped of referrer data because messaging and email use the secure "HTTPS" system rather than the open "HTTP" system used by web pages. Excuse me?! How does this trash get published?

How does any BusinessInsider trash get on the front page of HN would be the more relevant question.

Re: The Guardian Is Being Swamped with 'Dark Traffic'

#30

Post by ig1 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #20

This is another reason why a lot of links to certain pages have the referral or campaign information hardcoded into their URLs, which removes the need for a referral header. I guess if the Guardian really wants that information they can make a deal with app publishers or Reddit or whoever to add a header like that. But on the other hand, given how it was the Guardian that published all of the original Snowden article…

It's the difference between the person you're phoning recording the phone call and the telco doing it.
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