[HN Gopher] Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics ___________________________________________________________________ Tech-savvy audiences block Google Analytics Author : robin_reala Score : 1126 points Date : 2021-08-31 08:18 UTC (14 hours ago) (HTM) web link (plausible.io) (TXT) w3m dump (plausible.io) | sharmin123 wrote: | 5 Things To Check Before Taking Divorce Decision Or Separate: | https://www.hackerslist.co/5-things-to-check-before-taking-d... | marcinzm wrote: | >I looked at analytics of a site that had a post trending on | Hacker News and Reddit with more than a thousand upvotes and more | than a thousand comments. | | Reddit is a very diverse site and not a tech savvy site overall. | This just means the subset of users who liked this, likely very | technical link, blocked GA. To use that to claim 58% of all | reddit users block GA is very disingenuous imho. | asddubs wrote: | doesn't ublock black GA by default? That might help explain it | ovebepari wrote: | I don't. I like personised ads. I don't want bra ada at 3 am | whish I won't buy. | thrower123 wrote: | How is the percentage that low? Maybe iPhone Safari is to blame? | | It's not quite as bad as things were ten, fifteen years ago, | where not using an ad blocker was just begging to get your | machine pwned, but it's still bad. | [deleted] | aomobile wrote: | I surf in private mode. A super simple solution for all your | tracking protection needs people. It boggles my mind how this | comes up again and again yet we have private browsing since when? | The 90s? Don't be lazy - that's the real reason, isn't it? Having | to login again.. | isoprophlex wrote: | Yes, because of course private mode protects you from | fingerprinting tech and other tracking infrastructure | | /sarcasm | llarsson wrote: | No, we really did not have private browsing since the nineties. | It's a new thing, for sure. | | What we had in the nineties was that we could configure our | browsers to ask for every single cookie that a site wanted to | place on our computers. That got old really fast when internet | advertising became a thing, and tracking cookies were all over | the place. | capableweb wrote: | > No, we really did not have private browsing since the | nineties. It's a new thing, for sure. | | Indeed! Seems the first browser to implement some sort of | incognito/private/separated profile (specifically to hide | your tracks, not general like Firefox Profiles) was Safari | around the release of Mac OS X Tiger (April 29, 2005). | jobigoud wrote: | Chrome's incognito mode doesn't block Google Analytics. | piaste wrote: | You do know that fingerprinting is a thing, right? Private | browsing is designed to keep your local device clean of your | tracks, not the wider web. At all. | | Telling Facebook "hello, I am visiting baddragon.com from | Mozilla Firefox 63.1 on Obscure Linux in Podunk, Saskatchewan, | population 32" is barely an improvement over telling them | "hello I am John Q. Smith and I am visiting baddragon.com". | | And of course, private browsing is generally per-instance. Log | in to your Google account in a private tab? All your other | "private tabs" are also logged in to Google until you close the | private browser. | aomobile wrote: | I use a generic iPhone without any mods | | And yeah probably need to use windows not tabs on desktop. On | iPhone each tab wouldn't see that another is logged in though | | (Otherwise yes good to be aware of fingerprinting I agree | with you) | 8fingerlouie wrote: | I used to have Google Analytics blocked on my home networks | (through Pihole/Adguard Home) with the exception of one network | which my wife uses. She works with SoMe so not having access | kinda interferes with her job. | | I've since moved to NextDNS.io to have network agnostic | ad/malware filtering. Still keep a "special" configuration for my | wife :) | jerrre wrote: | what is SoMe? | 8fingerlouie wrote: | Social Media manager. | | I was as confused when i first saw job postings for "SoMe | experience", and figured it was a MeToo thing :) | klausjensen wrote: | Social Media | rubyist5eva wrote: | Shocking it's not higher. | stanislavb wrote: | Only 58% :)? | octref wrote: | Does anyone have recommendation for static site hosting with | simple server-side analytics? The only thing I can find is | Netlify Analytics, but $9/mo is too much for hosting a few pages | of OSS project documentations. | | If there's no complex interactivity achieveable only through JS, | I prefer to ship sites with plain HTML/CSS, so I don't really | like to use any client-side analytics. And yes - I can live | without all the fancy features to track and profile my visitors. | | I don't want to host by myself either, since I enjoy using a | simple git push to deploy my site. | maattdd wrote: | I use AWS Cloudfront on top of my static blog to get basic | analytics (and some edge caching). It is almost free. | shantnutiwari wrote: | Netlify analytics is very inaccurate to begin with-- it was | showing me I was getting 20,000 visits a month on a 5 year old | blog I never updated! | | Moving to a normal analytics, the number is closer to a dozen, | maybe a few hundred. | | I suspect Netlify doesnt remove bot traffic | sofixa wrote: | CloudFlare Pages does this. | busterarm wrote: | https://plausible.io/blog/google-analytics-alternatives | the_duke wrote: | If you are willing to go a bit more hands on: | | * Use a CDN which provides access logs (AWS Cloudfront, logs | are stored in S3, Azure supports this too i think) * Feed those | logs into a self-hosted analytics solution, like goatcounter | [1] | | [1] https://github.com/zgoat/goatcounter | marvinblum wrote: | How about Pirsch [0]? It starts at $4/month and you can set up | as many sites as you want for up to 10k page views/month. That | should be sufficient for most smaller sites. | | [0] https://pirsch.io/ | lobocinza wrote: | So Linux user base is kind of almost 5% instead of <1%? | fartcannon wrote: | Healthy people don't eat junk food. | Dah00n wrote: | And 90+ % of those likely have plausible.io on their block list | too. At least it is on all tracking/analytics blocklists I use. | wooptoo wrote: | * at the DNS level. | turbinerneiter wrote: | There is a German movie about the system that is used to gather | TV ratings. It's a special box that some users get which reports | what they are watching. Small sample size goes into a big | statistic (not sure how accurate the portrayal of the system in | the movie is). These boxes are given to the people who pay the | German public TV fee, which excludes i.e. students (they don't | have to pay) and some other groups. This group of critical people | figured that out and started to hack into these machines to fake | ratings. They faked the ratings away from stupid trash TV towards | some higher quality stuff, documentaries, culture, ... Obviously | in the movie then the country saw a renaissance, everyone got | smarter, yadda yadda, you get it. | | I feel like this is similar. All tech savvy people block ads and | analytics and at least the known tricks they use against us. So | the internet only tracks the defenseless people and is then built | to serve them (and or exploit them). | | Maybe we should engage in large scale AdWords fraud. Send come | fake traffic away from Facebook and over to Wikipedia. | dreen wrote: | I think very few actual people click on ads. Ad exchange | platforms get majority of their revenue from impressions | anyway. | fnord77 wrote: | What's the name of the movie? | erdii wrote: | You mean something like AdNauseam? | | https://adnauseam.io/ | | Edit: it's an adblocker that is supposed to click on EVERY ad | that it blocks. | divbzero wrote: | What GP describes would be stronger than AdNauseum. Instead | of sending clicks indiscriminately for every ad, you would | send clicks for high quality content. | scrollaway wrote: | That'd just end up costing the high quality content | providers money. Ads wouldn't just get cheaper for them. | | On the contrary, clicking only on trash, and having the | high quality content have a much higher signal-to-noise | ratio would have the desired effect. | | Maybe. | chrischen wrote: | Pretty much all pay per click ads are trash... and I | guess most other ads too. No complicated logic needed | here! | turbinerneiter wrote: | The idea is not so much of clicking on high quality | content ads, but sending visits to high quality content | pages and click on the ads of those pages, to get them | more money. Would obviously stop working if the sales | after the ad click are not made. | | But, hey this isn't a gameplan, this was just a "what if" | :D | monkpit wrote: | > to get them more money | | Wouldn't they just lose money? Ad clicks are not valuable | to the businesses themselves. Only to the ad companies. | scrollaway wrote: | That could work, or indeed it could get them dropped | quicker because they have a high fraud rate :) | | I'm fully on board with the AdNauseam model which fucks | about indiscriminately. The ad industry can burn. | mrjin wrote: | Cannot agree more. Since the the advertisers have that | much to spend, let's make them to spend more for nothing. | Also by doing so, it will literally put enough noise into | the data those trackers collect and renders the user | profiling useless and effectively protecting us from | being tracked. | | If we only click ads on high quality contents, those | content owner might benefit from it in short term but in | long run it most likely going to back fire and make them | penalized as for sure there is going to be counter | measures. If we simply click every ad indiscriminately, | there is no way to tell or they have to penalize everyone | which almost equals to do nothing. | AussieWog93 wrote: | >That'd just end up costing the high quality content | providers money. | | I always click on Taboola bitcoin scam links for that | exact reason. It's like scambaiting an algorithm. | ElFitz wrote: | Plus, low quality content providers would have a high | click-through ratio but very low conversion rate. | | Might be interesting. | a_imho wrote: | Last time I checked you could configured click frequency in | AdNauseum. | cnxsoft wrote: | Maybe that's where all the invalid clicks came from last | year... | FalconSensei wrote: | I think it wouldn't be about the ads, but the visit tracking. | Like, block GA from seeing your visits on trash sites, but | allow when it's a high quality post/content/source, so we | skew the numbers for high quality content | skinkestek wrote: | That's actually very interesting. | | Is there any extension that blocks analytics selectively? | atoav wrote: | As someone who has been in one or another meeting with German | TV stations I can assure you this is not completely far | fetched. The people deciding what is running at these stations | are of the mindset (a translated quote): | | > Our average viewer is 65 years old and watches TV while doing | the dishes, we must not show things that cannot be understood | by them | | and then they will serenade about how they would "love to have | a bit more sophisticated things", but as they are the only ones | who really understand their audience, they cannot allow this, | although they support the values of the 68 generation etc. pp. | | From my standpoint the German television landscape is | completely doomed, because the people at the levers are in the | illusion they do the good thing for "the small man" while in | fact they just think the small man is incomprehensible stupid | and must not ever be confronted with content that shows them | that there is still stuff to learn and understand in the world. | touristtam wrote: | In France there is the 50 yo housewife: https://translate.goo | gle.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... | bluGill wrote: | That is always the problem with data: it is reactive. Sure | the average watcher is 65, and wants easy to understand | stuff: that is what the data shows (I'll assume for | discussion that is what the data shows, but I have no insight | into if it is true or not). What the data doesn't show is if | content would draw in day 25 year olds, they need several | years of trying those other shows to see if it makes a | difference - a very risky best that could run them out of | business even if true (that is the older crowd stops watching | faster than the younger crowd figured out it is worth | watching meaning advertisers don't pay enough to keep | producing content). | | Of course TV in the US has figured out that the 65+ crowd is | very valuable to customers (the advertisers, not viewers!), | so even though they could get more viewers by not showing the | nightly news, the nightly news is what they show. | muffinman26 wrote: | In the US there's actually an FCC requirement that | television channels air news. | | From https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/public-and- | broadcasting: "virtually every station has an obligation to | provide news, public affairs, and other programming that | specifically treats the important issues facing its | community." The details are specific to the license, but | almost every station is required to air at least an hour of | news a day. | | There's also requirements to air a certain number of hours | of educational material for children | (https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/childrens- | educational-t...). | bluGill wrote: | Does the requirement mean air news during prime time | though, or can they do it at times when most people are | not even able to watch TV? | muffinman26 wrote: | It's unclear, because the exact details are specific to | the license and therefore may vary from station to | station. My local television stations usually air the | news at 11, which is after primetime. | karaterobot wrote: | This is true, but it's worth noting that the FCC revoked | the fairness doctrine in 1987. | a4isms wrote: | This the same problem as interviewing people for a job nd | collecting data about which "features" from interviews | correlate with job performance... Without tracking the | performance of any of the candidates who weren't offered | jobs--or turned down an offer. | | Something, something, a diagram of a plane showing where | the damage was on those that returned from missions. | andai wrote: | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias | errantspark wrote: | > Something, something, a diagram of a plane showing | where the damage was on those that returned from | missions. | | Ahahahah I love this dogwhistle. You always know you're | in good company when someone waves their hands around and | says "put