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Comment by Doctor_Fegg | Hacker News Reader

Believe it or not, some stores sympathise with you. They might actually be run by people like you, people who read your story.

They still want to know how you proceed round the store, because that helps them optimise shelf layout, identify hard-to-find items, and so on. So yes, they might use the standard in-store CCTV to observe your journeys, and when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty finding the eggs (seriously - why is it always so hard to find the eggs?), they'll move the eggs somewhere more prominent, so they can sell more eggs and you can buy what you came to buy.

But that's as far as it goes. They don't follow you out the store, let alone into your bedroom. They don't match anything with third-party data, let alone your mobile phone number. The store just wants to know where to put the eggs.

Unfortunately, your bouncers have simply been told to "hurt them if you have to, I’ve really had enough of it". So last time they came in, they smashed the CCTV cameras. The store-owner remonstrated with them a bit but the whole debate around bouncers has become so polarised that there was really no point arguing.

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And if this metaphor seems a little obscure, this is why it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools. Because some of us are trying to do the right thing and your bouncers are still beating us up.

View on HN

I find it interesting that a lot of content producers have feel entitled to users' participation in analytics at all.

Sure, it may be frustrating when a user blocks tracking tools (especially self hosted ones) but that's the their choice.

We got by for decades without analysing user habits (even in a local only context, without correlation with third party data). There are so few examples of cases where analysing user behaviour was a make or break factor in a store's survival. Sure, it can be useful to know what a user looked at and, as you suggest, how difficult it is to find the eggs. But there are better ways.

Physical stores at one point (and still now, in many cases) respect that user choice. Want to participate? Get a loyalty card. We'll watch how you spend, but we'll give a little something back to participants.

On the web, the solution is simple. Do it on your application servers back end. Have your request handler (which should probably know a lot more about your user in the context of your application than any third party tool) log user requests and actions. You'll be able to tie data gathered to a logged in user and their local purchase or browsing history.

You'll get to know your user better and you'll avoid third party tools that creep out a growing proportion of your users.

You're not entitled to participation in analytics.

We got by for decades without analysing user habits

Depends when you start counting the decades. Since Netscape and the 'coming out' of the www, we've always paid attention to where people go on our own web pages.

And stores have always paid attention to how many items they sell.

But (continuing the metaphor) now they're tracking what each customer buys and when, where they came from and where they go, where their eyes wander and how long they look at an item...

Then sharing that data with other stores to profile customers, and find out who's sick, pregnant, graduating, on a diet, what political candidates they support...

Tracking today is nothing like tracking site visitors in the '90s.

Completely agree. It's the sharing that bothers me.

Back in the 90's when everybody installed those wacky click counters on their page, it all seemed so innocent...

1896 is when "loyalty programs" (wherein the store collects loads of info about your purchases & habits) started.

In the "good ol' days" (TM the shop-owners in a community knew quite a lot about their customers.

Oh Mary just gave birth, Henry is currently sick, Walter likes his coffee a little stronger, James a little weaker (something with his stomach). Danielle drinks only tee, has two kids and the marriage is not really happy. And so on. A lot bordered on gossip, a lot was very valid and relevant information. People talked.

So it was totally normal in a smallish community for the store owners to have an extensive profile on every customer. All in their head for sure, but non the less. And guess what - everybody benefitted. The clerk could recommend based on what he knew. People would be directed to relevant produce.

By the way this works even today. If I buy at my normal place I get personalized recommendations for cheese from the lady behind the counter. We talk, she knows a little bit about my tastes and I get to try new things.

That's great, if you want personal recommendations.

But I do not. I want a choice, the choice to share my data and have personal recommendations, or not share anything and have generic ads. But no one give me that choice, so I have to take it by "hiring the bouncers"

This is the direction we should and, I predict, we will be headed. Personal recommendations and analytics should be optional and opt-in. The EU cookie law is a step in the right direction but the reason it's so clumsy is because cookies for now are opt-out.

The way to get there is to separate the browsing/shopping process from the tracking/recommendations. Instead of bouncers we should have personal shoppers. The majority of people I speak to have no problem with trackers so there is no reason not to make it more transparent where users can choose which data they want to share and for what purpose.

I've never seen a single site with the EU cookie warning saying "click here if you're ok with cookies, or click over there if you'd rather we didn't use them." It's always "click here to proceed with cookies, or fuck off."

As it should be. It's none of our "right" to visit any particular site. The person who sets up the site gets to identify the terms of use - since they're the one footing the bill for it.

