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Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

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Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#321
post #270
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fight against it by refusing to use these websites? If you can't do this, perhaps because a big _majority_ of users don't care enough to support this kind of ecosystem shift, what makes you think a majority of voters would support this? (And if not, why would you want to force your view on them?) It's like legislating that people should only listen to Good Music and eat Healthy Food, as defined by some people…

Part of the job of lawmakers is, intriguingly enough, deciding what’s good for voters. This would be among those things. Would voters vote for this specific law? Probably not. But they probably wouldn’t vote out the representatives who wrote it either. And arguably privacy needs to be protected for the good of society.

I'm not sure about this notion of the 'good of society'.

If you believe that the 'good of society' is not what voters want, why bother with democracy at all?

(Slightly besides the point: I actually do agree that people behave like idiots at the ballot booth and don't know what is good for them in this context.

Luckily, people tend to be much more savvy when voting with their wallets or their feet. And as a society we would be well advised to encourage these latter two.

Eg by taking subsidiarity serious, and pushing as much decision making as possible to as local a unit as possible. Don't decide stuff at federal level, when the states can handle it. Don't let the states handle, what the counties can handle. Don't let counties handle, what the municipalities can handle. Don't let municipalities handle what people can do privately on their own.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

By pushing authority down the stack, you make the act of moving between states or even just cities so much more powerful and expressive.)

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#322

Disclaimer: I am a data analyst. I consult companies in regards to ethical data collection. But I also know of black sheep. I don't have a problem with websites measuring what I view, click, add to cart or buy. I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. And if they do marketing I even want them to be able to see from which source of traffic (aka marketing effort) how many conversions…

How effective is tracking in increasing user experience over less invasive techniques, e.g. like asking users?

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#323
post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it safe to assume you've never had to deal with those downright malevolent dark patterns and button labyrinths, designed to make it extremely unlikely for anyone in the general population to actually reject tracking?

Don't blame the lawmaker for the bad behaviour of people who are trying to bypass it... If you're on such website, you know that the website itself shouldn't be trusted.

the laws are teethless if they are not enforced, and playing hot potatoe with responsibilities like is the case with Max Schrems makes it all laughable.

dont blame the lawmaker for participants bad behaviour?

well, ok. allright.

but i DO blame the responsible authorities for licking the misbehaving participants' boots

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#324
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current GTM, configured (via the server UI) to inject tracker X: gtm javascript loads, pulls down the config, injects tracker X javascript into the browser new gtm: gtm javascript loads, pulls down config, streams events to google servers to fan out to tracker X as configured So blocking gtm.js off tagmanager.google.com / www.googletagmanager.com / the various other domains still blocks all gtm injected tags. The tl;…

This is not how GTM server side works. There is not a single call to Google domains from the client, when GTM server side is set up to its fullest. The config (gtm.js) will be loaded from my subdomain and not googletagmanager.com. Also gtm.js can be renamed.

Per the docs here [1], that is not true. You continue to load gtag.js off the googletagmanager.com domain; subsequent events can flow to a custom domain.

[1] https://developers.google.com/tag-platform/tag-manager/serve...

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#325
post #301

Disclaimer: I am a data analyst. I consult companies in regards to ethical data collection. But I also know of black sheep. I don't have a problem with websites measuring what I view, click, add to cart or buy. I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. And if they do marketing I even want them to be able to see from which source of traffic (aka marketing effort) how many conversions…

> I want them to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of user experience. That's not what they're doing, at all. They want to be able to see what doesn't work in terms of maximising profits. That may correlate with good user experience sometimes, but more often it results in the opposite.

Exactly! A company's goal is profit and most of the time, that does not align with the customer's goals. Amazon's goal is to sell me the highest margin item, I want the best value or highest quality.

I have very limited information about which items are a good value or high quality, so why should amazon have the tools to most effectively steer me towards high-margin items? They exist to provide us a service and we grant them the right to make a small % of profit while doing it. Not the other way around!

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are solutions to most of that, e.g. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/consent-o-matic/md...

This is more of a workaround. A solution to a poliical problem is political, not technical.

i would call it societal; society still needs to grasp in what way they are being exploited. it's still not clear to most people

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#327
post #259
post #25

God damn... this is it, this is the end-game. There's no way to fight this unless you customize and maintain blocking scripts for each individual website. Yes, websites could always have done this, but the REST (CDN-bypassing) requests' cost and the manual maintenance for the telemetry endpoints and storage was an impediment that Google just gives them a drop-in solution for :( I think Google is happy to eat some of…

I don’t think the solution here is a technical one. This should just be solved by legislation. Google Analytics has been recently ruled illegal in multiple European countries. And either this already is illegal under the same laws or it should be made so.

I suspect this might end up as a slightly trickier scenario because when you get down to the details it’s hard at a technical level to make a distinction between a server log file and a tool like analytics which takes those same bits of data and mostly just organises and displays it in an intuitive way with charts and a nice UI.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are solutions to most of that, e.g. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/consent-o-matic/md...

Those are (nice) solutions to a problem that shouldn't be allowed to (legally) exist. The industry shouldn't be allowed to play clever with the ways to coerce their users into giving up their information just because they know that most of those users are not interested in navigating difficult dialogs.

They shouldn't be allowed, and they aren't allowed. Actually the new digital services act [0] is shaping up to clarify these, but IIRC there have also been first cases decided in courts.

[0]: https://edri.org/our-work/the-eu-parliament-takes-strong-sta...

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#329
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not how GTM server side works. There is not a single call to Google domains from the client, when GTM server side is set up to its fullest. The config (gtm.js) will be loaded from my subdomain and not googletagmanager.com. Also gtm.js can be renamed.

Couldn't you still recognize the script by its content?

No because the script contents can change from site to site. Maintaining an index for every site would get you closer, but individual sites can trivially tweak things to break fingerprinting as often as they want. Even on every request.

Re: Google Tag Manager, the new anti-adblock weapon (2020)

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> privacy rights given to us by law (eg in the EU) > As a EU citizen, i hope that our ineffectual administration at least tries to fight this somehow. Of course, there is little hope. GDPR is thanks to the EU and I wouldn’t say it has no effect. It seems like you’re contradicting yourself with these two paragraphs.

GDPR has been a massive win for user/consumer rights. Its a piece of legislation law makers in the US are trying to mimic. Surprisingly the UK are trying to rid or weaken GDPR significantly after brexit. The only way to fix this problem now is through strong legislation.

US law makers are trying to mimic GDPR?

are you certain? would be certainly nice, but i dont believe there is a majority in the US that would support such a change. I mean there are probably more individual people interested in doing that than not, but I bet in comparison there are more individual $$$ being invested in keeping data privacy laws as lax as possible

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