the armor where there _AREN 'T_ bullet holes" | and gives you a significant look. XD | lamontcg wrote: | "you don't build bridges by measuring swimmers" or whatever | that quote is. | ryandrake wrote: | Reminds me of a thread a while ago pointing out that a | single show dominates the MTV programming lineup almost | every day [1]. It's as if there is some algorithm running | without human intervention that feeds on itself by reacting | only to current viewing habits: foreach | (show s in lineup) if (s.viewers > THRESHOLD) | lineup.replace_with_more (s) | | Obviously resulting in this weird local maxima where no | other shows get broadcast. | | 1: | https://twitter.com/MTVSchedule/status/1422934028253081603 | jandrese wrote: | I don't have MTV so I had to look up what | "Ridiculousness" is. Apparently they play | Youtube/Tiktok/etc... clips? Sounds like it must be | incredibly cheap to produce. This is what it looks like | when you let a race to the bottom continue on | indefinitely. | | And the cable industry can't understand why people keep | cutting the cord. Can you imagine shelling out $120/month | to have some producers pick out Youtube clips for you? | jancsika wrote: | > Our average viewer is 65 years old and watches TV while | doing the dishes, we must not show things that cannot be | understood by them | | So like, sticking only to the first and second derivative in | soap opera plots about retired civil engineers? | | No late-period Beethoven sonatas as background music? | | That must be difficult for you as a German. | | Meanwhile, here in America we're perhaps a few years away | from something like the movie "Ass" from Idiocracy winning an | Oscar. | JTbane wrote: | > Meanwhile, here in America we're perhaps a few years away | from something like the movie "Ass" from Idiocracy winning | an Oscar. | | Very true, this is the first thing I thought of when I head | of the popular show "Naked and Afraid". | eru wrote: | Are you joking, or do you have perhaps too high an opinion | of German TV? | jancsika wrote: | On the one hand: yes, I am. | | On the other-- we have a network that bills itself as | educational and spends over a month marketing a full week | of programming dedicated to propagandizing its audience | to be maximally afraid of sharks. | | It broadcast a _wildly popular_ movie where a tornado | full of sharks attacks a city. | | German TV could be an order of magnitude worse than my | parody and it still wouldn't even register on the | American scale of stupidity. | jandrese wrote: | It reminds me of the (possibly apocryphal) reasoning behind | the cancellation of "Police Squad" back in the day: that | people would have to pay attention to get the jokes. | | https://boingboing.net/2014/07/04/police-squad-was- | cancelled... | eru wrote: | The '68 generation' is pretty much the same generation that's | now 65 years old and washing dishes.. | | > From my standpoint the German television landscape is | completely doomed, because the people at the levers are in | the illusion they do the good thing for "the small man" while | in fact they just think the small man is incomprehensible | stupid and must not ever be confronted with content that | shows them that there is still stuff to learn and understand | in the world. | | Well, that would be more bearable, if half the TV market | wouldn't be allowed to essentially tax everyone to finance | their drivel. | noAnswer wrote: | > Our average viewer is 65 years old and watches TV while | doing the dishes, we must not show things that cannot be | understood by them | | > because the people at the levers are in the illusion they | do the good thing for "the small man" while in fact they just | think the small man is incomprehensible stupid | | So basically they have a Hacker News mindset! | | In every thread about a dumbed down GUI/website it is argued | that granny wouldn't understand it otherwise. No power user | allowed, because data shows user is monkey. | josefx wrote: | > > Our average viewer is 65 years old and watches TV while | doing the dishes, we must not show things that cannot be | understood by them | | I haven't watched german TV in ages, but I distinctly | remember science shows degrading from science to thinly | veiled ads - things like literally running a companies | marketing video or making a "scientific comparison" where | they hand out random style points at the end to make a | specific product win. I think they even got into trouble over | it since ads and science/education shows are taxed | differently. Anyone pretending that they are doing that for | their viewers is living in denial at best, but probably just | outright lying. | blablabla123 wrote: | I stopped watching TV more than 10 years ago because I was | worried to turn stupid from it. Not so far fetched after all. | | There are some high quality shows and TV stations though. | Namely Phoenix (similar to PBS in the U.S.) and some of the | news magazines that run in the late evenings. Of course there | are also all the other public stations with higher quality | programs but I find the program most of the time quite random | and sometimes even a bit elitarian. | mattmanser wrote: | Well, you say that, but isn't that exactly why Netflix got | rid of ratings? | | All the documentaries were getting really high ratings, so | would display highly in searches, but not many people | actually watched them. | | It's the same for most content, I read a huge amount. I do | read some intellectual books, but only occasionally. The rest | of the time I read utter, thoroughly entertaining, trash. | | I don't want to read about an existential crisis after | programming all day, I want someone to hit something with a | big sword and get the girl. | q-big wrote: | > Well, you say that, but isn't that exactly why Netflix | got rid of ratings? | | > All the documentaries were getting really high ratings, | so would display highly in searches, but not many people | actually watched them. | | This rather shows that ratings _do_ work, but are used | wrongly for giving recommendations: | | If you want to create suggestions for a user, in many case | the wrong answer is "suggest what has really high ratings", | but rather "given the ratings that this user gave and the | films that he watched, what will he also like." | | The fact that these documentaries get high ratings (the | same might hold for art house films) shows that there is | some (niche?) audience which really loves this kind of | films, but not that "John Doe" will love it, too. | monkpit wrote: | Isn't this why it now says something like "your match: | n%" now? | FalconSensei wrote: | > This rather shows that ratings do work, but are used | wrongly for giving recommendations | | And I know I'm (possibly) a minority on hacker news, but | I prefer the new system. I was giving everything I wanted | to watch more 4 or 5, even when it was clearly not the | case, but because I want recommendations of things I'm | going to like AND actually watch | sempron64 wrote: | Predicting exactly this was the premise of the famous | Netflix Prize, one of the first open machine learning | challenges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize | tehjoker wrote: | I remember my professor talking about the ensemble | approach the competitors were taking in a data mining | class I took. I was saddened when Netflix ended up not | using it because it was too slow and expensive or | something. | jandrese wrote: | It didn't promote Netflix content above third party | content. Not enough control for the algorithm is | unacceptable for the marketing guys. | dmoy wrote: | I remember when that competition was released, I was | working (as an undergrad) in GroupLens, which had | MovieLens still around but it was getting a bit of | bitrot. | | It was always weird to me that GroupLens didn't spin up a | team for it, but it seemed like everyone in the research | group had moved on to other things and didn't want to | context switch back. Someone mentioned something like | "shame they didn't do this 10 years ago, a million | dollars would have been nice". I think someone was doing | tagging on movielens, but I don't remember the details. | | I got the sense that neither Riedl nor Konstan (or any of | the current grad students it seemed) wanted to pursue it | (Terveen, I think, wasn't in to recommender systems at | all in the first place). | | I don't think the lab had any funding problems haha, so | maybe that was what it came down to. | bluGill wrote: | > It's the same for most content, I read a huge amount. I | do read some intellectual books, but only occasionally. The | rest of the time I read utter, thoroughly entertaining, | trash. | | I feel the same way. However I force myself to read things | that will better me once in a while anyway. I too want to | hit things with a big sword (without the pain of getting | hit), and get the girl (without cheating on my wife), but | the world including me is better if I do something else | anyway. Which is why I do sometimes read a complex math | book. | tehjoker wrote: | That is how it is with documentaries. Just because they are | getting lower viewing numbers doesn't mean you shouldn't | keep promoting them. Certainly there should be a mix of | entertainment and public interest stuff, but following | audience preferences for entertainment creates a feedback | loop that damages society. | eru wrote: | Things like documentaries are mostly watched by already | well-off people (mostly middle class and up). | | In Germany, public TV is paid for by (nearly?) every | household. [0] | | Forcing everyone, including poor people, to subsidize | rich people's taste for documentaries seems a bit.. off? | | Similar arguments apply to public libraries and opera | houses, though at least there the financing is done | mostly via progressive taxation. | | Of course, you can argue that we sophisticated people | know what's good for those unwashed masses, and if only | they watched their documentaries like they are supposed | to, they would soon see the light. Colour me skeptical. | | [0] As far as I am concerned, private broadcasters can | and should do what they feel like. | tehjoker wrote: | People choose from what is presented to them. That's | consumerism. It's not like people get to pick what gets | produced. If more public interest material is available | and advertised, it'll get watched more. The alternative | is to watch less TV and engage with society directly | more. Both of those outcomes would be preferable to the | excessive production and consumption of entertainment. | | Private broadcasters do not pick material based on public | interest or even their judgment of what is good. It is | far more mechanical and influenced entirely by market | forces. Herman and Chomsky discuss this in Chapter 1 of | Manufacturing Consent. | | https://ia802700.us.archive.org/31/items/pdfy- | NekqfnoWIEuYgd... | nitrogen wrote: | Well, when people complain about a growing wealth divide, | and those who are doing okay financially say that | childhood access to public libraries and documentaries | made them who they are, shouldn't those things receive | funding? | tastyfreeze wrote: | When I was first living on my own barely making rent, PBS | documentaries were the most interesting thing on | broadcast TV. Infinitely more entertaining than drivel | like the Bachelor. Other than available time and offered | free content I doubt preference of documentaries is | different among income classes. | tehjoker wrote: | It's crazy how many people believe being poor means | you're stupid. Not true! Thank you for pushing back! | [deleted] | eigen wrote: | > Things like documentaries are mostly watched by already | well-off people (mostly middle class and up). | | assuming a normal distribution, wouldn't this then be the | majority of people? | mortenlarsen wrote: | The movie is "Who Am I (2014)". | turbinerneiter wrote: | I meant Free Rainer, didn't know that who am I had similar | themes. Is it good? | mortenlarsen wrote: | Oh. I must have remembered wrong then. Maybe I mixed those | up. I think it is worth watching. | | Edit: Note: Free Rainer also goes under the name "Reclaim | your brain" | JumpCrisscross wrote: | > _the internet only tracks the defenseless people and is then | built to serve them (and or exploit them)_ | | Believe it's Scott Galloway who said advertising is a tax on | the poor and technologically illiterate. | lgats wrote: | Exactly like https://syntheticmessenger.labr.io/ | | Though, I would say this can actually hurt publishers in the | long run | gonzo41 wrote: | Untill your last paragraph I was thinking you were going to say | "so let's lead from the front and let the trackers see the real | internet." | hadrien01 wrote: | What's the name of the movie? I'll add it to my watchlist | turbinerneiter wrote: | Free Rainer | kyazawa wrote: | This movie sounds great and I would love to watch it. It's | a shame there's no legal way to watch many international | movies like this if you are in the US. | | I make a point of watching a non-US film on every | international flight I take - I find it to be a unique | opportunity to watch interesting non-US movies with English | subs. I have discovered two excellent oddball comedies from | in flight movies (Die Goldfische from Germany and Le Grand | Partage from France), but when I tried to rewatch these | films with others in the US, I discovered it was basically | impossible. There must be so many other great movies from | around the world we are missing out on. | muglug wrote: | It's called "Reclaim Your Brain" in the US and you can | buy/rent it via Apple TV. | hammock wrote: | Hacking democracy (ratings voting system, whatever) to | indirectly effect a supposedly benevolent unilateral outcome? | Sounds familiar. | jedberg wrote: | It's not exactly hacking democracy. Democracy implies every | gets a vote. This is P hacking small sample sizes. | hammock wrote: | So it's engineering falsified scientific conclusions then. | Still sounds familiar. | mdoms wrote: | There's a Family Guy episode where Peter does the opposite. | jseigj43 wrote: | Do you have any links or references to that? It's fascinating. | hkai wrote: | I can't quite understand this. By "exploiting" you simply mean | targeting ads? | | The real harm seems to be from the tech giants censoring speech | and policing payments, but what's the harm that someone targets | a pair of shorts that I might like or show an ad for a | conference I might be interested in? | Lio wrote: | It's a question of control; no should mean no. | | Some people don't want to be tracked or monitored by | advertising