If you don't like it, that's your prerogative - you can go somewhere else. If enough people do that, the person who owns the site loses out. But I can't see why it's not entirely within a provider's rights to say "if you use our service, you must agree to X. Otherwise, Y."

I think a better use of resources than the clunky EU cookie law would be to say "sites can analyze what visitors do on their site - but only there." Then it's truly opt-in (by virtue of using the site), and sandboxed. There's no "following you home" - the site owner would only have access to what you do on their site.

Opting out by not participating is approaching impossible, and doesn't send a visible signal to site owners. There will never be "enough people", but that doesn't mean the issues are not important. If the minorities who notice problems (missing wheelchair ramps, lack of braille on signs, ambiguous color indicators, gross violations of privacy) are silenced and ostracized, we all suffer.

Well, the whole thing is kind of academic anyway. I can tell my browser to say "sure, I accept cookies!" and then drop them on the floor.

I can't think of one website/company that I would like to have this small town clerk-customer relationship with.

Youtube's recommended videos are unfailingly terrible, and Amazon's recommended products just feel like annoying add-ons that might "accidentally" get bundled into my cart if I hover my mouse too near them. I generally already have something in mind if I want to buy/watch online.

I'll stick with recommendations from friends/actual people. That's why last.fm/spotify has been so great for music discovery relative to pandora/rdio - you can browse real people's collections instead of an algorithm's guess of what you might like.

you can browse real people's collections

Wait, what? Do they know that you are browsing? Seems also creepy...

You can optionally choose to share play lists for sure, I'm not sure if they still do but spotify by default shows everyone what you are listening unless you put it into some private mode (a tad less creepy)

The difference is the customers also knew the same amount about the store owner. Oh, Gerald started running the store when his father got too sick to do it and he's been at it ever since. He's been trying to convince his son to take it up when he retires, but the boy only wants to play guitar, and so on.

There was trust because they were all part of a community. That's not the case with anonymous trackers that people aren't even aware of.

And guess what - everybody benefitted

I grew up in a town with <1000 year round residents. We had a general store like this. We avoided the general store as much as possible. Some families went as far as getting their mail through another town because the local post office was inside the store.

The reason is quite relevant to this thread. The shopkeeper, his wife, and all the regular customers who sat around to chat while they drank their coffee were gossip hounds.

People valued their private lives more than letting a social circle they weren't involved in know anything about them. Not who sent them mail, and not even what type of breakfast cereal they liked.

"Everyone benefitted"? Nah, I think you've just heard too much "small town community" bullshit from politicians.

Different strokes, different folks. Personally, I like that people in my town know me. Gossip goes around, sure, people know more about me than I might be comfortable with but in general that establishes in the long run a familiarity that works for me. It feels like a very large family, and I like that.

So what you're saying is that not everybody benefitted?

"Danielle drinks only tee, has two kids and the marriage is not really happy........ People would be directed to relevant produce."

What's the relevant produce for an unhappy marriage? Whiskey?

I'd actually talk to a few people before I'd say "everyone benefited" because many didn't and absolutely hate it. I've seen people rearrange their schedule and go way out of the way just so they can run an errand in peace and with some privacy and dignity. Myself? I know I've avoided places specifically because I'd be likely to see someone I know there.

Having a conversation once in a while with the person selling you cheese (which is choice!!) isn't the same thing as being tracked.

Not everyone wants personalized recommendations either. Or recommendations at all, most people know what they want and are creatures of habit.

I don't want recommendations at all from anyone who is selling me something! The incentives are misaligned to say the least. What if you found out the cheese salesman got commission from certain brands? You'd think she'd suddenly recommend them?

Counterpoint: the barista always knows what you want.

For a single store, or family business, that's equitable and I'd opt in by shopping there or visiting the website. On the web the small business is often the artisanal butcher, small crafts or the one HN reader running their side project trying to compete with IBM. Happy to share some data. Happy to help and try and support by giving you my money.

The web is mostly not like this. The ad and tracker networks are on multiple sites and are so agressive and successful at retargeting that it almost induces paranoia. Sadly out of ignorance the innocent small business is using a network that's borg like in their assimilation of everywhere.

Tesco, Forbes and the agressively multi round funded startups can fuck off. Especially as they give no shits for apparently anything. Fuck that man, get bigger fast. Let me show you this ad for VisualThing++ for the 96th time, even though it's well over a week since you accidentally clicked on the maximise on rollover sound playing flash abortion.

