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Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

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Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#51

Post by r_singh »

askafriend wrote: post #48
pipermerriam wrote: post #40

There are a number of comments here who seem genuinely happy about this. This is a perspective that is hard for me to understand, largely because I'm strongly in the pro-privacy, anti-tracking ideology. So if you are part of the group who sees this as a good thing, I'm genuinely interested to understand why you see this as a good thing and whether you view the mass surveillance of the general public by advertising co…

Targeted ads have helped small businesses and indie brands thrive. Previously, only large brands and national/multi-national corporations could afford to advertise at scale and reach customers through TV/Radio/Newspapers (that too with a high minimum spend). Now your local mom and pop bakery could have a spend as low as $100 a month to reach their customers and help drive their business. The world is not black and wh…

While this is completely true, it is worth noting that a huge majority of the $100 ads that are marketed as the channel that enable small businesses to "thrive" are Facebook or Google ads, and they are professionals at confusing these business owners with vanity metrics, payment / pricing models, constraints on packages, etc (and this is just from the buyers side, these cos have massive leverage on the publishers' end as well).

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#52

Post by alehul »

soared wrote: post #11

Author failed to do any research, instead of going for the typical "FB is doing something secretive and cryptic" angle. Related links that explain this: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/facebook-attribution-... https://marketingland.com/facebook-attribution-now-available... https://old.reddit.com/r/adops/comments/9pycuk/facebook_atti... This hn thread is a perfect example of a news bubble. Googling "fbclid" ret…

Small nitpick, but I believe you meant "instead going for," which has the opposite meaning of "instead of going for."

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#53

Post by al_chemist »

eveningcoffee wrote: post #49
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineer here: I used to be completely anti-tracking. Then, I started needing analytics for my own business. Without analytics, I wouldn't be able to sell with efficiency, and therefore, I wouldn't have a business. Granted, the anti-consumerist in me thinks maybe as a society we shouldn't be so concerned with our efficiency to sell. But, we live in a capitalist world, and I don't see that changing any time soon. The…

TL;DR version: I like tracking now because it now makes money for me.

As in "I was against child labour, but then I've inherited textile factory in China and paying adult wages is not efficient".

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#54

Post by danShumway »

lolc wrote: post #5

So they're modifying URL? Facebook is breaking things. But sure, they've run the numbers and decided they don't care. Browsers will now have to resort to removing query parameters to prevent tracking. And websites should really use click-to-enable sharing buttons to prevent Facebook from snooping on everything.

I understand being upset about the tracking aspect, but attaching query params to a link isn't breaking anything. Of all the ways Facebook could have implemented something like this, I actually prefer it this way. Query params are easy for me and other adblockers to strip off. Imagine if they were messing with request headers or something that was harder to notice or change.

An incredibly small number of sites might already be using `fbclid` internally, and an even smaller number won't be able to update their sites.

I am totally on board the don't-break-the-web train, but this just doesn't seem like a problem to me. Maybe once stats come out we'll see that it's a bigger issue, but... I kinda doubt it.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#55

Post by teaneedz »

pipermerriam wrote: post #40

There are a number of comments here who seem genuinely happy about this. This is a perspective that is hard for me to understand, largely because I'm strongly in the pro-privacy, anti-tracking ideology. So if you are part of the group who sees this as a good thing, I'm genuinely interested to understand why you see this as a good thing and whether you view the mass surveillance of the general public by advertising co…

My guess that it's the Facebook employees, advertisers and marketing people who like this.

There's a flawed belief that it's necessary. UX on the other hand suggests otherwise. AdTech is not concerned with UX though and tries to wrap targeting in some kind of pseudo user benefit—spin.

Good products and services sell even without tracking. Advertising is an economic powerhouse though and will always push for anti-UX trends because it fundamentally runs polar opposite to the user experience.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#56

Post by patrickyeon »

danShumway wrote: post #54
lolc wrote: post #5

So they're modifying URL? Facebook is breaking things. But sure, they've run the numbers and decided they don't care. Browsers will now have to resort to removing query parameters to prevent tracking. And websites should really use click-to-enable sharing buttons to prevent Facebook from snooping on everything.

I understand being upset about the tracking aspect, but attaching query params to a link isn't breaking anything. Of all the ways Facebook could have implemented something like this, I actually prefer it this way. Query params are easy for me and other adblockers to strip off. Imagine if they were messing with request headers or something that was harder to notice or change. An incredibly small number of sites might…

I got caught this weekend where I linked an image on Facebook, and it generated the preview properly but the link is broken because the host 404's with the added fbclid parameter.

I entered: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Byv5uWSIIAEf38C.jpg

Facebook made: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Byv5uWSIIAEf38C.jpg?fbclid=IwAR2...

So sure, there may be an argument that the server should ignore that param. But it's absolutely false to say it "isn't breaking anything".

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#57

Post by gotocake »

askafriend wrote: post #48
pipermerriam wrote: post #40

There are a number of comments here who seem genuinely happy about this. This is a perspective that is hard for me to understand, largely because I'm strongly in the pro-privacy, anti-tracking ideology. So if you are part of the group who sees this as a good thing, I'm genuinely interested to understand why you see this as a good thing and whether you view the mass surveillance of the general public by advertising co…

Targeted ads have helped small businesses and indie brands thrive. Previously, only large brands and national/multi-national corporations could afford to advertise at scale and reach customers through TV/Radio/Newspapers (that too with a high minimum spend). Now your local mom and pop bakery could have a spend as low as $100 a month to reach their customers and help drive their business. The world is not black and wh…

Even ignoring the morality, this is all ultimately driving the adoption of ad blocking. Advertising online is an industry digging its own grave, which would be fine except they’re going to bury a lot of those small and indie sites with them.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#58

Post by patrickyeon »

This is breaking some links. You might believe it "shouldn't", and a server "should" ignore the added params, but the reality is it's breaking them. This past weekend, I posted a link to an image on Facebook, and FB generated the preview fine, but created a link that 404's.

My link: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Byv5uWSIIAEf38C.jpg

Facebook made: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Byv5uWSIIAEf38C.jpg?fbclid=IwAR2...

I guess if FB really wants, they could make a second fetch to ensure that their added params don't break the third party server. Or could they add a whitelist of domains that use their first-party tracking?

I really don't like the end result right now, looking like "the web works" from inside FB, but not when you try to follow this link out of it. I don't believe at all that that is FB's intent here, but it's just one more time that some silo breaks another part of the ecosystem, and to an untrained eye it looks like the third party is the culprit.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#59

Post by jphalimi »

kageneko wrote: post #23
berbec wrote: post #2

I can see urls eventually being thousands of characters long with referral links daisy chained.

I use Neat URL[0] with Firefox to strip things like that from URLs. 0: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/neat-url/

Do you know if the rewrite happens before a user clicks a link? If it happens after, the data ends up actually being sent out to their server...

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#60

Post by lolc »

tomnipotent wrote: post #33
lolc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time I read about UTM. It looks like those parameters are used to track ad campaigns. They provide metrics over which campaign works best. The "fbclid" parameters on the other hand seems intended to track individual clicks. That is, Facebook wants to keep tracking individuals when they follow links to off-site pages.

It's no different than what every other major player is already doing, they're just now catching up.

I'm not aware of this, but maybe I'm behind the curve? Are you saying that if somebody posts a link on Twitter, that link gets a tracking-parameter appended when people click through? Ar what is it they ar all doing?
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