Hacker News Reader

Comment by brendanib | Hacker News Reader

A large portion of that 700kb of js is for user-level analytics to track everything, which is fed back into everything from Ads to Page Insights to News Feed algorithms. There's a lot going on that has nothing to do with loading and displaying content.

View on HN

There's a lot going on that has nothing to do with loading and displaying content.

-- This is exactly the problem. for users, content is king.

Just because it doesn't deal with directly showing content doesn't mean it has nothing to do with content.

Let's say Google used predictive algorithms based on what you've clicked/hovered on/looked at on the search page to generate your next query. That doesn't deal with loading and displaying content, but it is directly related to DECIDING which content is going to be shown. And if content is king, that's the most important thing of all.

Exception that proves the rule is google search. nobody wants to trade performance so they can be analyzed and ad-tracked "more better" for basic info...Example: 9x [!] do not track blocks @ http://www.independent.co.uk/

I know it's in vogue to rail on Facebook at every opportunity, but you're making an assumption that all this tracking and analyzation is ultimately only to serve you more targeted advertising or sell your info. While that might be part of the reason, Facebook also does a lot of work behind the scenes to determine what content to show you, just like Google does.

And while we're comparing Google and Facebook, why would it be ok for Google to analyze the heck out of your behavior but not for Facebook to do the same thing? Google and Facebook both make approximately the same percentage of their revenue (basically 100%) off of advertising, right?

To be fair, I think you mis-understood me. There's no mention of FB. My example was a news site with 9 trackers. Plain vanilla newspaper - Independent is in London UK. The odd-couter-example might be x, y, or z. It might be google or it might be facebook. but why not just have opt in? The default inference is that [insert number here] would not find it worthwhile enough to bother. [1]

_______________

[1] Also, I did not mention, but on that topic you asked: FB data can be considered more sensitive. They start broadcasting and sharing stuff. Taking it "out of context", and sent to your network. Kind of ironic, but true. It begs the question: Why do you like this? or Why do your read that? Do I want to put footnotes on everything I do? To explain the "context" and the logic of my thoughts? Not really... =D.

> This is exactly the problem. for users, content is king.

If I were someone significant at Apple or Google(+), I would pay attention here and formulate my attack plan based on this factor. Part of that would involve a browser add-on that syncs to multiple social networks, with the express purpose of taking power away from Facebook.

This would probably violate ToS for facebook.

they should abandon this concept altogether of pushing this burden onto the client-side (smartphone), they should be able to move any tracking logic server-side to get what they need from a mobile device, really I don't think companies should ever offload this burden onto a client-device, what are they tracking client-side (mousovers? keystrokes?) isn't this a bit invasive to the user?

They're tracking things like bounce rates and time on pages to find out who you interact with the most. Also, I'm sure they're analyzing how far you scroll the page, where you click away, and a variety of other things.

can you remove the word "loading" from your comment?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com