Back when I was being persuaded that all advertising and tracking online was becoming evil I'd innocently visit somewhere work connected say SEOMoz, as was, then see ads for them EVERYWHERE, for ages. Like the bad commission only salesman who ruins parties and friendships with only one topic of conversation I'd go read something in the evening on sports and the ads would be having a conversation about Moz, or random startup service we looked at for work. WTF man fuck off and stop following me!

Even on the web the good ol days, as you describe them, wouldn't be so bad, but that's not what we have. Not even close.

To be fair, you're not entitled to free content free of tracking either.

True, but we aren't really given much choice either. Even if I buy for a service or buy a product from a company, I'm not going to be excluded from tracking.

Amazon isn't going to not data-mine the shit out of my purchases, even though I paid for a product.

I do question the value of all that data collection though. Sure it's interesting, but I don't really believe that data collection and analysis at the current scale translate directly to more sales. Honestly what's the value of tracking me around the net, how is knowing what sites I visit going to translate to a sale of some product?

Walmart wouldn't run an ad in GQ highlighting it's clothing section: because the ad isn't going to resonate with the person seeing it.

However, unlike Walmart who would get on the phone with an account executive with Conde Nast (GQ's publisher) and talk through the campaign, most website advertisers and publishers do not have people dedicated to doing 1-1 sales. Publishers want the most money possible per ad unit and advertisers want the most sales possible within a reasonable acquisition cost. To balance those two things out and create value on both sides, ad exchanges and the demand platforms that tie into ad exchanges provide tons of targeting and remarketing opportunities. That allows advertisers to target their most profitable audiences. However, in order to offer all the rich and detailed targeting options, the exchanges and platforms have to know what individuals are doing so they can create personas and profiles of you.

If this happened magically in the magazine industry and magazine ads could be customized to the individual reader, then Walmart might buy some space in GQ if they learned a small portion of GQ readers are actually bargain hunters and shop at Walmart all the time for clothes and only read GQ more for their interviews and cocktail recipes rather than for men's fashion info.

> Even if I buy for a service or buy a product from a company, I'm not going to be excluded from tracking.

Exactly! I subscribe to SiriusXM for my car, because I really like the music options. Last night I looked at installing it on my phone. It requires access to my contacts (why?); to my phone status and identity (what the heck?); to direct-dialing my phone (WTF‽); to view my network connexions; to pair with Bluetooth devices; to install shortcuts.

It plays music. It should need access to my SiriusXM username and password, and to the network. That's it. There's no way that I'll install the app: I may be paying, but I'm apparently not the customer.

Those permissions seem abusive, but some of them are not too odd for a music-playing app (phone status is useful for pausing the music when a call comes in, BT pairing for speakers and headphones), but mining your contacts or dialing just seem absurd (and should be blocked with xprivacy or Marshmallow's App Permissions).

Phone status I'll agree is useful, but there's no need for a music-playing app to control BT pairing - the phone can do that itself.

You're completely right. But you know what? I kind of preferred the Internet back when most of the 'content' was being produced by people who loved it, for the fun of it and not for money. It's the difference between an amateur and a professional, and I was fine with that.

Sysops of BBSes used to watch their users while they were online. When the BBS only had one line this was easy (and often you couldn't do anything else BUT watch them.)

So, to say that analysing user behaviour is new is probably an overstatement, at least in the BBS example.

You write "Do it on your application servers back end", but then the parent comment actually argues specifically for "self-hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools". So, I'm now confused: do you actually agree with it? or disagree? or what? was there something edited in the parent comment in the meantime? did I miss something?

There's a difference between using tools like Piwik (which still burden the browser with additional HTTP requests), and logging the relevant data in the application or server code itself (Apache/nginx logs, or writing your own context aware logging code in your Django/Rails/whatever framework application).

What I'm suggesting is that applications can completely unobtrusively log visitor data internally, without requiring the client to make additional requests. In the same way that ad networks could serve data through your own application backend (rather than being requested by the client), if the ad networks and advertisers could stomach losing access to cross site user data tracking.

The GP was complaining that users still block Piwik and other self-hosted solutions. Of course they do. I'll block every single request I can, if it's not just fetching the content that I want.

Some developers and content providers complain that by blocking analytics services (including internally hosted ones) means they'll be left completely in the dark. This is wrong. They can always log visits through their web app code on the server side - they'll have the benefit of complete request context access ("Is the user logged in?", "Is their account in credit?", "Did they buy this item at some point in the past?") but simply won't be able to correlate this data with other websites logs (a benefit to the users, from a privacy perspective).