companies and it should be enough to just say so | without companies like Facebook always trying to sneak | tracking back in via dark pattens, shadow profiles, etc, etc. | | For example once you've seen a website offer you the same | product for different prices based on arbitrary tracking it | leaves a bad taste in your mouth. | turbinerneiter wrote: | I.e. ads, facebooks feed, endless scrollers like 9gag -> they | like to use dark patterns and exploit tricks against the | human mind to keep and guide your attention. | | The harm if targeted ads depends on your viewpoint. | | A targeted ad might serve you something you were looking for | anyway, or it might manipulate you into spending on something | you don't actually need. I.e. look at Instagram influencers, | showing off their fake perfect live, making the viewer feel | small and then try to buy the same happiness by buying the | same product. | | At best, ads are information that you need, at worst, they | use psychology to manipulate you. | Freak_NL wrote: | I think you might have the meaning of 'i.e.' ( _that is, | namely_ ) confused with 'e.g.' ( _for example_ ). | turbinerneiter wrote: | Thank you very much, I am proud to say that I did this | wrong for at least 10 years :D | | Thanks! | Tijdreiziger wrote: | There is a shortcut to remember this: 'e.g.' for 'example | given' (and therefore, 'i.e.' for 'that is'). | | ('E.g.' doesn't really mean 'example given' in English - | it means 'exempli gratia' in Latin. But it's a useful | mnemonic.) | xenophonf wrote: | I also use "in essence" for "i.e." even though it's | actually 'id est' in Latin. | JohnFen wrote: | In my mind, when I see i.e., i think "in other words", | and when I see e.g., I think "for example" | hkai wrote: | Seriously, you're worried about someone spending more time | on their phone or spending more money on goods and | services? Spending their own money -- not the public money? | That's what freedom is to you? Not the freedom to talk to | whoever you want, say whatever you want or pay whoever you | want? | turbinerneiter wrote: | I have no clue where you derive any of these things from. | I certainly never said any of it. I never even made a | claim a out freedom. | | I was talking about how ads, tv programming, trackers and | such have a tendency to create a positive feedback loop, | which leads people towards less quality and mindless | consumption. And about a fun idea from a movie, to break | this feedback loop and replace it with another one, that | promotes higher quality content. | | You then started talking about a different topic and are | now accusing me of not being interested in free speech. | chalst wrote: | hkai's mind is like a hammer: whenever it sees an opinion | relating to human choice, it sees a nail. | kervantas wrote: | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0810868/ | belter wrote: | Is this the fee you have to pay even if you are blind or deaf, | or do not have a Radio or TV? Gives you the most boring TV News | in the world, plus 600 movies per year nobody wants to watch, | because they are horrible? But they collected the tax and they | have to spend it, as the German actors guild is worst than a | cartel? :-) | | https://www.german-way.com/germanys-tv-tax-the-debate-over-t... | geraneum wrote: | I personally prefer boring news backed by quality journalism | and funded by people rather than sensational, outrageous and | superficially controversial news! If I want the excitement I | watch a drama or action movie. I think the news | articles/pieces work like clickbait; the more head-turning | they get, the more viewers they acquire which results in | higher profits. | belter wrote: | I am not talking about sensational or misleading like in | FoxNews or CNN :-) I am talking about boring as in....very | serious persons, on a serious background, reading very | serious the Reuters or Ap news of the day. As the service | was paid and it has to provided ;-) A better model would be | instead having to provide good analysis or quality content | otherwise your audience will go somewhere. As in for | example, the FT or the Economist. | | Actually thinking about it, the issue is wider than just | the news and I think the financing mode of the mandatory | tax is a big part of it. What is really a shame, as Germany | has a rich culture of hundreds of years so great content in | all forms should not be a problem. | | "Why is TV in Germany so bad?" https://www.reddit.com/r/ger | many/comments/3d4vxz/why_is_tv_i... | | "Why is German TV so crap?" | https://www.exberliner.com/blogs/the-berlinale- | blog/berlinal... | | You might comment the BBC financing model is similar and I | would agree. I think the difference is that the BBC also | embraced a highly commercial model of selling content like | Top Gear and other stuff worldwide. In this case the | English language content with its planetary audience, | pushed for a more competitive/commercial model and the | German TV stayed too insular in my view. | tehjoker wrote: | Audience engagement chases entertainment (and thus | reproduces CNN/MSNBC/Fox etc). You won't get what you | want by tweaking that metric alone. | matzab wrote: | Deutschlandfunk alone is worth it imho | MrGilbert wrote: | > Is this the fee you have to pay even if you are blind or | deaf [...] | | That's not correct. If you are deaf, you get a reduction - if | you are blind, you get a reduction. If you are deaf-blind, | you don't pay at all. If you are already receiving financial | help because of your blindness, you don't pay at all. | belter wrote: | You are right about it, did that change recently? According | to the reference below it depends on the degree of deafness | or blindness...if you can still hear or see something still | have to pay... | | https://www.rundfunkbeitrag.de/buergerinnen_und_buerger/inf | o... | turbinerneiter wrote: | Not a big fan of the GIS either, but my stance is not as | extreme. I see benefits, but there is problems as well. It | could be a good system if there was a proper reform and if | you get politicians out of the system. | Simplicitas wrote: | What an awesome idea! :-) | smilbandit wrote: | digital idiocracy | Semaphor wrote: | > which excludes i.e. students (they don't have to pay) | | That is incorrect, they do have to pay (once per household). | But if you get BAFOG (student loan/social benefit mix that | require you and your parents to be below a certain income | bracket), you don't. | turbinerneiter wrote: | I know that very well, I had to pay it because there is no | BAFOG for foreign students. Just felt it might not be an | important enough detail to explain BAFOG to the international | audience. | rusticpenn wrote: | You could have called them and they would usually give you | an exception. Not sure if that situation has changed now. | viraptor wrote: | > Maybe we should engage in large scale AdWords fraud. | | You may like the "Google will eat itself" idea. | | https://www.gwei.org/index.php | NmAmDa wrote: | "202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google." | | Nice cosmological time scale idea | vincentmarle wrote: | > Google Shares owned by GWEI: 819 | | Those 819 shares are worth $2,371,005 now | ALittleLight wrote: | Isn't this just investing the results of ad fraud into | Google? Probably a profitable idea, but I'm not seeing the | "Google eating itself" aspect. | byecomputer wrote: | According to their numbers they netted $400,000 worth of | Google, essentially for free. Mind, that hasn't been | updated in close to a decade; nowadays their 819 shares | would be worth about $2.4 million. | kzrdude wrote: | That's art! | cm2187 wrote: | Don't modern internet-connected TV boxes snitch on what people | are watching? Surely we don't need a sampling anymore? | | Just thinking that the elderly population is probably the least | likely to use those boxes (though I am not even sure of that), | whereas they constitute the (dying) core of traditional TV | viewership. | JohnFen wrote: | > Don't modern internet-connected TV boxes snitch on what | people are watching? | | Yes, which is why I will never own one. | 14 wrote: | Just wait until 5g is everywhere and companies will just | add its functionality to your tv and connect regardless of | what you do. | JohnFen wrote: | They can't add functionality to a device that I don't | own. | conradfr wrote: | You know a connected TV / set-top box is on a channel but you | don't know how many / which persons in the house is in front | of it. | ta988 wrote: | Most "smart" TVs have cameras these days... | yissp wrote: | How long until they start putting cameras in them and doing | facial recognition? | ta988 wrote: | Cameras are here and we have no idea what they do with | them. | gruez wrote: | Put tape over it? | jobigoud wrote: | They could put an IR camera right next to the remote | sensor. Since it's behind a glass that is opaque to | visible-light you wouldn't even know the camera's there, | and if you put tape on it your remote wouldn't work | anymore. | gruez wrote: | >Since it's behind a glass that is opaque to visible- | light you wouldn't even know the camera's there | | If it's opaque to visible light how does the camera | produce an image? | | >if you put tape on it your remote wouldn't work anymore. | | Not really? You just have to be more careful placing the | tape. Besides, nowadays many smart TV have app remote | controls, or RF-based remote controls so the IR sensor | being blocked is a non-issue | bluGill wrote: | > If it's opaque to visible light how does the camera | produce an image? | | It isn't opaque to infrared light though. The image is | still high enough quality to make out people, it looks | funny but it is good enough for their purposes. | cm2187 wrote: | Some sort of localised motion sensor would probably be | sufficient to tell you how many people are watching | without invading too much on people's privacy. You | wouldn't know the age, but you already have ton of | information by knowing the address and the subscriber | already. | hnlmorg wrote: | > _Some sort of localised motion sensor would probably be | sufficient to tell you how many people are watching_ | | You'd also have pets captured, curtains flapping by an | open window captured, and any toys kids are playing with | (like balls) potentially captured as another viewer too. | | Meanwhile pap who likes to sit motionlessly while the | kids round around him, isn't detected. | | > _without invading too much on people 's privacy_ | | Motion detection feels like a pretty major privacy | violation to me. | | > _You wouldn 't know the age, but you already have ton | of information by knowing the address and the subscriber | already._ | | Except when you have friends or family over. | justanotherguy0 wrote: | Just use the microphone in the smart tv. That's what the | CIA does: https://www-washingtonpost- | com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.wa... | MiddleEndian wrote: | Speaking of tracking, non-amp link: | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- | switch/wp/2017/03/07... | KallDrexx wrote: | So I found out my neighbors were proud to be | participating in some new Neilson study. Apparently they | pay you to wear these boxes in your pocket that pick up | sound. At the end of the day it syncs what it heard to | their servers and you get points, which eventually | translates to money. | | Essentially the stated purpose is so that it can pick up | what music you listen to throughout the day, but in | reality it's picking up everything. | touristtam wrote: | Oh so like a cell/mobile phone, but only with the purpose | stated out right? | vel0city wrote: | Nah, they get paid to have the box in their pocket, you | pay to have your box in your pocket. | WorldMaker wrote: | Ironically, modern streaming apps have far more accurate | numbers than anything Nielsen ever cooked up sampling people, | _but_ Netflix made the precedence that they should be | "secret sauce" and not shared publicly and most of the | "Streaming Wars" diaspora today are following that | policy/precedent. | | We're in something of a worst of both worlds situation where | Nielsen has an increasingly small number of viewers where | traditional TV boxes work to get decent samples, has to rely | more than ever on surveys, and distrusts all streaming | viewership numbers because they are cloak and dagger white | lies between competitors, despite in theory being way more | accurate than all the previous tools (the surveys and the TV | boxes). | | It's almost wild. The most forthcoming to shareholders/the | general public over the years has been Hulu and Hulu's | numbers at times have suggested Nielsen's data is _very, | very_ wrong right now, but Nielsen doesn 't trust Hulu's data | at all because it smells like lies because Netflix does | nothing but lie or ghost them. | nebula8804 wrote: | I have been exploring ways to avoid sending this data to | them. To start: using an instance of Pi-Hole and running | all your apps will remove some tracking from them. | | Following this up with paying for your subscription but | pirating all the shows might help remove you from the cycle | completely. | | I understand the second point is not realistic for the | majority of people but I wonder if in the future we might | have an easy to use version of Pi-Hole that most people can | just flip on and strip a large chunk of tracking from the | apps. | WorldMaker wrote: | That just gets us back to the topic way above: if we | aren't giving that tracking data to TV producers, it's | tough to complain when our favorite nerdy/intelligent | shows get cancelled. | | That's the deep weird irony that we live in a world where | we could have the best possible numbers (directly tracked | statistics), and yet TV Producers are still relying (for | the most part) on Phone and Snail Mail Survey Results | because they don't think they can trust streaming | provider numbers. Pi-Holing those numbers just gives | those Producers even more reason to feel that they are | lies or wrong. At what point do you Pi-Hole too many | telemetrics to oblivion and aren't allowed to complain | when your favorite TV shows get canceled because "no one" | was watching it? | nebula8804 wrote: | I guess this contributes to me watching less and less | shows because I am tired of stuff being canceled | midseason. It might be a self fulfilling prophecy. Less | people watch these shows/appear to watch these shows, the | networks stop producing it and these people don't come | back to whatever the network does end up producing. | | From what I am hearing, traditional forms of media are in | decline because