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Comment by OrvalWintermute | Hacker News Reader

The message is that Techdirt is without Google Ads, Tracking Code or analytics.

This may be a set in the right direction but.....

The same page on which they posted this is running CSS from fonts.googleapis.com, as well as embedded frames from soundcloud.com & w.soundcloud.com which I also believe is google owned.

So, count me a little skeptical

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They're working on it. If you don't read TD regularly, you're probably not aware of how long this has been going on. They're trying to survive independently without selling users out, and that is not easy.

> So, count me a little skeptical

Be as skeptical as you want, they are transparent about what's going on. A decent background piece specific to the Google piece of this madness explains part of it here:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200810/11335745081/why-a...

(I've met with Mike a couple times, but otherwise have no connection to them, other than being a long-time reader.)

Also, Google does not own Soundcloud.

Is SoundCloud owned by google? I looked it up, but it didn't seem to be.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+owns+soundcloud&t=brave&ia=...

It's not, but the implication is that they're touting their effort to be "much more protective of the privacy of Techdirt's readers" as they begin self-hosting their tracking tools, while reader data is still being sent to SoundCloud, a private third-party with a heavily-vested interest in user tracking.

Thanks for the correction, apparently I was mistaken.

You haven’t actually said what you were mistaken about.

> mbedded frames from soundcloud.com & w.soundcloud.com which I also believe is google owned.

This is erroneous, as soundcloud is not google owned.

Appreciate the fact check and correction :)

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