As a user, there is absolutely no benefit to me whatsoever of your site knowing my age, income bracket, recent (off-site!) browsing history and interests. None. Ad networks, advertisers and content providers will benefit. I won't.

> I'll block every single request I can, if it's not just fetching the content that I want.

Do you block images, css, and other stuff that doesn't pertain to the content at hand?

> What I'm suggesting is that applications can completely unobtrusively log visitor data internally, without requiring the client to make additional requests. In the same way that ad networks could serve data through your own application backend (rather than being requested by the client), if the ad networks and advertisers could stomach losing access to cross site user data tracking.

Yeah if all you want is referrer, user agent, url requested, and ip. But what about other great information in help with making your site BETTER for your users, like screen size?

> As a user, there is absolutely no benefit to me whatsoever of your site knowing my age, income bracket, recent (off-site!) browsing history and interests. None. Ad networks, advertisers and content providers will benefit. I won't.

I find it strange given the demographics of HN that people still believe by me putting Pwiki on my site to gather analytics about my visitors, that somehow taps into your bank account to see your income, requests your tax documents, downloads your birth certificate and gives me a full list of your last 100 visited urls.

That data is only available if I somehow put a tracking pixel on as many sites as I can. Such as a 3rd party script.

So because of that I can see blocking Google Analytics, or 3rd party trackers, but what are you doing by blocking 1st party stuff like Pwiki other than giving a big fuck you to the website owner?

> Do you block images, css, and other stuff that doesn't pertain to the content at hand?

No. In many cases, the styles and images are content that I'd actually like to see. In some cases, sure - I'd eagerly jump right back on that Gopher train and trim out all the extra crap you want to funnel into my browser.

> Yeah if all you want is referrer, user agent, url requested, and ip. But what about other great information in help with making your site BETTER for your users, like screen size?

Screen size? In 2016, optimising for specific screen sizes is archaic. Exercise responsive design. As for things like javascript feature availability - if you're already using javascript (a rich web app, as opposed to simple content), then you'll already have the facility to pass this data back to the server, the same server, that's serving the requested content.

> I find it strange given the demographics of HN that people still believe by me putting Pwiki on my site to gather analytics about my visitors, that somehow taps into your bank account to see your income, requests your tax documents, downloads your birth certificate and gives me a full list of your last 100 visited urls.

You're being facetious. I don't think anyone made this suggestion. I know I certainly didn't.

My issue with things like Piwik is primarily the additional requests my browser makes to help you accomplish something that you could have done on the server side. When I'm reading your blog, my browser shouldn't be expected to make extra requests once the content has loaded, just to give you a better idea of how people use your site. It doesn't benefit me, and you're not entitled to my cooperation. I can choose to block Piwik if I'd like. You can always log the limited data on server side.

> [...] giving a big fuck you to the website owner

And by expecting users' browsers to make additional requests (using additional data, and additional CPU cycles - however few), I could maintain that you're "giving a big fuck you" to the user.

This sense of entitlement to user data, usage data, analytics, and the right to make the client behave as you wish is relatively new over the past decade. I don't like it, and it sets a dangerous stage for the future of the web.

I completely agree with you. Not to mention the current trend(?) with solutions like hotjar or inspectlet where the whole html is sent to their servers with realtime cursor position, click and scroll information. This is really disturbing. And I guess 99% of the visitors don't even know that they are being tracked.

Believe it or not, people have been optimizing the eggs location long before the Internet, using the simple art of [anonymous] sampling and statistics. There is absolutely no technical need to track everyone's every move, the ad / surveillance industry is overreaching by a huge margin. See http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/about-us/nielsen-families.html for an example of sampling in action.

Furthermore, the eggs are hidden on purpose, such that people have to walk a long way along aisles filled with high margin impulse buy crap. As a customer, this "optimization" is actively trying to exploit my atavic weaknesses and damage my health. Thank you very much, I don't sense a whole lot of sympathy for me here, just a race for the quick and dirty buck.

They have been doing it for a long time, but we know the game now. Most people haven't figured out they are being digitally tracked, but when that happens, I have a feeling consumers will get proactive, and really begin to withhold, or make it difficult for entities to track buying habits.

As to eggs in the back of the store, yes milk and eggs are always in the back of every store I can recall. We all know the game. Why piss off your loyal customers? Too many MBA's? I don't know, but it's obviously not working. I don't like shopping anymore. I don't think I'm alone.

I can't think of any brink and morter store that's doing well. And they always blame the Internet?