people are spending their time on | Youtube/Twitch/Social media instead. | crtasm wrote: | > Surely we don't need a sampling anymore? | | Depends, are the TV networks buying that information? Or just | advertisers? | dylan604 wrote: | So does your cable provider's set top box. So does your | Roku/Fire/AppleTV/etc, except it is at the app level. | [deleted] | dspillett wrote: | Modern TVs do snitch but there are two issues with relying on | that: | | 1. There is a disparity between age groups and other | demographic dividers who have newer TVs. This could | significantly skew the results for some advertisers. | | 2. The data is going to the TV manufacturer, and they will | not share that freely between themselves or with anyone else. | This will complicate collating the data as there are several | entities to negotiate with in order to get an overall | picture. | ok123456 wrote: | And the tech savvy people never connect their "smart" tvs to | the internet. | noir_lord wrote: | My "smart" TV has one job - show the signal fed to it via | HDMI from my linux box. | ipaddr wrote: | I don't block ads. I remember what the internet was about to | become before ads stepped in. Everything of value was going to | be pull behind paywalls. | | Let's say everyone get their wish and ads go away. Everything | will require a purchase. Those purchases are logged to a real | name/address. You end up with bigger privacy leaks. | | People will still be tracking you the way they are now. And at | the credit card level. | | As an adult in the first world I can afford to pay for adfree | solutions. Most people can't. Ads level the playing field. | 542354234235 wrote: | Ads have bloated the useful internet to the point that it is | more expensive and less functional. We have 8,000 websites | trying to show me a recipe for chicken parm, most of them | with pages of family history and backstory, because they are | all trying to get me to see _their ads_. A lightweight | Wikipedia for recipes and a few high value added websites | charging a trivial amount for access to their recipe catalog | would be highly value added for me, and run on a fraction of | the infrastructure. | | Ads obscure solutions, and add redundancy and complexity with | zero value added, because solving a problem means you no | longer are on the page _seeing ads_. Simplifying or | automating a process means you are clicking less pages less | often and _not seeing ads_. If you automate something to | directly connect users with what they need, then they don't | need to come back and see your ads. So we have automations | they bring us to some middle man that can _show us some ads_ | before we can get to what we need. | | Ads mean that maximizing the time your attention is held is | the core value. High quality content that leaves you | informed/satisfied/fulfilled is worthless compared to low | quality content that is just good enough to keep you from | leaving, without being having enough substance to actual | fulfill you, because then you might leave and _not see the | ads we have to show you_. | | Podcasts show us that a tiny minority of users able to pay | for content subsidize an incredible amount of added value | content for everyone, whether they can pay or not. | | Ads don't level the playing field. Ads are an ever growing | tumor, sapping resources and weighing everything down in a | mindless effort to replicate. | marcodiego wrote: | I don't think the playing field is disleveled without ads. | Wikipedia has no ads. | | If you're willing to handle ads, they should at the least be | untargetted. | ipaddr wrote: | Agreed. | hollerith wrote: | Your personal prosperity depends on a prosperous online ad | industry; doesn't it? | ipaddr wrote: | The last time I worked in adtech was 2012. | [deleted] | JohnFen wrote: | > Let's say everyone get their wish and ads go away. | Everything will require a purchase. | | No, it won't. There was plenty of high quality stuff on the | internet before ads or payment was even possible, and there's | plenty of high quality stuff that don't track you or require | payment right now. There's no reason to think that would all | evaporate. | ipaddr wrote: | We will see plenty of high quality stuff still I agree. But | much of the free stuff will be about converting you to the | paid stuff. | | With ads or not you are still the product. You will still | be tracked because people want you to spend money on their | service. People will sell that information. Companies will | use it. | JohnFen wrote: | Sure, much of it will. But certainly not all of it. The | amount of actually free content will certainly not | decrease, and it would probably increase, even if by only | a little. | | > With ads or not you are still the product. | | It depends on the site. There are lots of sites where the | site operator has no interest in it generating an income, | let alone a profit. You are not the product there. | McDyver wrote: | While that speculation is plausible, another view would be | that companies would offer quality content without tracking | users and invading their privacy (how many paid services | still flood you with ads?), and possibly free alternatives | would start to come up. | | From your point of view, free open source is something that | wouldn't exist | ipaddr wrote: | The hobbiest websites will not go away. Open source existed | long before the internet. | | What you are left with is the hobbiest websites or the mega | brands that want to funnel you into their ecosystem. To | offer anything that cost resources that you are willing to | spend you must be a megabrand using this as a loss leader | opportunity. | | I don't think we want that world. We may think we do but | look at what happened in Mr. Robot. | JohnFen wrote: | > I don't think we want that world. | | That's the world we have right now, though, just with the | addition of the spying that advertising brings. | ipaddr wrote: | The spying still happens regardless. We just don't have | advertising (benefits and drawbacks) | cblconfederate wrote: | . | turbinerneiter wrote: | What even gives you the idea I am saying that? Did I say it? | Nope. | PaulHoule wrote: | There is the Nielsen system in the US and I wonder if it is the | other way around. That is, in reality, nobody has watched MTV | since 1994 but Viacom bribed a Nielsen family to tune a TV to | it and keep it there. | michaelcampbell wrote: | > Maybe we should engage in large scale AdWords fraud. | | Data poisoning for something the scale of Google I fear would | be ineffective to the point of laughability, sadly. | kin wrote: | So you want more targeted ads for tech savvy people? I wouldn't | give ad tech that much credit. Many tech savvy people have cut | the cord and watch TV through streaming. Anecdotally, I watch | Hulu. Hulu knows so so so much about me yet zero of the ads are | targeted. They very much have this capability (engineering | resources) but due to a number of reasons I can only assume | (network contracts, ad bids) it just probably isn't going to | happen. I would love if I could have an ad blocklist cause one | more Progressive Ad will drive me bonkers. | gmadsen wrote: | I don't live in the ad tech world, so I only vague know what | is interconnected. Do the tech giants just sell info back and | forth to each other? | | For example, When I watch youtube on my Roku, if im not | signed in, does roku still aggregate what I watched on | youtube, could that be sold to Hulu, for ads when I watch | that on the same tv? | ClumsyPilot wrote: | "large scale AdWords fraud." | | Be carefull - fraud is a crime. But I am under no obligation to | provide AdWords any data, let alone true and reliable data. | | Considering the tracking and spying, and my legitimate interest | in privacy, there is no room for fraud argument here. | | PS: this would be probably a Hoax | Nextgrid wrote: | Fraud would involve financially benefiting from it - if you | don't benefit I don't think it would count as fraud in most | countries. | lawtalkinghuman wrote: | In England and Wales, all three types of fraud covered by | the 2006 Act have as substantive elements of the offence a | requirement that a defendant intends to either "make a gain | for himself or another" or "cause loss to another or to | expose another to a risk of loss", where gain and loss are | defined as only referring to "money or other property". | | Note also that the offence is framed in terms of intention | to gain or cause loss. Even if no material gain or loss | happens, the intention is what matters. (The equivalent | mental element for theft in England is that one dishonestly | intends to permanently deprive someone of the property | being taken.) | | https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35 | | This applies to online ad 'click fraud' in both ways--if a | publisher fraudulently clicks on adverts to make money, | that'd potentially be fraud to make a gain for themselves. | If a competitor clicks on adverts to get their competitor | to lose money on pay-per-click, that'd potentially be fraud | to cause a loss to another. | | I can't speak for jurisdictions other than England and | Wales but I'd be surprised if a fair number of other | jurisdictions didn't also define fraud in a way that covers | both gain and loss scenarios. | r0m4n0 wrote: | You may want to read the CFAA and report back. | | Spoiler alert, it doesn't involve your intentions or money. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Ac | t | ClumsyPilot wrote: | We are talking about general fraud, not CFAA, which is a | 'hacking' law. | | The companies spying on me should be the first in line to | be tried under CFAA | yunohn wrote: | Where did you get this notion from? That's absolutely not | true, and there are many acts that can be illegal without | benefitting from them. | | I don't think AdNauseum users would be prosecuted, but | you're still wrong. | | source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud | travisgriggs wrote: | Correct, fraud isn't the correct term here. The op grabbed | the first word that probably presented itself, and others | nearly ad nauseam (lowercase) have discussed its merits as | the term. | | What's needed is a better term. | | I propose either AdTurfing (hat tip AstroTurfing) or | AdLighting (hat tip GasLighting). My personal preference is | the second. | treis wrote: | Isn't it just vandalism? | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Vandalism is, again a crime against property that is | legitimately placed on the street or somewhere. | | Ad biz is a business model, not property, and a predatory | one as that. You are not obligated to enable someone | else's business for free. | | They are claiming their clicks and impressions mean | something - its their problem to ensure they are | accurate. | | Imagine someone is doing a survey of sex habbits, and | selling the results. Is it a fraud to lie? Ofcourse not, | why should you be responsible for their profits. | | The fact that people think they are legally obligated to | enable this is really fucked up. | pessimizer wrote: | It's not actual fraud. You're not bound by the terms of | service of ad providers. Your device is actually sending | requests to the ads, which they are counting themselves to | determine payment rates. If it's fraud to send ad impressions | to sites I like without visiting them, it could be fraud to | deny ad impressions to sites that I do visit (with my ad | blocker on.) | | If the sites set it up themselves, it's fraud. If you | conspire with the sites to set it up, it's fraud and | conspiracy to commit fraud. But if I'm prosecuted for the | crime of not actually looking at ads I request, that's just a | judge with an agenda. Whether it went one way or another at | every layer of appeal would probably be a coin flip, though. | [deleted] | mrjin wrote: | Agree. I'm genuinely want to click every ad I see to protect | myself from being tracked. If that could be fraud, will there | be anything not a fraud? | [deleted] | marcodiego wrote: | I think it is just a matter of semantics. Let's call it | "large scale AdWords statistics improvement". Look, sounds | much better now! | UnFleshedOne wrote: | While legally we are probably far away from this being a | fraud, nothing stops google from adding something to their | TOS and banning your account on that basis... This is the | only reason I'm not using those noise generators even though | all ad-tech should burn in a trashcan fire in my opinion. | einpoklum wrote: | Do you remember the name of this movie? Might it have English | subtitles? | turbinerneiter wrote: | Free Rainer is the one I'm referring to. | [deleted] | Closi wrote: | > They faked the ratings away from stupid trash TV towards some | higher quality stuff, documentaries, culture, ... Obviously in | the movie then the country saw a renaissance, everyone got | smarter, yadda yadda, you get it. | | > I feel like this is similar. All tech savvy people block ads | and analytics and at least the known tricks they use against | us. So the internet only tracks the defenseless people and is | then built to serve them (and or exploit them). | | I think this is right - ad-traffic is manipulative and actually | I don't think it is a societal 'good' at all. | | A few personal examples: | | * On Youtube almost all my adverts are encouraging me to start | Forex / Stock / Property investment and trading, and sign up | for courses on these. These courses are scams (or at best, | 'half-scams' and poor/generic advice repackaged and sold for | thousands), and in general provide poor financial advice | (either through extortionate courses, recommending you become | too heavily leveraged or advising you to day-trade high- | volatility stocks by just looking at charts). Presumably it | does this because I am 32 and male, so I am considered 'prime' | for this marketing. | | * One of the friends I know is a girl, and she has never seen | the above adverts. We were talking and she says every single | advert is just about pregnancy and fertility. I wonder how many | of these adverts are just reinforcing gender-stereotypes in a | wider sense, i.e. while google claims to be progressive and | care about 'equality' really is their business model at it's | core really just targeting women and telling them that they | should be getting pregnant, while telling guys that they should | be the bread-winners and earn money via stocks/shares? | | * While my adverts are for forex, and my apparently fertile | friend is getting adverts for pregnancy tests, my older parents | just get targeted adverts for pre-paid funerals. One or two are | probably be fine, but they are just on constant repeat - and I | can't help but think that I wouldn't the constant reminder of | death before every youtube video. | | * My laptop is convinced that I want to go camping. It's only | my laptop, every advert is camping related. Sleeping bags, | tents... and the strange thing is that when it started I didn't | want to go camping, but it's been so consistent across the last | few months now that I kinda wanna go camping. Like it's sold me | this romantic vision which I know wasn't there before, so even | though I would usually like to say I can't be manipulated | through marketing, it's really made me realise I can be. | | Is the above really making society better? And if it's not, why | should we put up with it? IMO the biggest lie we have been told | by Google is that 'personalised ads' are a good thing. | z3t4 wrote: | Just change your gender to trans/alien and your age to 5... | hackmiester wrote: | "trans" isn't a gender. But, I am trans, and advertisers | are more than prepared to advertise to me. So I'm not sure | what the goal would be there. | malka wrote: | Irrelevant ads are less likely to work. | 542354234235 wrote: | > The advertiser has a tracker that it places on multiple | sites and tracks me around. So it doesn't know what I bought, | but it does know what I looked at, probably over a long | period of time, across many sites. Using this information, | its painstakingly trained AI makes conclusions about which | other things I might want to look at, based on... | | > ...well, based on what? ...Probably what it does is infer | my gender, age, income level, and marital status. After that, | it sells me cars and gadgets if I'm a guy, and fashion if I'm | a woman. Not because all guys like cars and gadgets, but | because some very uncreative human got into the loop and said | "please sell my car mostly to men" and "please sell my | fashion items mostly to women."