Ask HN: Do you push back on tracking scripts at your company? How? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you push back on tracking scripts at your company? How?

I'd like to push back against it both from a) a technical standpoint (we have 5x as much marketing JS as actual app JS) and b) a principle standpoint (I believe it's wrong to track people this pervasively). For example: we have a client-side script for every single one of the dozens of social networks that we buy ads on, for the purpose of tracking conversions.

I'm a senior front-end dev so I have some amount of sway in this matter, but I'm not sure how to make a business case for cutting down on this stuff. The impact on SEO is something, and we're going to look for ways to trim the fat, but I think the conversion data is more valuable to the higher-ups than a few points on our Lighthouse score.

Has anybody had this conversation before? Any suggested angles I can take?

View on HN

> I'm not sure how to make a business case for cutting down on this stuff

What are the business goals that the tracking scripts are working to achieve? What alternatives are there to achieve those goals? What are the downsides to those alternatives?

Start there.

They're informing us about the performance of different kinds of advertisements, which helps us focus our money on the ones that count, which I can't deny is a pretty big value-add. I don't know of any direct alternatives for doing that.

If they have a goal and this is the best (only) tool to achieve it, you’ve got a few options:

1. Get them to reevaluate their goal(s).

2. Get a new job with values that align with your own.

3. Make an emotional plea and see where that gets you.

4. Actually look into alternatives and make a case for one (if it exists).

Can you not hide behind the GDPR shield to push your opinion? As in, "sorry guys, a user must consent to tracking before we load any scripts and send any data. Only functional cookies allowed by default".

Unfortunately we're US-only, so we don't have to think about GDPR :(

Isn't there a california-state law that is gdpr like? Sorry I do not know the details, just remember someone saying that if you are gdpr compliant you are also compliant with those laws.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/14/californias-new-data-priva...

I'm a marketer and think tracking is fine and ethical. That said we have a few extremely security focused clients who moved away from JS tracking, so I'll tell you the compromises I've seen:

1) Setting up server to server integrations with FB and Google to send conversion tracking to to the platforms directly, no JS needed.

2) Creating a sandbox to hold pixels (not sure of the tech details).

Creating a server-side events funnel is something I'm asking around about. Unfortunately it won't help with user privacy, but it would at least lighten the page weight.

Though from what it sounds like, this has to be done case-by-case (arduous) and not all vendors support it. Is there a generalized solution for doing that?

Edit: actually maybe it could help with user privacy. If we're only sending over the necessary data to track conversions, instead of letting eg. TikTok run arbitrary code on every page our users visit, that's probably still a win.

At my last job we ran into the same issue you're going through and also wanted to limit the amount of client-side tracking scripts running on page-load. We ended up using Segment (https://segment.com/) to act as an Event hub and they have integrations with Facebook, Google Analytics, and other platforms to forward events to. It worked well once you get through the pain of setup and any incorrect configurations.

If I remember correctly, it wasn't a complete replacement for things like Google Tag Manager if you're using that but it certainly replaced many event tracking calls for a single event tracking call.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com