Whole foods was doing great for years. Now with uniformed security guards roaming around, tired workers, sneaky product placement; their quarterlies are the chits. They blame competition. It's not competition. Your stores became like everyone else. By the way, the CEO did promise to make staples affordable and he delivered. Milk, eggs, butter, and bread are cheaper than Safeway, along with their brand of product. There 365 products are reasonably priced.

I am very respectful to pretty much every store I shop in.

By respectful, I treat the store like I live there. I put away items of I didn't need. I don't just leave the item in the cart, or in another area of the store. I don't mess up shelved items, like books, etc. I treat the employees with respect, and try to make their horrid jobs easier.

That said, when I walk into a store like Home Depot. A store that is tracking my movements throughout the store with CCTV, and takes a picture of my mug at every isle, checkout, bathroom entrance, point of sale, etc.; I could care less about how I treat the store. Do I care that every one of my transactions is transferred to some server in Richmond Virginia--yes!

It's funny, I used to like the company. I was glad when they opened up near me. The employees seemed like they liked/respected their employer. I used to go to their stores just to browse. I usually ended up buying something.

Jump foreward to today. I only shop there if I absolutely have to. I walk into that chit box, and can't get out quick enough. If I don't need a product in my hand it goes anywhere except where it was located. My mood changes once I walk through those doors and look into those cameras. I don't think I'm the only one who dislikes being monitored, tracked, and manipulation with product placement.

Their employees seem like they are working in a correctional facility. literally every employee seems misserable.

Home Depot is a perfect example of too much tracking(I don't know all their digital tracking tools--I just feel like I'm being watched. I don't like showing my ID when returning an item with a receipt.), bad security, and general useless advice from MBA's who should have at least one year of grunt level retail work before being promoted to screwing up a store.

I have a feeling tides will turn eventually.

I made a small purchase in store at Home Depot with a credit card (a bad habit, which I've resolved to do less of [0]). A few weeks later I received an email asking me to review it, to an email address I had used for online ordering. In retrospect, it wasn't so amazing that they'd correlate this information, but that they'd have the audacity to assume I wanted my relationships with them to converge.

It's similar to price checking something on Amazon, not even logged in, and then them spamming you about that item. Your average person is so overloaded and unobservant that these things apparently don't set off their creepy detector.

[0] I started doing so because it's easier to return items, and I try not to keep stock when a store can do that for me. Speaking of returns, they run your license with a 3rd party verification company that is obviously also surveilling you. Furthermore, if this company's digital voyeurs decide you should no longer be able to return items, you have little recourse. I believe using a credit card avoids them wanting to see ID [1], and obviously prevents their system from denying your return.

[1] Although I've got my license's serial number / 3D barcode covered with blackened masking tape. A picture, name, address, and birthday is more than enough to "identify" me for civilian purposes, thank you very much.

> it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik

First, a precision: EasyPrivacy blocks Piwik. uBlock Origin enables EasyPrivacy by default. If you think it's wrong for Piwik to be blocked, bring the issue to EasyPrivacy maintainers.

Now, why is it "irresponsible" for Piwik to be blocked?

Some of us just do not like to have all our movements scrutinized, even by 1st parties -- I personally consider this a healthy stance, I just do not like to be treated as a product.

Also, what guarantee there is that all the data collected by one 1st party through Piwik is not sold to any number of 3rd parties? There is no guarantee -- thus all tracking deserve to be blocked as much as it can. It's for the same reason I choose to not disclose my phone number or postal code at the cash register when they ask in brick-and-mortar stores.

I can understand phone number, but what possible reason is there to refuse to give zip code? The only thing I can think of using that information for is to determine the optimal location to open another store.

With tinfoil hat on, they mighy want to get a few more fingerprinting bits. https://panopticlick.eff.org

Zip code data correlates strongly to wealth.

I thought part of the reason they ask for zipcode is that it is for verification purposes if you use a credit card to pay

I've only ever run into that when getting gas, and even then only in high-fraud or very busy areas.

> Some of us just do not like to have all our movements scrutinized, even by 1st parties -- I personally consider this a healthy stance, I just do not like to be treated as a product.

And that is your choice and I can respect that, but please, don't be one of those entitled people who complain about a website completely blocking you for blocking their stuff.

And for the record, I love uBlock and your work. I use it myself, but I use it in blacklist mode only. Which I feel is the best way to do it. Block the shady sites, don't hurt the ones who just want to get a little analytics.

If you make it an arms race, you will never be done racing. You should be honored that people want to use your site, not angry because you feel entitled to creep on them just because they made a GET request.