... You know this is how it | works, right? It has to be. You can infer it from how bad the | ads are. Anyone can, in a few seconds, think of some stuff | they really want to buy which The Algorithm has failed to | offer them, all while Outbrain makes zillions of dollars | sending links about car insurance to non-car-owning | Manhattanites. It might as well be a 1990s late-night TV | infomercial, where all they knew for sure about my | demographic profile is that I was still awake. | | > You tracked me everywhere I go, logging it forever, begging | for someone to steal your database, desperately fearing that | some new EU privacy regulation might destroy your business... | for this? [1] | | [1] https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190201 | Igelau wrote: | Your female friend should probably take a pregnancy test. | During my wife's first pregnancy, my Kindle started | displaying diaper ads within days. | kjs3 wrote: | On the other side of the coin, my ex-wife continued to get | diaper/formula/etc ads for years after our miscarriage. | MiddleEndian wrote: | >why should we put up with it? | | You, your friends, and your family personally don't have to | put up with it. Ublock Origin can block ads on Youtube with | ease. | touristtam wrote: | It isn't available on all plateform utube is unfortunately. | Closi wrote: | I agree on a personal level, although at a societal level I | believe regulation is required. | | As per the parent comment to my original one, I just | fundamentally do not believe that most advertising | contributes anything positive to society and mostly | generates negative externalities. | wodenokoto wrote: | Is it the Simpsons or Seinfeld where in one episode one of the | characters gets a Nielsen box that is used for measuring tv | viewership and they can't leave the house for fear of shows | being canceled if they're not home to watch it. | sofixa wrote: | Happens in Family Guy too. | hotsauceror wrote: | They did something similar in "Roseanne." The Connors were | selected to be a Nielsen family and Roseanne made the family | watch nothing but PBS, documentaries, etc the whole time. She | wanted to hack the ratings so that over time, regular folks | like her family would get exposed to a better class of | information. | marvion wrote: | And ALF in 1987 S02E05 | wodenokoto wrote: | I want to believe that you just remembered that, like if | the top of your head. | | The idea that some die hard Alf fan just made they way past | my post on hacker news really puts a smile on my face. | asiachick wrote: | Me, I don't block Google Analytics intentionally, I run Ublock | Origin to get rid of ads in general and it happens to block | Google Analytics. | tiku wrote: | I wonder why Google did not yet make a tool to integrate your | server logs into analytics. That way you can really measure | everything. | uthapaa wrote: | Why people block google analytics let the owner of the website | track you.. it will help them to earn because they open a website | to serve you not to untrack you... | CalChris wrote: | Ok, so I sheepishly admit that didn't know how to block | analytics. Now I do. | | https://www.privacyaffairs.com/block-google-analytics/ | wintermutestwin wrote: | That link is a joke: The highest ranked solution is installing | a google extension. | BlackLotus89 wrote: | > Plausible proxy runs as a first-party connection and is only | blocked by those visitors who block JavaScript entirely. It is | not blocked by any browser or adblocker | | Would be interested to also include that into the statistics. How | many nerds block javascript? I wouldn't be counted by the | plausible proxy since I disable javascript per default via ublock | and if I allow javascript I still filter it using uMatrix. | zoobab wrote: | Get me some lawyer and enforce Schrems2 against Google Analytics. | tomaszs wrote: | I have been using professionally Google Analytics for over ten | years. When I set up Summon The JSON store on Shopify I made | decision to not use it. | | It does not give any value. And moreover it takes a lot of time | to study. At the end rather on quality and sales you focus on | visits, and a lot of other non important metrics. | ponytech wrote: | This article clearly suggests that you should use their own | solution, Plausible Analytics. | | They are also JavaScript based, so how long before ad-blockers | start blocking them too? | | Isn't it time to come back to server side analytics? | Seirdy wrote: | Plenty of filter lists block several instances of Plausible. | | I welcome that; if I want to give feedback I'll do so myself. | Analytics should not be opt-out. | timdaub wrote: | They are blocked a whole lot too, see my comment in the thread: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28365505 | ponytech wrote: | I don't get your comment, sorry. | | By server side analytics I meant using a tool like AWStas or | Webalizer which parse web server logs to tell you how much | visitors you had on your site. | | I can't see how it can be blocked. | jobigoud wrote: | They meant that "Plausible Analytics" are blocked a whole | lot too. | timdaub wrote: | exactly (can't edit original post anymore, sorry) | ponytech wrote: | You were answering the first question not the second, | totally make sense now. | | Sorry for my misunderstanding. | sodality2 wrote: | I've noticed several plausible.js's blocked by uBlock origin. | Not sure how, maybe pattern matching? I doubt it was manually | in any blocklists as it was a small personal blog. | ushakov wrote: | you can serve the script from your own server (what they call | proxy) and it shouldn't be noticed by adblockers | Seirdy wrote: | Adblockers are fully capable of blocking subdomains and | individual scripts by name, as well as forbidding certain | outbound connections. | | You'll probably have to use inline scripts and send data back | bundled with actual data necessary for your site to run if | you want to sneak past the user's defenses. But if a site has | that much of an adversarial with its users, maybe it's time | to stop using that site. | jeroenhd wrote: | Most adblockers I know block Piwik and that's fully self | hosted in most cases. I know because I gave it a spin and the | entire interface was broken because of my adblocker. | | Smuggling tracking through first party proxies is certainly | an easier way to avoid privacy protection systems on your | customers' devices, but it's definitely not the silver bullet | people want it to be. | marvinblum wrote: | That's the main reason we promote the backend integration for | Pirsch [0] so much. In the long run, JS will probably not be | sufficient, depending on your target audience. | | [0] https://pirsch.io/ | ponytech wrote: | Thanks for mentioning Pirsch, their backend integration | sounds like a modern solution. | | Tools like AWStats or Webalizer are really outdated nowadays. | GuB-42 wrote: | That's something I often think about. Are blockers used for | fingerprinting? Especially by the likes of Google who controls | both the ads/analytics platform and the website (aka first | party). | | There is a specific demographic who use blockers, generally of | the tech-savvy kind. It should even be possible to detect the | blocker being used and some of its settings. It would be ironic | to detect that a user is blocking almost everything and show them | ads for privacy-oriented products and services. | BatteryMountain wrote: | Pihole (2M domains) + Firefox strict mode + uBlock Origin is what | I do. Any other tips? Used to have privacy badger too but it | breaks too many sites for me. | 3r8Oltr0ziouVDM wrote: | Disable JavaScript by default (try uBlock's advanced mode). | OliverJones wrote: | Pi-Hole on my domestic private network. | underlines wrote: | Every reputable Digital Marketing Agency now switches to Google | Tag Manager Server Side (first party) tracking. Only disabling | Javascript would circumvent this. | morpheos137 wrote: | 99% of users ignore online adds. | | Most advertising is a con, on the ad buyer. | fortran77 wrote: | HN users think they're too smart to be susceptible to ads, but | I'm skeptical! I think ads work. | | I block ads not because I'm anti-ad, but because | | 1) it's nearly impossible to browse the web at all without an | ad blocker | | and | | 2) Malware has been delivered via ad networks, sometimes on | otherwise reliable websites that were duped into running the | ad. | | I'd have no problem with ads if they appeared as ads used to | appear in a newspaper - static content between articles that | doesn't distract or interfere with my reading experience. | libertine wrote: | You're saying that while commenting on a HN post from a company | that sells analytics solutions, with a piece of content showing | that Google Analytics it's getting blocked a lot by a specific | type of a audience. | | Like... _hey guys, you know, if you want to sell to these folks | maybe you should consider an alternative to GA, right?_ | | Why didn't you ignore this? | | This is fine for you, yet an AD that's it's clearly identified | as being an AD, with, literally, a defined area - it's not. | jeroenhd wrote: | I expected these numbers to be higher. However, an even more | interesting metric is the 88% block in Firefox. | | Firefox may not have a great market share, but based on these | numbers it's market share may very well be eight times higher | than your analytics report. This can change the argument of "it's | only 3% of our users so we don't need to test on FF" to "it's a | quarter of our user base, we should at least test it", depending | on your target audience. I've seen tons of people claim general | Firefox usage is negligible based on public data from websites | such as statcounter, but these metrics prove that those | statistics are unreliable and should not be used. | | The best you can do is use server side UA inspection, though you | can't really distinguish bots from real users that way. | nix0n wrote: | > I expected these numbers to be higher. | | The actual numbers might be higher, the article notes that | these numbers still don't include anyone who blocks first-party | JS completely. | | I don't know if any of the sampled websites actually work | without first-party JS. | sofetch wrote: | > The best you can do is use server side UA inspection | | No, the best you can do is to stop caring. A distant second is | this "server side UA inspection." Whatever that means exactly. | batch12 wrote: | Server side useragent inspection | kongin wrote: | >I expected these numbers to be higher. | | Home vs office. | | On my company laptop I am often not allowed to install software | (but I'm allowed to develop the software that companies trust | to handle billions of dollars in transactions) so my usage | would look 60% chrome with no add blocking and 40% completely | locked down firefox. | DocTomoe wrote: | I feel this heavily depends on your goal. | | IMHO, this points at Firefox being used mostly by ad-averse, | tech-savvy users, while the less-adverse, less-savvy users | prefer Safari and/or Chrome. | | If your objective is to maximize ad revenue, the most obvious | approach would now be to ignore Firefox completely and focus on | non-FF browsers. | | Of course, following web standards would be the Golden Way, and | more selfless actors follow that rule, but that song has been | sung ever since the old Netscape/MSIE wars. | bluGill wrote: | > If your objective is to maximize ad revenue, the most | obvious approach would now be to ignore Firefox completely | and focus on non-FF browsers. | | No, your best approach is to test firefox carefully to ensure | it is broken. That way you encourage people to use something | more friendly to you. | | I hope I didn't give anyone ideas. | nine_k wrote: | It's less of a joke than it sounds. | | I have to keep Chromium around not just for testing in it, | but also to make certain purchases, reservations, etc, | because some sites just fail to work in regular Firefox, | even with enhanced protection off. Not many, maybe 0.1%, | but in a pinch there's no other way than to fire up MISE^W | Chromium. | dannyw wrote: | Dont give Google Maps and YouTube ideas. Wait... | tempestn wrote: | Also Google Meet. I've noticed my webcam always comes | through crystal clear in Meet on Chrome, but is reliably | blurry in Firefox. | nebula8804 wrote: | Is there a good blocking solution for Safari? From what I | understand uBlock Origin cannot operate on Safari due to the | way that it disallows some allows access to the underlying | source of the webpage. | | Also it seems like extensions on Safari require you to | install them via the App Store which just seems so dumb and | unintuitive compared