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Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

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Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#61

Post by DelightOne »

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…

Until the 100$ run out and the ad service starts marketing the competition.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#62

Post by kiallmacinnes »

patrickyeon wrote: post #56
danShumway wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I guess this makes sense. The request contained something the server didn't understand, and wasn't expecting, so returning a 404 seems sane.

After all, as a developer, it's my site - I choose the URLs (including the query strings) which are valid and acceptable to me.

I wonder how many sites other than Twitter are rejecting requests with unknown query parameters?

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#63

Post by amelius »

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.

> Without analytics, I wouldn't be able to sell with efficiency, and therefore, I wouldn't have a business.

I guess your summary is about right.

> we live in a capitalist world, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

We were living in a capitalist world two decades ago, and we didn't have a significant amount of tracking back then. If you are concerned about your competition using tracking, then just try to make a better product.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#64

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

al_chemist wrote: post #53
eveningcoffee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The point I was trying to make is: before I worked in the growth team at several mid-sized startups, I had this naive assumption that tracking data was basically the food for an evil monster.

I had this idea of an evil group of people getting together everyday and looking at this data and somehow using it to puppet my entire online-life.

Sure, this group of people exists at every decent sized online company, and sure they're trying to get you to spend more time and money on their site/app/whatever, and sure this tracking data helps them.

Sure, SOME of these websites are peddling fake news or selling scams or preying on the poor/unfortunate/uneducated/etc. But I think that's the exception, not the norm.

Most successful companies make a product people genuinely like. There are millions of people that would buy and enjoy this product if they knew about it. Most companies are just trying to use this tracking data to get their product in front of as many of those people as they can, and as few people that don't want their product. They're trying to fine-tune their messaging to make sure it appeals to the people that actually like their product. They're trying to use it to figure out how to BETTER make a product people actually want!

Again, if you're saying that increasing our efficiency in sales is a bad thing, you're saying that capitalism is bad. But I've just come to see this data as something that enables product evolution to occur much faster. I see this data as something that's helping the world, mostly, get more of what it wants.

Like everyone says, Capitalism is the worst economic system, except all the others we've tried.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#65

Post by 8ytecoder »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #44
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…

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…

I'd be completely ok with intent based advertising - I search for $X you show ads that are related to $X. And I'm ok with measuring what percentage of those who click the ad that converts as well. However, that's not where we are today. The appetite for marketing and advertisement has grown to such a level that companies like Facebook want to know every aspect of your life so they can satisfy that appetite. Clearly a) there's a demand from companies big and small and b) it's working. Companies can still be ethical about it - like why should Facebook track every URL I visit (via the Like button)? Or, why not provide an option to opt-out of targeted ads - I don't like them and I do have friends who like them. I get it but provide an option to opt out.

The general retort I hear is what do you have to hide? Like the only thing that people want to hide are the bad and evil stuff.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#66

Post by mtkd »

patrickyeon wrote: post #58

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 i…

I had a quick look at the protocol but couldn't see anything on handling that case

Regardless of the protocol - it's not unreasonable to return a 422 or 403 by default for that (malformed) request when first seen - as it would indicate that something sketchy may be going on - which can be whitelisted later

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#67

Post by drusepth »

gotocake wrote: post #57
askafriend wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think ads inherently promote ad blocking, but you're right: this specific instance of an ad breaking links and lowering the quality of other sites does indeed promote a culture of ad blocking (if they can remove the fbclid param?).

I don't see any indication that advertising online is an industry digging its own grave. On the contrary, the increase in quality of ads over the past 10+ years (especially in terms of unobtrusiveness and relevance) would suggest to me that online advertising is digging its way _out_ of the grave it dug itself with flashy, irrelevant ads throughout the 90s and early 00s.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#68

Post by drusepth »

al_chemist wrote: post #53
eveningcoffee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Or, "I was against child labour, until I lived in a country where it was culturally acceptable and I couldn't buy food / compete without it."

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#69

Post by pipermerriam »

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…

it was, and thank you for sharing it.

Re: Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links

#70

Post by citrablue »

amelius wrote: post #63
eveningcoffee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Without analytics, I wouldn't be able to sell with efficiency, and therefore, I wouldn't have a business. I guess your summary is about right. > we live in a capitalist world, and I don't see that changing any time soon. We were living in a capitalist world two decades ago, and we didn't have a significant amount of tracking back then. If you are concerned about your competition using tracking, then just try to mak…

If you are concerned with making a better product, you are going to need quite a bit of tracking and instrumentation to understand how to make a better product.
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