Yeah, I get it. I should be honored to pay a server bill to display content that you want to see, and not get anything out of it.

You should be honored I had the content you wanted to see and agree to what I require in exchange to view said content.

So many people claim they'd rather pay a fee to view a site than have an ads shown to them.. But in practice, I highly doubt anyone would pay for the amount of sites they visit daily that display ads in exchange for delivering the content they want to see.

Why are you so hung up on the server bill? The costs of distributing information are next to '0'. The cost of the creation is an entirely different matter.

Cost of creation is one aspect, a server bill is the most tangible way to show cost. Take your post for example. Did it cost you a lot to write it? No. But I bet the cost in resources on your server for it making the front page of HN did go up.

It's negligible compared to the time I spent writing it. At the same time, there are no ads on that page and there isn't a single tracker on it either. And the way the page has been slimmed down the bandwidth costs are a lot lower than what you might think they would be (that page transfers less than 15K of data).

If server costs are a worry then definitely spend some time on thinking about slimming down the presentation to the point where those are no longer a worry.

Whether that page gets viewed 10K or 100K times doesn't bother me, if it would get into the millions I'd have to do something about it (probably slim it down even further).

I mean don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved your post and I understand it, but your argument right now is pure anecdotal.

I haven't ran a site in the last 5 years that had an advertisement on it. But I have ran sites in the past that served over 400,000 unique visitors a day, and the only way I could afford to continue delivering the content that those visitors came for was to either require them to pay for it, or put advertisements on it.

I couldn't afford at that time a $1500/mo server bill to give content out for the love of it. It was a full time job just to curate and provide the content let alone work a full time job to pay for it too.

I see both sides. If you want to block ads and trackers, I fully understand and that is your right. I just don't like the fact that people feel entitled to the content of the website without agreeing to view the other stuff on the same page.

Once again, if you block my ads, go for it, your right. But it's also my right to deny you that content on the fact that you blocked my ads.

Ah, but you are conflating ads and trackers, which is exactly the root of the problem. I'd be more than happy to view the ads, I might even click on them. But I point blank refuse to be profiled/tracked/long term cookied/finger printed and served a side of malware to boot.

That is the problem here.

But people fight the trackers by installing adblockers, because lets face it, the biggest offenders are ad companies. And all ad blockers are in whitelist mode by default, and nobody cares enough to turn it to blacklist mode, as a result the guys who display tasteful, unintrusive, non tracking ads, get caught in the crossfire, and the go to argument by these people is "It's my right to block anything I want." but in another breath they're complaining because a company decided that if you block their ads, they're blocking you.

Yes, but I think it is a step (or rather several steps) too far to blame the users here. The advertising industry decided to take what it could so here we are today. Web properties have had ample time and opportunity to dial up the heat on the agencies and the ad-tech companies to stop this all from happening but the money was just too good.

So now the unintrusive, non tracking ads (the good guys, if you wish) will be lumped in with the rest, because they are a very small fraction of the total and people that have finally had enough of all this can't be bothered to be precise enough about how hard they slam the door.

And I'm not complaining about companies that block me because I run an ad blocker, I couldn't care less, their loss, not mine, there is enough content out there that you couldn't consume it in several lifetimes if you wanted to.

I would just like to say I enjoyed this discussion. Most people don't like my stance on adblocking (I'm not totally against it, I use and love uBlock Origin) and it usually ends up with me being downvoted to oblivion for having an alternative opinion.

Have a good weekend and happy high five Friday.

The same to you. Thank you for the exchange and have a nice weekend!

Ads in some context are okay. People who use adblockers wouldn't click on your ads even if they'd see them. But tracking is a completely different thing and much more serious. And most of the time I don't even have a choice, the website just tracks everything about me with no way of turning it off.

The way trackers are implemented, they aren't a trade of good content for some info. They're a proposal of "I won't even let you find out whether I have good content unless you give me your info up-front". It's literally the privacy-invading equivalent of a clickwrap EULA that you can't read until after you've already agreed to it.

To which the answer is "no, now take the business model that you thought required this and shove it somewhere anatomically improbable".

If you're really this worried then you should probably be spoofing your request headers and hiding your IP behind a VPN, because those will reveal a lot more about you than what most 1st party trackers will.

I think the 'ethical' choice is some kind of a middle ground approach. It's true if everyone blocked all tracking and analytics the web could not exist as the largely free service that it does today. Websites also would struggle to improve their quality without the analytical data.

That's why I think the orbital strike option of block everything all the time is ultimately selfish. I think individuals should make some attempt to block ads/tracking that they think is itself immoral but not block what they consider fine.