to Chrome/Firefox. | | If they fixed these two issues, I think Safari usage would be | much greater. That browser is so incredibly fast and snappy | especially on the new M1 macs but not having proper ad- | blocking is a complete deal breaker. | sidibe wrote: | The reason Firefox is higher is probably because it's the | easiest one to block ads on mobile. Most people I know who use | Firefox on mobile do so specifically to have ublock origin. I | personally use chrome on desktop but Firefox on mobile. | tadfisher wrote: | Funnily enough, Privacy Badger is an excellent ad blocker. | Turns out 99% of ads come from tracking domains. You'd think | the ad people would split up the tracking from actually | showing the ad, but apparently it's not worth showing an | impression without also tracking the user. | [deleted] | mywittyname wrote: | Ad Block Plus browser on Android is easier. I use both but | don't bother blocking ads in FF since I use reader mode 99% | of the time. | 300bps wrote: | With so many options for Chromium-based browsers, is there a | reason why you still use Chrome? | | I personally use Edge on desktop and iPhone because I give so | much data to Google by using a gmail account that it lightens | the load a little bit to use something other than Chrome. It | functions the same as far as I see and it runs all the same | plugins. | Bilal_io wrote: | Not op. | | I also use Edge on my Android, it has a built-in adblock | plus. I prefer unlock origin, but it's better than nothing. | rovr138 wrote: | Doesn't firefox on android allow ublock origin? | SirFredman wrote: | yes. | loudtieblahblah wrote: | and privacy badger, https everywhere, decentraleyes and a | number of privacy addons. | sidibe wrote: | My reason for using chrome is I don't mind it. I think I'm | less suspicious of Google than most of HN. They don't allow | extensions on mobile though | wintermutestwin wrote: | You have to be on Android to use addons with mobile Firefox. | Since Android=Google, doesn't that mean you are giving Google | all your data including browsing data and the fact that you | are blocking ads? | zeta0134 wrote: | Only if you are running Google Play services. You can | certainly opt out of this if you like. I run LineageOS and | do just that, but I also don't need my phone for much more | than the basics, and F-Droid can fill those in for my use | case. | silon42 wrote: | Why would you assume they are getting all browsing data? | wintermutestwin wrote: | Motive + ability. They want all the data and they own the | OS. | | Why would you assume they aren't? | loudtieblahblah wrote: | there's never been any evidence that Google is capturing | all internet traffic on android devices. | X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: | Motive + ability aren't the only things. That'd be a | clear invasion of privacy that you could expect to win a | court case over. | sidibe wrote: | I don't know, but it definitely blocks ads which is why I | use it. | nix0n wrote: | Yes, but at least I don't have to see as many ads, and my | phone's CPU doesn't spend as much time rendering ads, and | my limited mobile bandwidth isn't all sucked up by ads. | polote wrote: | The reason Firefox is higher is probably because users who | choose it are more educated about the internet and are | probably the ones who know how to use an adblocker. So it is | unlikely that the proportion of users who use Firefox | globally is higher than what stats give us. | floatingatoll wrote: | I thought Firefox desktop and mobile blocked Google | Analytics by default these days, as part of the general | anti-tracking protections. Maybe I'm wrong, though? | pvg wrote: | _I expected these numbers to be higher._ | | These numbers are iffy or at least, very poorly described. | They're not a percentage of HN or Reddit users - in the HN | case, the sample is HN users who clicked on a front page link | to a post about switching to Linux from MacOS. It's a fairly | small sample biased in ways that are unknowable when all you | have is that one sample. As a methodology, this is flaky enough | to not warrant the headline and the significant digits in these | numbers. | joeframbach wrote: | "it's only 3% of our users so we don't need to test on FF" to | "it's a quarter of our user base, we should at least test it" | | To nitpick. Starting with 3/100 FF, times 8 unaccounted for, | you get 24/121, 20%. | nine_k wrote: | Why 121? I suppose visitors are counted by more reliable web | server logs. | tempestn wrote: | If you're counting 3% Firefox usage in your analytics, | that's 3 users in every 100 using FF, and 97 using other | browsers. If we assume actual FF usage is 8x what's being | reported, you actually have 24 FF users and 97 other users, | for a total of 121. | ionwake wrote: | Doesn't Firefox still include google analytics into its | Preferences dialog boxes or something? Im finding these stats | ironic. | irae wrote: | I don't have any proof or study on it, but I suspect they | don't do it. My anecdotal evidence is that I use an | application firewall and Firefox by itself pings only | telemetry.mozila.org or accounts.mozilla.org and stuff like | that. It uses domains that explicitly say what they mean to | be used for. At least in my experience | wodenokoto wrote: | Mozilla has a special agreement with Google about how their | analytics data is stored and handled. I thought they only | used it on their websites but it is not impossible that they | use it for software telemetry. | commoner wrote: | If you're referring to Firefox using Google Analytics for the | Firefox Add-ons frontend, as of July 2017, Mozilla has | disabled Google Analytics for any browser that has Do Not | Track enabled. | | https://github.com/mozilla/addons- | frontend/issues/2785#issue... | | This change was made in response to pressure from HN readers, | so thanks to everyone for that. | zibzab wrote: | It's odd a company of that size cannot roll their own | solution. | johannes1234321 wrote: | It's odd a company of the size of GM cannot roll their | own gas station and toad construction network. | | What's the purpose of the Mozilla organisation? Is it in | creating a analytics platform? Mind that value of GA | comes from all the info they have and thus can estimate | age, gender, social things, ... of users etc. Building an | comparable service is a notable effort with little | synergies to what Mozilla does. (Whereas Google can | combine with information from other businesses) | nacs wrote: | I'm a Firefox user but let's face it, Mozilla doesn't | have to make their own -- there are plenty of open- | source, self-hostable analytics solutions. | | (Also the "toad construction network" made me laugh) | mkl wrote: | Maybe it's a condition of their funding deals with | Google? | tr33house wrote: | So proud of the plausible guys for getting to the top of HN. I | remember reading about them in 2019 on indie hackers! All the | best | ScottWRobinson wrote: | Really curious how this compares to Cloudflare's analytics. I run | a site for developers with decent traffic, and according to | Cloudflare only about 25% of our readers block Google Analytics. | I had always thought it would be a higher percentage, so this | seems to make sense. | | It's also odd that the clicks from Google Search Console line up | very closely with what we see from Google Analytics. I had always | thought this data would be more accurate since Google SERPs uses | (used to use?) forwarding URLs to track this stuff. | NewEntryHN wrote: | How do I block Plausible? | mrlatinos wrote: | Pihole | yoble wrote: | Their open analytics page shows the live HN traffic to their | website, driven by this article - quite a peak from regular: | https://plausible.io/plausible.io | mastazi wrote: | I'm curious as to why Reddit users were considered a tech-savvy | audience. While there are some tech-centered subreddits, many | others are not. | markosaric wrote: | the subreddit that drove the traffic to the post that was | analyzed was /r/linux which should be more technical than the | average subreddit out there | mastazi wrote: | Thank you, I missed that part. | randomperson_24 wrote: | This is highly inaccurate. The author is using Plausible via a | proxy but Google Analytics directly (a very biased way to do | things). | | Secondly, PiHole, uBlock origin and most other adblockers also | block Plausible analytics (there are discussions on their own | Github Issues regarding it). If you are proxying Plausible to get | accurate readings, same should be done with GA. | robin_reala wrote: | I don't read this as Plausible vs GA but server-side anything | (including a GA proxy) vs client-side GA. in that case, it | doesn't seem like these figures should be wildly wrong. | cwizou wrote: | They definitely did, this is not a GA vs server side | comparison. From the source : | | > I compared stats between Plausible Analytics and Google | Analytics. | happybuy wrote: | As a developer of an ad blocker[1] our stats would seem to back | up what Plausible has found: | | - Despite having equivalent desktop (macOS) and mobile (iOS) | apps, most of our users (> 75%) use the app primarily on desktop | | - Most users say the key reason for use is for privacy | protection; even with Safari providing some inbuilt privacy | tracking protection | | - Our app is focused on providing a simple 'set and forget' ad | blocking approach; so you would think the key audience would be | less tech savvy users. However a large proportion of users are | tech-inclined and knowledgeable users. | | - A lot of tech heavy websites are some of the worst offenders in | terms of tracker usage and advertising. For example, The Verge | can load 3.5x faster simply by using an ad blocker that blocks | the on-page trackers and ads[2] | | [1] https://www.magiclasso.co/ | | [2] https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/difference-adblocking/ | tppiotrowski wrote: | My experience running a web server also backs this up. The | number of GET requests to the back end is around twice as much | as I see in Google Analytics. | thurn wrote: | Are there any ad blockers for iOS that can block ads in google | search results? Or is that kind of thing essentially | impossible? | graftak wrote: | I use 1Blocker which blocks those (checked just now), I don't | see why other apps could not do the same. | 1--6zVa-E wrote: | AdGuard is the best option, plus it's free. | hkai wrote: | Why is it important to have "privacy" from someone selling me a | new video streaming service, but not important to fight against | censorship and policing of content by tech giants? | telesilla wrote: | Can you make this for Android? | slaw wrote: | On Android you can use Firefox + uBlock Origin. | Omniusaspirer wrote: | Add Blokada + Newpipe to the mix as well. | htns wrote: | I don't recall ever having heard about Blokada before, | but looking it up now it doesn't seem recommended: https: | //gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/8536 | ignoramous wrote: | (I created _that_ merge request) | | Blokada's UI is without peer and so it makes for a very | good "just works" for the majority (in fact, from what I | know, it is the most downloaded DNS-based content blocker | on Android by far). | | However, it is disappointing that some of their decision- | making is found wanting: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy | toolsIO/comments/papgeq/any_... | ttctciyf wrote: | Forgive the questions, but you seem to be a good person | to ask.. How does Blokada actually work? Its FAQ claims | it: | | > prevents apps and browsers installed on your device | from sending your private data (known as tracking | fingerprints) to the Internet. | | Is it doing some kind of packet inspection? | | As a secondary layer of blocking I use DNS66 which | intercepts DNS requests and fails them for blacklisted | domains, by installing itself as a virtual VPN - | essentially a cooked /etc/hosts for Android. | | Would Blokada work alongside that? | ignoramous wrote: | > _prevents apps and browsers installed on your device | from sending your private data (known as tracking | fingerprints) to the Internet._ | | For now, Blokada's utility is limited to DNS-based | content blocking. It cannot and does not prevent most | forms of fingerprinting. | | > _Is it doing some kind of packet inspection?_ | | Yes, only DNS packet inspection, but even for the only | thing it does, it is clumsy: It leaks DNS requests; that | is, Blokada _does not_ trap all DNS traffic on port 53, | and it _does not_ handle DNS queries sent over TCP. DNS66 | has these same issues, too. | | > _As a secondary layer of blocking I use DNS66 which | intercepts DNS requests and fails them for blacklisted | domains, by installing itself as a virtual VPN - | essentially a cooked /etc/hosts for Android._ | | Blokada uses the same trick (I mean, core parts of | Blokada 4 code-base does bear similarities with DNS66 | which preceded it... Blokada 5 however was re-written in | Rust). | | > _Would Blokada work alongside that?