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Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

See my comment. My hypothesis is: ignorance and apathy that results in incompetence.

Using GA4 is just the normal thing right?

Look in a room full of marketing experts and they will say yes or shrug.

Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or rain god because they just lost it at that comment. I know I would.

To answer: no GA4 is not just the normal thing. There is no normal. It's the dominant thing and it invades privacy like hell and the whole thing needs to be thought about in a different way. I'd advice almost everyone to stop smoking that Google crack pipe and roll your own or find an analytics friendly vendor.

Yea I got a bit rhetorical there, apologies for being a bit fed up with this situation.

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Yes, my comment was published just one minute after yours so I only saw your comment after mine and I appreciated reading your comment (& upvoted it)

> Look in a room full of tech people and you'll see all security experts and security adjacent people screaming HELL NO or simply giving a nuanced answer that ultimately comes down to "no". Some will do funny little dances, some probably even just praying to a sun or rain god because they just lost it at that comment. I know I would.

But if that's the case, are we saying that when the website was being created, it was being created with no-one who was security expert or let alone security adjacent people?

This is what I had refused to believe because in my opinion, more due diligence within the structure should've taken place and if there was no-one competent within the team, then why not hire one who is?

I can't help but feel frustrated, this is probably gonna negatively impact people who have talked on such suicide prevention websites.

Literally these websites is to create a safe space and for a person to be heard, if one introduces the concept of tracking or even feeling tracked, I can't help but feel frustrated as to why, why not hire people who know about security especially for such websites and especially with these laws. I am unable to understand this to be more specific.

Marketing people like the features they're getting, and Google and Meta are dominant, so big that they're the default, in the same way that we talk about github being the default option, and "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM / (big tech company of your choosing)". I wouldn't dream of saying they should choose something else, without researching and guaranteeing that nothing they'd ever want from GA (and they may not know everything they'll want in the future right now) is missing in the alternative. In a role (marketing) that's completely out of my wheelhouse. So I don't even bother.

Not all websites are created with IT in the loop. And sometimes even if IT is in the loop, then they aren't privacy/security conscious enough.

I got to see this first-hand being part of a marketing department. IT was explicitly left out of the loop. Though that was a Fortune 500 company. I'm not saying it's the same situation for the organization of this article.

My point simply is: IT is not always in the loop when a site gets created. And I bet "not always" is putting it mildly.

Tribalism is a thing. Or at least, I call it tribalism.

"Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome". It's that kind of stuff, unfortunately.