The Guardian covertly sends your data to 58 tracking services
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Thanks for the work you do in curating this resource - it's awesome stuff.
The only downside is now I can't support ad-funded website by whitelisting them in my ad-blocker.
So next time wikileaks sends out leaked info about bombs in Syria or intelligence gathering in the US ask yourself this question:
Are they telling you everything, or are they serving their own political agenda?
This is why GDPR is catastrophic for ad-based EU business.
Realistically, if 58 tracking services watching what you're doing is scary to you, you'd better be prepared to either: a.) pay your worth or b.) see many of the sites you use go out of business or have their ability to operate severely diminished.
The Internet would become leaner, but I can't see how it would not also become better.
That's assuming these people have other jobs (which will have to somehow be funded by something other than ads or selling data -- bye bye 90% of Silicon Valley.) Having other jobs means they won't be able to spend as much time on it and quality will suffer.
> The good content will be kept afloat by donations.
Donations often don't stretch beyond what's required to do the work that's been done before (people don't often donate once the donation goal has been reached.) This stifles growth.
> The usual corporate content will be written off as "marketing expense".
So companies that derive their value from the content they produce and sell ads on have to write off their entire business model as a "marketing expense". Good idea. Say goodbye to virtually all online publishing that isn't paywalled already.
> The ad-supported worthless crap will disappear. You mean like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, Twitter...?
Three of those provide paid-for tiers. The other two that do not, well...
Optimally.
It plays out optimally.
If everyone suddenly installed and ran an aggressive ad-blocker, we could strangle all of the tracking networks overnight and the Internet would become a noticeably nicer place.
People who refuse to concede that allowing ads is functionally the same thing as inviting third parties to monitor your browsing patterns and invade your privacy are being disingenuous.
How would the horse merchants operate if everyone used cars?
How would window fixers survive if there were no stones being thrown?
We'll survive without Facebook or YouTube.
I personally don't mind if web advertising phases out. I have no idea what the alternative is, but web advertising has become a cesspool of privacy invasion and coercive commercial intent that the world is better off without. In this day and age you might imagine that nothing exists in the world but commerce and advertising for that commerce, and without it no one would publish anything. But it's human nature to communicate and share stories and ideas, and if the web advertising industry fell out from under publishers, the web would still exist.
To me the obvious alternative is a return to generally targeted ads as are found on television or in print publications. They are targeted to general audience for the program/publication, and can be served inline with the main content (and therefore not blocked) and require no tracking.
Or they could run quality ads in a non privacy-invasive manner (just like print ads) and be happy.
> This is why GDPR is catastrophic for ad-based EU business.
Running businesses based on shoving shit down people's throats isn't really a smart move to begin with so they should've seen it coming, and there were warning signs already, first with people just ignoring the ads (because there are so many), then with ad blockers, and now finally with the law cracking down on it. I personally welcome GDPR and can't wait to see it take effect.
That certainly wouldn't make advertisers or publishers happy. "Quality ads" (from a consumer perspective, I understand what this means) don't make any money, because they aren't nearly as effective. So yeah, if a business carefully balances their spending with their ad earnings, switching to quality ads could destroy their business.
> Running businesses based on shoving shit down people's throats isn't really a smart move to begin with
My house, my rules. If there are strong market forces that are dictating that publishers change what kind of advertisements they show, so be it. Until then, you're choosing to visit my site, for free. In exchange, I serve you ads that I want you to see, and you get the content you came to see for free.
> there were warning signs already, first with people just ignoring the ads (because there are so many), then with ad blockers
Nothing about this is going to change unless people like you (and I) stop leeching off users who view ads with our ad blockers, or we start paying for our use. People don't ignore ads, by the way, they're quite effective. That's why there's a (massive) market for it.
And by the way, I already pay over $150 for monthly internet, when I combine phone and cable/fiber, and I pay for about ten premium services including The New York Times, HBO, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, Youtube/Google and Netflix, and I still see ads, so what's going on here? What does an ad-free life actually cost?
Tell me, I want to know. Or was that simply an unrealistic option never actually on the table to begin with?
No, free (as in beer) has never been on the table. Free doesn't exist. I suppose an ad-free life costs what the market dictates, which it never has because of ads, thank goodness. I think if people had to pay for everything they use there would be a lot less innovation and certainly far fewer options.
They just pay indirectly - a cent of each sofa can distributes between the newspapers, product placement tv spots and internet sites that show ads for that soda producer.
If everyone paid directly for what they used the world would surely be a very different place but I see no reason for less innovation or less options.
Can't wait for this. The other day Facebook's COO said the same, if users want privacy they have to be willing to pay for it. Yet Facebook offer no such paid service.
Some (most?) people are happy to trade their personal data for free access. I am not. I prefer to pay for services I want. There are almost zero services where this is an option.
"How many trackers" and report on media sites.
I feel ashamed I once respected them/him as an outlet of truth but in reality serves only to push a single person's agenda.
I think that calling the newspaper out for the number of trackers is fair since it shows a mismatch between the behaviour of the company and the tone of the articles.
Hell, my blog has Google Analytics and such on it and so I feel like I'm a hypocritic since I use uBlock Origin (with quite restrictive settings). I do intend to remove the analytics/trackers at some point (actually, I plan to move to a completely static site and "redo" the whole thing -- I haven't even turned on HTTPS yet!), but I've been neglecting the site for years so there's a lot of work to do and, TBH, it really isn't very high on my priority list.
I agree with the general premise of this tweet, though. If you're going to call out others for doing something (i.e. tracking users), you should first make sure that you aren't doing it the same thing. At the least, don't be a part of the very thing that you're bitching about.
Wait ‘til you find out where the Graun is based for tax purposes...
Left-wing-ness is just a product that they sell. They don’t believe in it anymore than everyone in McDonald’s head office eats Big Macs every day...
They might not be doing it for that purpose. They only help collect data in exchange for better ad service. The data lives on, however, and someone else uses it for surveillance and tracking.
But nope, just the usual tracking script/cookie/beacon nonsense.
This way you get data analytics without dispensing user data to third parties.
(1) To get targeted ads, and thereby money because you showed a targeted ad. So if the Doubleclick tracker you embedded on your site sees that your visitors are watching lots of dog videos, they can serve you ads for dog food. I suppose (in theory) you could not embed the Doubleclick tracker and instead send Doubleclick the info you collected with your own self-hosted analytics, and get Doubleclick to send you the dog food ad which you insert into your site yourself.
(2) To improve ranking on Google search. I've read that running Google Analytics improves your search ranking as opposed to letting Google simply crawl your site.
And other reasons too?
I welcome any corrections if I'm gravely misunderstanding the technology and motivations.