For example, I don't block ads in google search results since they are unobtrusive and clearly marked as ads.

Tough.

The advertising industry and tracking has gone too far. The amount of websites with local analytics is small. I suspect that nearly all US based shops with local analytics is breaking (EU) data protection law. Why should I assist them in breaking the law when it harms my privacy?

Unfortunately, the reason the eggs are hidden is that they are a low-margin item and people looking for them will pass more high-margin items on the way and be possibly tempted to buy.

> And if this metaphor seems a little obscure, this is why it is irresponsible, populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools. Because some of us are trying to do the right thing and your bouncers are still beating us up.

Honestly, we only need a statistically significant sample for a few buckets...so unless uBlock and chums hit ~85% none of this effects me. The same is true for virtually every "good actor" in the space.

You just need to be able to run an A/B test that is statistically accurate + analytics + RUM.

https://blog.pagefair.com/2015/ad-blocking-report/

~37%

Ad blocking is a reasonable proxy for tracking blocking since they usually go hand in hand. [e.g. uBlock]

Real world, I see ~35% block rates at $DayJob. I don't care about that at all and I'm amazed any "good actor" would given 65% of the population is more than enough for as many statistically accurate samples as you'd need.

So when you say "you are doing the right thing", what isn't included in the above?

> They don't follow you out the store

This is actually factually incorrect.

Some hints here:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/10/automatic_fac...

And it goes even deeper than that.

Self-hosted, same-domain Piwik doesn't track you on other sites, and doesn't pull in any external data sources.

Yes, I got you, I was just pointing out to you that if in-real-life stores are capable of following you out of the store using their CCTV systems there is absolutely no reason to assume that you can't use a website's analytics suite to couple that with other databases at your disposal.

The major reason why companies will self host analytics services is not because they are trying to protect the privacy of their visitors, it is because they don't want to give out business critical information to third parties.

Once, a shop had hired an assistant called "Cookie" to do the job and another one even had hired a specialized clerk (named W.B. Alizer, for the record) and I was totally fine with this. But then, stores started to hire some guys from the Tracker bunch, but said it would be ok, since they had strict orders to stay indoors.

Now, this became a little distracting. Every now and then I had to wait for the guy to catch up, who was crawling along with me trying to measure the width of my foot steps with an inch rule, and then there was this guy, who insisted to peek into my pockets and to keep track of its contents in a quart book he had attached to the lining of my coat. (Over time, my coat became that heavy, I had to stop and rip out the lining in order to proceed.) Yay, it was all to my best ...

Then, something funny happened as stores began to engage in something they called "optimizing". Had the super market around the corner once sold 5 different sorts of cheese, it was now just 3 with the 2 best selling ones missing (they didn't have much potential for future optimization as they were sold out constantly). Some months later, they started to hide the bread behind a fake wall as soon as I entered and pushed whole piles of umbrellas in my way (since I had once bought one on a stormy afternoon a year ago – I would have understood, if it had been bagels, because I started to buy these as I was searching for the bread in vain.) That is, until last Halloween, when I discovered that there was still bread to buy, when I entered the shop in disguise.

Last month, I bumped into a girl that looked rather familiar, just as I was preparing my wig and false mustache for getting some bread at the super market. Remember Cookie? She is still working at a store, inside the server room. We chatted a while, and now I'm a habitual to her work place again. The store is a bit farther away than the fancy super market, but it really outweighs the inconveniences of the other place.

A little obscure? :)

> hurt them if you have to

> they smashed the CCTV cameras

What? Nope. Not at all. You can still track everybody without a blocker, can you not? Or what harm do you incur that translates into harm or property damage in your metaphor?

They cry that they are hurt when you block ads. Forbes.com may be the worst of them, but even if I allow ads they block content if I don't allow the trackers. I was going to email them to voice my concern about this, but there wasn't a contact page easily accessible (they really blocked their pages!).

I think you make a good point. There is an argument to be made against ad blocking, but it can't be made honestly if they are also requiring tracking technology to also be turned on.

Integrate analytics and tracking server-side. Duh. (And if you so need window size and other easy-to-get-via-client-side-JS information, render the script into the page instead of putting it into a .js file.)

And maybe make all this optional for those that don't want to be tracked. (I mean allow them to register and opt-out of server-side tracking too.) I think they might even start to like you and become sort of loyal.

You are missing some basic facts about how marketing works. Let's start here to demonstrate.