_ | | No, it cannot. But: Apps that support "DNS proxying" | (like Nebulo [0]) can. It is quite an involved setup. I'd | simply use Nebulo over DNS66, as it is not only more | capable but also encrypts DNS traffic unlike Blokada 4 or | DNS66. | | > _...but you seem to be a good person to ask.._ | | A disclosure, rather something to keep in mind: I have | been accused of spreading fud by the Blokada lead | developer and using it to "market" a "competitor" app I | co-develop. In my defense, it wasn't / isn't fud what I | spread, unless fud === uncomfortable truth. | | [0] https://github.com/ch4t4r/Nebulo (fixed link, thanks | _u /NoGravitas_) | status_offline wrote: | Would you mind to suggest any alternative to Blokada? | Thanks! | ignoramous wrote: | https://github.com/offa/android-foss#-ad-blocker and | https://github.com/offa/android-foss#-firewall | ttctciyf wrote: | Thanks for the info! | NoGravitas wrote: | Github link for Nebulo appears wrong: is this the correct | one? | | https://github.com/Ch4t4r/Nebulo | [deleted] | stjohnswarts wrote: | This is the way. Although the built-in blocker in "strict" | mode does a darn good job as well with a rare site breakage | 45ure wrote: | In addition to uBO, I also use TrackerControl. | | https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol. | f... | zibzab wrote: | And uMatirx, but Firefox put stop to that one. | Lev1a wrote: | Pretty sure Firefox did no such thing, instead IIRC the | developer (gorhill) of both addons (uMatrix and uBO) | realized that uMatrix was pretty much redundant given the | options available in uBO and thus archived uMatrix. | zibzab wrote: | We had a HN discussion where users brought up situations | where uB could not replace uM. | | IMO what really killed uM was major API changes by chrome | and Firefox. | happybuy wrote: | Google has no incentive to support effective ad blocking on | platforms they control (Android and Chrome). This has made us | reluctant to develop for or invest time on these platforms - | the platform owner would be working against what we would be | trying to achieve. | Dah00n wrote: | What? Apple is even worse. There was a big cry when Google | wanted to nuter adblockers API but Apple have done exactly | the same thing. You fell into a pr stunt. Apple doesn't | care for privacy. Just look at how they scan you pictures.. | nacs wrote: | Apple literally built an API for ad-blocking. How is that | worse? | AlexandrB wrote: | Are you referring to the "content blocker" API? Because | that basically forces plug-ins to supply a list of | blocked domains. Just like Google's upcoming changes. | Neither allow you to run your own engine for blocking | like what uBlock Origin does. | [deleted] | FabHK wrote: | No, _other_ cloud providers scan all the pictures you | upload. Apple does a careful private set intersection | (partially on the client, partially on the server) on all | the pictures you upload to collect strictly less data | than other cloud providers. | raxxorrax wrote: | All prominent smartphone OS come with an advertising id. | It wouldn't have to be this way. I think Android is open | source done wrong to be honest. | | But yes, in the end they are both crappy vendors. | wintermutestwin wrote: | It appears that Magiclasso is not open source. That being the | case, how can anyone trust your claim that "Magic Lasso Adblock | doesn't see or have access to any of your web pages or browsing | history?" | Nextgrid wrote: | The Safari content blocking API makes sure of that. Content | blockers can only provide a list of rules for content to | block (based on URL regexes, CSS selectors, etc) but can't | actually access the content itself. | anon9001 wrote: | How do you collect your analytics? | happybuy wrote: | On our website we have no analytics or trackers installed at | all. The app usage statistics come via the Apple App Store. | App Store users can opt out of these stats via an OS-level | setting. | Dah00n wrote: | Opt out? It should be an opt in system in a for-privacy | app. | whimsicalism wrote: | > Opt out? It should be an opt in system in a for-privacy | app. | | I think it's pretty clear that they are discussing an App | Store policy, not analytics collected by their app. | minhazm wrote: | Apple does ask you when you set your phone up if you want | to share analytics or not. I consider that opt-in, since | you're given the choice up front. | smoldesu wrote: | Great, now it's equally as privacy-friendly as Windows 10 | /s | 8fingerlouie wrote: | I'm curious how does this compare/align with 1Blocker ? | themacguffinman wrote: | Worth noting that if you're already willing to setup a first- | party proxy like Plausible does in this comparison, you can do | the same thing with Google Analytics using either the NYPL | project [1] or send whatever you want to the Google Measurement | Protocol API [2]. You can usually send whatever you want through | a first-party proxy in basically any competent analytics product. | Analytics is not ads. | | I find it this comparison a little misleading because Plausible | admits that their own script/endpoint are blocked by adblockers, | just to a lesser extent than Google Analytics [3]. | | [1] https://github.com/NYPL/google-analytics-proxy | | [2] | https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection... | | [3] https://plausible.io/docs/proxy/introduction | enigma-reload3d wrote: | I expect HN to be close to 90% | nullc wrote: | Can some HN users that don't block ads across the board in their | browser explain how you can stand using the Internet at all? | daitangio wrote: | PiHole is my preferred solution. I have come with some insights | here: | | https://gioorgi.com/2020/pihole-lockdown/ | | Give it a try! | | https://pi-hole.net/ | tsjq wrote: | is there a way to run this pi-hole on cloud so, multiple users | can use it , and also while using mobile data ? also, for those | who do not want to spend on / does knot know to fiddle with | RPi. | Havoc wrote: | This should only be done in combination with a VPN. Open DNS | points are not generally recommended | | Check out nextdns instead. It can likely do what you had in | mind | dalu wrote: | I run c64g.com | | Back in the day I could choose ad formats and place them to be | non-invasive. Since a while ago Adsense only has the responsive | ad format. It stretches across the full width and is extremely | high. I tried what they suggested to limit the size but it isn't | working. The site looks nice without ads. And I personally hate | so see it so full of ads. But server needs to be paid and I'd | like to also earn something for my time and knowledge spent on | developing the site and maintaining. There's a lot of work to be | done there. I'd like the audience to be able to write their own | reviews, upload images, maybe even offer a way to play those | games in the browser. The site used to be #1 in search results, | but since Google prefers wikis it's not anymore. I've also | decided to not track my visitors via any trackers, so no piwik, | no GA. Only server logs. | | There's also legacy.c64g.com which despite not being listed | anywhere anymore performs better than the main site in ad | revenue. It has static banner ads that are not invasive. | | I had a free forums service many years ago. German audience. | Barely made server costs. I wanted of course to earn something | for my time maintaining it so I put those annoying layer ads | there. It was a downward spiral. The layer ads initially brought | additional revenue, really nice revenue but people started | protesting and after a while leaving and using adblockers, who | could blame them. It was so full of ads it was unusable. I wrote | an adblocker-blocker, which displayed a black screen if adblock | was detected. That lead to people leaving even more. Eventually | so many people left that removing the annoying ads resulted in | not being able to pay the server rent and it had to close down. | | Ads are a necessity for some sites (subscription based model | won't work) Google is actively destroying the sites that choose | to put those ads on them by removing choice of ad formats. | | Recently I moved away from chrome on the phone for my daily | browsing because Firefox allows me to install an adblocker add | addon and chrome doesn't. Even worse are those cookie nag | screens. Every top result on Google search has an annoying one. I | blame the, sorry but it's true, idiots of the EU parliament who | make half assed laws without taking care of the consequences. | Remeber Shareware of the 90s? It's worse than that now. I wish | there were cookie screen blockers. Lately I started to just | navigate back when I visit a site with a modal cookie dialog that | wants you to accept all by default. In most cases I don't bother | to click anything anymore, if I visit your site and can't read | the info I came for to read I will leave. Too bad there isn't a | metric to count that. | | GA is some of the worst spyware and since the US government has | access to it whenever it desires it's also used to track | individuals. It's one part of the huge spy apparatus the US | shadow government built. | newbamboo wrote: | And we know it doesn't make a difference. | WhyNotHugo wrote: | This is exactly why metrics like "only 10% of our users use | Firefox" are complete rubbish. | | Only 10% of the users that don't block GA. | | That's pretty in line with "X% of users that participated in our | poll say they don't min participating in polls". | xnx wrote: | Google even has official add-ons (for multiple browsers | nonetheless) to opt out of Google Analytics: | https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout | FriedrichN wrote: | Seeing as Plausible is still a script, how much of the remaining | percentage of Firefox/Linux users are blocking scripts entirely? | My default uMatrix settings block everything but first party CSS | and images. | lopis wrote: | Considering that most of the web is unusable for most people | without javascript, I'm pretty sure no-script people are a very | very small portion of the internet. | FriedrichN wrote: | A lot works quite okay, reader view also works great a lot of | the time. And if necessary I'll allow first party scripts and | most tracking scripts are third-party. | NoGravitas wrote: | Now I need to teach my adblocker to block Plausible, even when | hosted first-party. | splch wrote: | _as i browse from duckduckgo browser_ | GekkePrutser wrote: | This is good to hear. I didn't think the percentages would be | that high. | | "Data driven design" is kinda overrated anyway. It's better to | actually listen to your users. Stats don't show what people | think, and they're often tweaked to show what people want to see. | WJW wrote: | "Listening to your users" is just a more manual form of data | gathering though. Also, it's not like "hearing what you want to | hear" has been invented by statisticians, that is super easy to | do when talking to users as well. | | Some of the problems in talking to users: | | - people will often tell you what they think you want to hear | rather than what they really think. (Very few users would ever | tell an interviewing dev that they think the product is | unsalvageable, the dev team wasted several months and that the | user would never ever use it) | | - Users often don't know what they want because they don't | understand the full range of possibilities. Sometimes they | dream of tech that would violate several laws of physics, at | other times they fail to realize that for-loops exist and just | ask for a faster way to manually click a button a thousand | times. | | - Fads affect users just as much as anyone else. If there has | been a surge of news articles about how Google is doing fancy | AI stuff, you can bet the bakery on the corner of the street | will mention machine learning when asked what they want to | improve their business. | JohnFen wrote: | "Listening to your users" is a voluntary exchange with your | users, not compelling data from them. The difference between | the two is critical. | snowwrestler wrote: | It's amazing how far the goalposts have moved on analytical | data. | | I worked retail in The Time Before The Web and we collected | and analyzed data from our customers. We had a door clicker | to give us a daily record of traffic. We did detailed | analytics on what items customers bought when, to inform | inventory and staffing decisions. We did regular people- | counting studies to evaluate our merchandising in different | parts of the store. We did coupons in local papers for | which we could directly track redemption. This was all in | the service of making the store work better for our | customers. | | Now, you might say that those are all anonymous aggregate | piles of data. Well, so are most web analytics packages, | including many client-side JavaScript. | JohnFen wrote: | No goalposts have moved. | | The difference between the two is that there's no | question that counting heads walking through a door and | watching inventory patterns are not personal to the | customer. | | With telemetry, including web analytics, there is always | a question because there is no visibility as to their | actual practices. It all amounts to "trust us". And we've | had more than enough experience with these things to know | that such trust is frequently misplaced -- so none of it | can be trusted. | | And GA especially cannot be trusted, and also happens to | be pretty much ubiquitous. | | As a side note, it's become just as dangerous to be in a | physical store as online now. People who prefer not to be | spied on must pay in cash, be sure to put their phones | into airplane mode before entering the store, and so | forth. And with the increasing adoption of face | recognition in stores, it becomes risky to even show your | face. In other words, they have to be as "on guard" in | the store as online. | ehsankia wrote: | The percentage is misleading. it's not people intentionally | blocking Google Analytics, it's anyone that runs any adblocker, | which almost all block Google Analytics. I installed uBlock for | my parents and they don't have the faintest clue what GA is. A | significant portion of those 58% probably don't care either. | hkai wrote: | Why is it good to prevent analytics? How can it benefit the | user? | | Why is it more important to hide the fact that you're | interested in cars and Netflix, but not important to protect | free speech, free enterprise and free association? | | I'm absolutely shocked by why someone would want to protect | against a vendor selling me a new mobile phone when the real | threat of social media is promoting left-wing extremism and | censorship. | approxim8ion wrote: | > not important to protect free speech, free enterprise and | free association? | | Analytics is able to track your speech, enterprise and | association to facilitate their encroachment. Part of the | metadata collected from messaging apps, for example, is the | network graph of your interactions with other users. | Association. If you're not using something E2EE, that's | speech as well. And so on. | | > the real threat of social media is promoting left-wing | extremism and censorship. | | Oh, you're one of those. | perryizgr8 wrote: | I think both are important. | | Personally I hate analytics because it makes my equipment | work against me, or at least for someone else. Consider that | there are websites and apps that are so overloaded with js | and ads, that they will run sluggishly on anything but the | latest phones and laptops. I would rather not allow that. | | I have no problem with static ads. I love watching creative | ads on TV during a sports broadcast. Instagram ads are | another example of advertising done well. Minimal distraction | from the content, no slowdowns, easily dismissible. | | As for censorship, I agree that is a more important issue. | But we can focus on more than one issue at a time. I will | take a win on either front. | scrollaway wrote: | I'll take your question at face value (even though you're | very certainly a troll account given your post history). | | It's less about "hiding" or "preventing" anything, and more | about putting the user in control of sharing those things. If | I tell you I like figure