Who wants to be tracked? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#51

Post by arendtio » Thu, May 18, 2023, 8:58 AM UTC

davedx wrote: post #41

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #12

Better question here is, why is this not handled through the browser instead of relying on individual web apps to do it. Block third party cookies by default, delete other cookies on the last tab or window closed and prompt user to save cookies on a form submit ("do not delete cookies for this domain when leaving" type of prompt, for pages with logins, settings, etc). Also remove features that make easy fingerprintin…

Because the most popular browser is made by an AdTech company

To be fair, I think it was Microsoft who killed the DNT header by enabling it by default.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#52

Post by quickthrower2 » Thu, May 18, 2023, 8:59 AM UTC

kmlx wrote: post #37

quickthrower2 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My violin is probably small-medium sized for this problem. You can talk to your users in person and ask them, or poll them via email. Do usability tests etc. I guess it just costs more. Other industries have to do this, they can't just default-spy on their customers.

> You can talk to your users in person and ask them doesn't scale. > poll them via email doesn't work. > default-spy on their customers analytics is not spying.

you don't need scale, you need good data

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#53

Post by sundvor » Thu, May 18, 2023, 9:00 AM UTC

Related: 99.999% of users don't read T&C's, so why do consent checkboxes exist?

(I made the number up, but I'd be very surprised if I am off by magnitudes).

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#54

Post by SanderNL » Thu, May 18, 2023, 9:00 AM UTC

TekMol wrote: post #15

I have switched one of my sites to cookieless analytics and it is bad for everybody. I can't even say how many users this site has now. It could be the same user coming back over and over. Or many users. How would I know. Yes, I could track a ton of stats about every pageview like user agent, screen resolution etc and then try to stitch it back together. Trying to figure out how many different users there are. But th…

This is similar to law enforcement saying: "You mean we cannot track everything you say and do. How in the world are we supposed to do our jobs safely and efficiently?" Answer is, you basically can't. Not safely and not (as) efficiently. Because the world will turn dystopian and will destroy the very thing we are trying to create/maintain. (Happiness, etc)

It's nice to be able to A/B test your blog or product. It's cool and efficient, but it also hurts and to me that hurt outweighs your company's marginal benefits although it is a nuanced and difficult discussion to be fair. I'm being simplistic here to make the point clear. I hope.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#55

Post by yason » Thu, May 18, 2023, 9:01 AM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #12

Better question here is, why is this not handled through the browser instead of relying on individual web apps to do it. Block third party cookies by default, delete other cookies on the last tab or window closed and prompt user to save cookies on a form submit ("do not delete cookies for this domain when leaving" type of prompt, for pages with logins, settings, etc). Also remove features that make easy fingerprintin…

I might be wrong but I think the EU regulation that forced these cookie acceptance forms―I can't remember if it was GDPR or some earlier directive―specifically required that the consent submission may not be automated so that the browser can be configured to accept everything.

It may have had good intentions as entities such as Microsoft would just set their browsers to default to accept all cookies anyway and a marginal group of people would know how to turn it off and even they couldn't still be sure if a proprietary browser still accepts and sends cookies without just telling the user.

So as usual the good intentions have turned into a cat-and-mouse game in the technical, grassroot realm. There are browser extensions that will just kill these consent dialogs automatically and websites try (luckily, not very hard so far), to work around the kill scripts. Everybody suffers.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#56

Post by kruuuder » Thu, May 18, 2023, 9:03 AM UTC

MaxikCZ wrote: post #20

barbs wrote: post #7

Is there a browser extension to turn these off?

uBlock origin with appropriate filter turner on.

You still have to find filter lists that work though. I use uBlock origin and frequently run into problems where cookie popups are half-blocked - the dialog is no longer visible, but I still cannot interact with or scroll the website. To work around that, I have to deactivate uBlock's cosmetic filters so that I can see the dialog again, then deny cookies. Pretty annoying, I haven't found a setup that fixes that.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#57

Post by austinjp » Thu, May 18, 2023, 9:03 AM UTC

kmlx wrote: post #34

pelorat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need to know anything but hits/month and ad-revenue/month? Why don't you just hash the IP-address and count unique users that way?

that's easy: to improve the service.

This is the generic reason that is always given, but I don't think I've ever seen exactly how the service will be improved and why cookies (or any uniquely-identifying data) are the only way to achieve the desired outcomes.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#58

Post by gsatic » Thu, May 18, 2023, 9:04 AM UTC

Cause the prob being solved by search rankings, newsfeeds, maps etc is info overload. People forget that all the time.

There is too much info out there. Context about the user shrinks the ever growing info sphere.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#59

Post by charcircuit » Thu, May 18, 2023, 9:04 AM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #12

Better question here is, why is this not handled through the browser instead of relying on individual web apps to do it. Block third party cookies by default, delete other cookies on the last tab or window closed and prompt user to save cookies on a form submit ("do not delete cookies for this domain when leaving" type of prompt, for pages with logins, settings, etc). Also remove features that make easy fingerprintin…

>why is this not handled through the browser instead of relying on individual web apps to do it.

Websites want you to explicitly reject consent for using your data. There are many untrustworthy places on the internet, so trustworthy places want to explicitly ask because they don't want the user to reject consent to them just because they are being lumped with the other sites.

Now if you had a browser setting that gave consent by default and allowed users to deny consent that is something that would reduce the need of sites constantly asking you for consent. But any attempt to automatically reject consent is just going to result in sites asking for consent via another channel. See what happened to the do not track header when you try and lump all sites together.

Re: Who wants to be tracked?

#60

Post by arendtio » Thu, May 18, 2023, 9:05 AM UTC

Does someone know why it is legal that in some countries websites are allowed to offer layers that offer a paid version and a tracking enabled version (very popular among newspapers)?

As far as I understand the GDPR, there should be no downside to rejecting the tracking technologies. And Websites relying on advertising, could do so with unpersonalized ads (granted with very different metrics).

Nevertheless, to me it feels, like these paid vs tracked offers are not what the authors of the GDPR intended.