...when they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty finding the eggs (seriously - why is it always so hard to find the eggs?), they'll move the eggs somewhere more prominent, so they can sell more eggs and you can buy what you came to buy.

You think that stores are in business to sell you eggs, and are slightly puzzled that eggs aren't easy to find. But you confidently continue proceed despite direct evidence that stores don't act like you think they should.

The answer to your question is that stores are in business to sell you as much as they can, and the eggs are just there to get you to see everything they have to offer. If they made it easy to buy eggs then your life would become easier and they make less money.

Stores know this because they hire consultants who tell them what to do. And the ones who refused, made less money then got out-competed or bought out by the ones who followed the advice. Now they all know to bury eggs, and the big ones make each store's layout different so that they can maximize how much consumers wander.

You know what else those consultants told them? Candy bars are high profit items, but nobody is going into your stores to buy junk food. Those are impulse buys. So put them right where everyone is forced to stand and wait for the cash register to make it as hard as possible to avoid the impulse.

Look down the cereal aisle. They put cereals with healthy branding at eye level for moms, and the obviously exciting cereals at eye level for kids. Note that branding and reality are unrelated. Take a look at the serving size and sugar per serving on all the boxes. No matter what the branding, most of the cereals work out to be about the same.

It goes on and on. Marketers have fine-tuned their art to a science. No matter where you look, they have mastered details you wouldn't have thought of. And while they aim to hit your emotional buttons, they do NOT fundamentally aim to please YOU. You're not the client. The store is their client, and your being unable to stop opening your wallet is the product that the store is buying.

Hmmm.I have seen more evidence of supermarkets shifting the position of everything every few months, so that you have to hunt more to find your eggs, then see lots more other stuff you will need to buy while searching around.

Grocery Store Tactics: Easter Simulator Edition.

Why can't you just ask people for permission first?

I think even if we were to accept that some places use tracking responsibly, it's the capacity which could so easily be abused, and so lacking in benefit for the individual, which warrants the blanket use of privacy blocking.

Given this, a little more difficulty in "finding the eggs" is a good trade-off, especially since it's not like designers are naive and consigned to random interface choices, and you can actually still do A/B-type testing without user tracking.

Otherwise, users have to trust that site owners, out of empathy, will do the right thing with data, and that a broader network of tracking won't occur -- despite that it's totally rational from the site owner's perspective to broadly track users. That strategy is beyond brittle; it's unbelievable.

Some of us find even that level of tracking to be creepy and invasive, and would rather opt out. You never asked us if we wanted to be "helped" around your store, but we have now answered that question anyway.

What is meant by "populist" in this critique?

It means roughly the same as when the term is applied to politicians when they promise lower taxes: A popular measure that actually has detrimental effects in the long term (with the possible connotation that the politician should/does know this and is just exploiting some base emotions).

Does it not sound solidly, unambiguously sound for the long-term health of the market to increase the ability of consumers to make informed decisions?

It's a way make "popular" sound like a bad thing.

Your second paragraph... that does not apply to grocery stores here in the US.

They fill the center with junk and the fresh food, eggs & milk along the sides. Often eggs & milk (commonly used together) are on OPPOSITE halves of the store!

http://www.grocery411.com/grocery-store-layout.html

> But that's as far as it goes.

You, the store owner, may know that; but how do I, the customer, know it? How do I know you aren't selling data from that CCTV camera to others, who don't own your store and don't have the use for the data that you do? Even if you aren't doing that today, how do I know you won't tomorrow, when someone shows up with an offer you simply can't refuse? And so on and so on.

You're right that this is a sad situation, when people's desire for privacy means cutting off access to data even for the (few, I suspect, but still...) store owners who actually want to do something with it that might benefit the customer. But it's what we have. If you want to know where to put the eggs, you'll have to figure it out some other way.

uBlock didn't block it. I blocked it, by using uBlock, which I picked because of its stance on trackers. So its more like I found a cloak of invisibility so I don't show up on your cameras. You can't blame the store selling the cloaks, because I and every user like me chooses to wear them. You have to blame the user for using the cloak... but to what point? You are blaming me for not letting your code run on my machine.

If you want to read a good book on studying in-store shopper behavior, you should checkout "Why We Buy" by Paco Underhill. He runs a firm that studies shoppers by secretly following people around in a store and writing down everything they do.

I assume that if you change the file names of those internal analytics tools then they will stop being blocked.

bad analogy; no one is smashing your cctv cameras; they're just donning an invisibility cloak on the way in. as is their right, even if nethack would like to claim otherwise :).

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