We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened • Hacker News Board

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#61

Post by brookst » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:13 PM UTC

Root_Denied wrote: post #53

justinclift wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's incredibly hard to tell. Heh, that's very much like the old "... and nothing of value was lost" then.

Yeah, the fact that they don't have a clear indication of impact means one of two things: - Cookies weren't doing a whole lot for them to begin with, and removing their use had negligible impact. - The other work their marketing department did to try and compensate for discontinuation of cookie usage interfered with the test, making the results useless for evaluating the value of cookies. I'm leaning towards the seco…

Agree, but your second bullet is kind of the same as the first, right? It’s saying that on the whole, inclusive of changes to marketing processes, removing cookies didn’t impact bottom line enough to be measure able as positive or negative.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#62

Post by phailhaus » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:13 PM UTC

cpach wrote: post #54

potatoproduct wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a user you'll probably find you get more clickbait, more ads, more paywalls, less access to high quailty content, etc as publishers scramble to survive. (Because the value of their ad inventory drops.) And as marketing is less efficient, higher budgets are required to drive the same results. We can potentially expect to see these costs gradually passed on to the consumers and watch more businesses fail.

Or see subscription-only publishers thrive?

And slowly make the internet increasingly inaccessible without opening up your wallet. Hooray!

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#63

Post by jefftk » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

While they removed cookie banners and say they no longer include dependencies that set cookies, browsing around the site for a bit I still see several cookies set. For example, visiting https://changelog.getsentry.com I get first-party cookies "_GRECAPTCHA", "ph_phc_UlHlA3tIQlE89WRH9NSy0MzlOg1XYiUXnXiYjKBJ4OT_posthog", and "_launchnotes_session", plus third-party cookie "_GRECAPTCHA" on recaptcha.net.

Similarly, visiting https://try.sentry-demo.com I got cookies "sentrysid", "sc", and "sudo".

I also got a player.vimeo.com cookie at some point, but wasn't able to reproduce.

If you're running a complex modern site and decide to do away with cookie banners, you generally need to pair this with browser automation that crawls your site and verifies that you (and your dependencies) are in fact not setting any cookies.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#64

Post by phailhaus » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #25

Can I voluntarily register somewhere and profile myself for the purposes of ad targeting? I'd really hate to just get completely random ads everywhere.

Yes, but you don't have to do anything. Google is pushing a new advertising paradigm [1] wherein the tracking is done client-side and then sent (at your discretion) to websites for ad-serving.

[1] https://privacysandbox.com/

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#65

Post by zelon88 » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:17 PM UTC

potatoproduct wrote: post #45

quickthrower2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, so this’ll happen to all of em soon. Fuck people might have to talk to their users ;-)

As a user you'll probably find you get more clickbait, more ads, more paywalls, less access to high quailty content, etc as publishers scramble to survive. (Because the value of their ad inventory drops.) And as marketing is less efficient, higher budgets are required to drive the same results. We can potentially expect to see these costs gradually passed on to the consumers and watch more businesses fail.

How many times do you actually click on, or buy things from the ads you are shown?

You make it sound like we should all be grateful. Like ads are adding value to our lives. They don't. Outside of marketing, nobody cares about ads. We train our cognition to cancel out ads. We avoid them. The only people looking at ads and appreciating them are the ones, like yourself, who find them useful for things nobody asked for. I'd much rather you DON'T track me and --gasp-- DON'T show me an ad either. "But then you'll see worse ads!" Good. I'll ignore those too.

In my lifetime I've probably been shown $10,000 worth of ads on the internet, and I've probably spent $12 on them. Ironic that the only people who think that ads matter are the ones who's job it is to buy them with other people's money. Keep spending your bosses money, and I'll keep wasting it for you.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#66

Post by tgv » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:23 PM UTC

elzbardico wrote: post #15

junon wrote: post #2

I kept waiting for their findings but halfway through it's just a bunch of self-gratifying talk and deflecting talking about why they think it's important - I read for two solid minutes without them getting to any hard numbers or findings.

Marketing speak is incredibly annoying and low content. That’s why chat GPT is to produce marketing copy that is as good or better than the best ad people can do.

This morning, I opened a help page for a B2B product. There is a wiki with all API calls, but not a hint as to how to use them, and there are some pages for people who use it via their frontend. To get some bearings on the API, I opened the latter, and the first topic I opened said:

"We at [...] understand that being able to accurately manage [...] while fielding is essential to a successful project."

The entire text was two more sentences and a video. That's just taking the piss. Just say "watch the damn vid." if you really want to add text.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#67

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:31 PM UTC

Diti wrote: post #57

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trying to shove Google into my face will meet the same reaction as trying to shove ads in my face. Getting blocked. You will have a hard time browsing the web, including this site ;)

Content blocking is not an all-or-nothing process. Popular blocklists have different flavors depending on whether you value privacy (blocking almost everything Google, etc.) or usability (blocking ads, telemetry, third-parties) but allowing everything else.

[deleted]

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#68

Post by zelphirkalt » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:32 PM UTC

bmacho wrote: post #50

rrr_oh_man wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trying to shove Google into my face will meet the same reaction as trying to shove ads in my face. Getting blocked. You will have a hard time browsing the web, including this site ;)

> You will have a hard time browsing the web, including this site ;) No, HN works even js disabled. I did this experiment a while ago, blocking google in my hosts file. Usually fonts break (arrows, icons), and javascript breaks (reddit and stackoverflow need google ajax jquery to uncollapse collapsed messages). But in general most of the web is usable. In theory it should be possible to host fonts and jquery locally,…

I am nor 100% sure, but I think injecting resources locally is what Decentraleyes does.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#69

Post by soyyo » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:43 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #63

While they removed cookie banners and say they no longer include dependencies that set cookies, browsing around the site for a bit I still see several cookies set. For example, visiting https://changelog.getsentry.com I get first-party cookies "_GRECAPTCHA", "ph_phc_UlHlA3tIQlE89WRH9NSy0MzlOg1XYiUXnXiYjKBJ4OT_posthog", and "_launchnotes_session", plus third-party cookie "_GRECAPTCHA" on recaptcha.net. Similarly, visi…

I believe that under GDPR cookies that are used only for technical purposes and not related to personal information are exempt from any consent and don't need to be informed with the infamous cookie banner.

Is not about cookies, is about their content and purpose.

Re: We removed advertising cookies, here's what happened

#70

Post by dylan604 » Fri, Jan 12, 2024, 2:46 PM UTC

zelphirkalt wrote: post #35

dewey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Trying to shove Google into my face Unless you always browse with the network inspector open I don't really see how that would be the case.

It is really not very complicated. It is actually very simple. When I visit a new website, I check what it requests using uBlock Origin. Then just block those unwanted stuff. If the website does not work without something like Google fonts or tag manager or whatever other bloat, it means, that it is shoddy-made, by an either uninformed or ignorant entity. It probably is illegal according to EU law as well, since I ne…

I do the opposite. I block everything, and if a new site I’m curious on doesn’t work, I’ll look at what’s needed to let it work. Your method would potentially require some cleaning up since things were allowed to initially run. If the site requires things I don’t like, I just close the tab and move on.