skating, here on an online forum, | I'm making a conscious decision to share that fact about my | life. | | If a script completely silently figures out I like figure | skating, because of websites I previously visited, that it | was able to infer due to various data sharing setups (such as | google analytics overprevalence etc), that is not a choice I | made. It's a form of stalking. | | The problem is accentuated because it's not just one hobby, | it's _everything_. Your hobbies, your location, gender, | religion, income, political affiliation, etc. | | That it serves ads based on that is icky, but the problem is | that it knows those things _at all_ without me choosing to | share that. And this is without even getting into "bad | actor" territory. | | Privacy is control over what you share with others. | TeMPOraL wrote: | Collecting telemetry is essentially doing an impromptu social | science study, and it suffers from the same problems - | collecting good data and making correct inferences is a | difficult task, and it requires specialized skills. Social | scientists are trained to do this, and yet they still fail more | often than not[0]. A random business trying to run product | development off automated metrics? They don't stand a chance. | | This is not to say the data is useless - it's just worth | remembering that, unless you have strong statistical | background, you're probably reading your data wrong, so your | metrics should be treated as weak evidence at best. | | -- | | [0] - It's not snark, it's a corollary of the replication | crisis. This is a _hard_ job. | gruturo wrote: | The remaining 42% of users work in adtech and need to monitor | their own product, are stuck on some platform where an adblocker | is not possible, or are they just masochistic ? | yoz-y wrote: | Or they put their money where their mouth is and stop going to | websites that are ad ridden to the point of unusability. | saagarjha wrote: | A lot of people in adtech block ads. | tsjq wrote: | forgot the ignorant or not-tech-savvy ? | ghostpepper wrote: | The entire methodology of this 'study' is comparing analytics | from Google to analytics from Plausible? Who is Plausible, you | might ask? Just take a look at which blog is hosting this very | study. | | This is a clever ad for a google analytics competitor. | masto wrote: | The title seems to have been truncated. Presumably it meant to | end with ", according to a Google Analytics competitor" | fswwi wrote: | Only 58%? I expected 95% at least. | _arvin wrote: | Can confirm, part of the 58% who block all the ads. Using a | raspberry pi as a pi-hole, works great. | | Getting 100% blockage [0] on this adblock test [1]. | | [0] https://i.imgur.com/7hdaHmh.png | | [1] https://d3ward.github.io/toolz/adblock.html | | Haven't seen an ad in months. (kidding) | [deleted] | herbst wrote: | Same here. I don't even open the browser when my phone is not | connected to my safe heaven WiFi. | arepublicadoceu wrote: | Just wireguard to your "safe haven" and you can open your | browser anywhere. | | Or, if you're lazy like me, just use NextDNS when you're | outside. There's even an option to only activate NextDNS when | not connected to the Wi-Fi of your choice. | herbst wrote: | To be honest. I enjoy being semi offline when not home. But | yeah, would be easy to VPN home. | drpancake wrote: | This is pretty much in line with what I observed a few days ago | when my post[1] reached the top of the front page here. | | Google Analytics reports 10k uniques vs. 35k in Netlify's server- | side analytics. | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28288760 | micromacrofoot wrote: | I'm surprised it's not higher to be honest | throwawayswede wrote: | The fact that it's so low (yes imo 58 is pretty low) speaks | volumes to the attitudes of the "tech-savvy crowd" towards | tracking and data mining. | scrollaway wrote: | Including Reddit's audience as "tech savvy" is an outright lie. | Reddit is one of the most popular websites in the world. (And | even if it weren't, it doesn't take much browsing to see how | non-tech-savvy its audience is. It's basically Facebook at this | point.) | throwawayswede wrote: | While I agree with you, unfortunatley that is still | technically considered the tech-savvy crowd, amongst others | at least. | scrollaway wrote: | The audience isn't even sort of comparable to Hacker News | though, so putting both in the same headline is weird. | There was some correlation long ago, now not so much. | | The Firefox numbers above are a much better tell of what a | "largely tech savvy crowd" looks like. 88%. | markosaric wrote: | Depends really on the subreddit in question. The traffic | to the blog post that was analyzed came from /r/linux | which should be more tech savvy than the average web user | and also more tech savvy than the average Reddit user (i | would put /r/linux audience close to the Hacker News | audience) | Tenoke wrote: | I assumed it was more since posts I've had on the front page have | more like 70-80% of traffic missing in GA. It could be because I | only enable it when DoNotTrack is off though which I don't | believe is the default. | YKreator wrote: | One solution is to use its own Google Tag Manager server. In this | case, the events are sent to the server container via a custom | URL and the data is then transmitted to Google analytics. | superasn wrote: | That's why I prefer goaccess(1) over any other tool that uses | client side Javascript. | | It's basically a real time website log analyser which gives you | enough information to know whats happening on your website but | doesn't require any pesky Javascript etc to do it. | | Also since it is works by analysing your log files it can never | be blocked. | | (1) https://rt.goaccess.io/?20210826211303 | scrollaway wrote: | By nature it won't filter out bots, however. | | One of my clients' website traffic is composed of over 75% bot | traffic. Server-side logs are unusable for anything other than | site performance. | superasn wrote: | Goaccess does have a separate panel for Crawlers/Bots(1) but | I think it's based on the UA. | | There is also an option to ignore IPs/Referrers too which can | work very well for such cases. | | (1) https://goaccess.io/features#:~:text=Spot%20aggressive%20 | hos... | AlexAndScripts wrote: | Can't you have a client side system do nothing but tell the | server it's not a bot? | Cyberdog wrote: | > One of my clients' website traffic is composed of over 75% | bot traffic. Server-side logs are unusable for anything other | than site performance. | | I'm unclear how broad you intend that second sentence to be, | but there's still a ton of info you can glean just from | server-side logs: | | - Referrer info, and, by extension, popular search terms | being used to find your site; | | - Paths on your site causing 5xx errors (so pages which might | be triggering an error in a server-side script) | | - Paths on your site causing 4xx errors, and associated | referrers (might be broken links on your own site; might be | stale search engine indexing) | | - Mobile vs desktop access statistics | | Finding this data among a bunch of bot-induced noise might be | annoying, but if they're good bots and sending proper UA | headers specifying their botness, it's easy enough to filter | out. Even otherwise there might be typical bot-like behavior | you can find and account for such as not sending a referrer | header or trying to access known exploitable PHP scripts (in | which case you should block that IP address for a few hours | or days - there are programs which can do this sort of thing | automatically but frustratingly I can't recall the name of | one off the top of my head right now). | | Granted, a lot of this can be spoofed, but I'm pretty sure | the number of people sending spoofed referral or UA headers | is dwarfed by the number of those (like me) who block Google | Analytics and similar cruft entirely. | second--shift wrote: | | frustratingly I can't recall the name of one off the top | of my head right now | | fail2ban | scrollaway wrote: | No, you're right, I shouldn't have written something so | dismissive. (I do include error tracing as part of | "performance" for what it's worth but those have their own | system from within the app itself) | | Frankly I would love to see some serious low-config | solutions to analyzing server-side logs. Oh, especially | Fastly. Client in question uses Fastly and it blew my mind | to find out that there was nothing in place to answer | simple questions such as "what are the slowest paths to | respond", "which paths are a cache hit most often", "which | paths are most hit overall", etc. And being able to look at | various dimensions such as browser, bot traffic, country of | origin, etc. If you have suggestions... | Cyberdog wrote: | Any log analyzer will tell you which path is the most | hit. For slowest paths, I think a server daemon could | theoretically log how long it took to serve the page from | request in to last byte out, but I don't know if any of | them do that - you might have to set up a custom format | for logging, and then from there you'd need to tell your | analyzer how to interpret that field. For cache hits, I | guess it'd depend on what sort of cache you have in mind, | but that might be something you could only effectively | log at the application level. | marvinblum wrote: | The middle way is using something like Pirsch's API [0] from | your backend. | | [0] https://pirsch.io/ | dschooh wrote: | > By nature it won't filter out bots, however. | | I have two questions about this: | | - Since you know they are bots, why couldn't you filter them? | | - On the other hand, couldn't there be bots that run | JavaScript which would be tracked client-side? | scrollaway wrote: | > _Since you know they are bots, why couldn 't you filter | them?_ | | A decent amount can be filtered by UA. This is inconvenient | because UA is a very large piece to log and index on, so | you need to do UA processing to do anything useful with it | and ... well by that point it just becomes a chore and I | suspect there's good logging services that do this better | than you'd spend your time doing yourself. | | > _On the other hand, couldn 't there be bots that run | JavaScript which would be tracked client-side?_ | | They exist but they're more rare by nature, because running | JS at bot scale is expensive. | dschooh wrote: | > well by that point it just becomes a chore and I | suspect there's good logging services that do this better | than you'd spend your time doing yourself. | | Which is why the OP suggested using tools like goaccess. | qualudeheart wrote: | Can I evade tracking by disgusing my traffic as bot traffic? | Sounds like a startup idea. | ignoramous wrote: | You're likely going to end up implementing a poor man's | Tor. | scrollaway wrote: | Oh I suspect you'll have a decent amount of sites not | serving you ads or analytics if you put "googlebot" or | "chrome lighthouse" in your UA. | faeyanpiraat wrote: | If you use googlebot you'll likely just get blocked | altogether. | | Using Lighthouse might be an interesting experiment | though. | napoleond wrote: | I think this is why most sites--especially those targeting | technical audiences--should rely on server-side analytics | instead. Add some middleware to your web framework of choice | which logs request data and parse that, or use something like | https://www.tabbydata.com (disclaimer: I built that) to pipe it | into a data warehouse. Voila! No JS tracking, retain useful | metrics. | prepend wrote: | I've used server log analysis, awstats, for maybe 20-25 years. | It's really interesting the difference between awstats and | Google analytics (or Adobe analytics, etc). | | The reason I keep using Google stats on my backend is | convenience and "Google magic" for tracking session length, | bounce, behavior, etc etc. I can get most of that out of | awstats, but that requires more work. | mrfusion wrote: | Can I block this on safari on the iPhone. | mgh2 wrote: | Why is this even at the front page of HN? I give them credit for | the brilliant marketing. | | This is an ad disguised as an article targeting the "tech savvy" | by _bundling_ HN and Reddit (a truth + a lie makes the statement | more true), a common clickbait tactic | | > This makes sense especially considering how difficult it is to | install an adblocker on Chrome, the most popular browser on | mobile devices. | | Nope, it is really easy: is just an extension | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-%E2%80%94-... | | It makes me think Reddit users are inflating/manipulating this | article w/ votes and comments | | Correction: "difficult to install adblocker on _mobile_ devices " | ehsankia wrote: | The headline is the perfect anti-Google HN-clickbait, and it is | quite misleading. These people just run any ad-blocker, they | mostly all block Google Analytics as a side-effect. The | majority of those 58% probably don't care about GA | specifically. | Jorengarenar wrote: | It says it's difficult to install on _mobile_ | mgh2 wrote: | My bad, but the original premise still stands | mdoms wrote: | No it doesn't. | mgh2 wrote: | Care to elaborate? Not sure why the HN title changed | [deleted] | blackoil wrote: | How do you install extension on mobile Chrome? The link shows | button to install on Desktop. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | Well, for extra irony, I use the Steven Black /etc/hosts | content to block on the order of 70,000 domain names, and | plausible.io is in there. So I can't even read the article | because I'm one of the people it describes. | zaphar wrote: | Isn't the primary use-case for plausible that you can run the | tracking entirely off of your own domain. Which means that | blocking plausible.io doesn't really give you much. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | it's just one of a list of about 68,800 hosts in the | blocking data. nothing specifically intended to block | plausible alone. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | > > This makes sense especially considering how difficult it is | to install an adblocker on Chrome, the most popular browser on | mobile devices. | | > Nope, it is really easy: is just an extension | https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-%E2%80%94-... | | The key word here is _mobile_ devices. | | AFAIK, ad blocking in Chrome on my phone is difficult. But with | Firefox, I can easily install uBlock Origin. | | I use a PiHole on my phone occasionally to block ads in | anything that isn't Firefox, but I found that the OpenVPN | client is a significant battery drain (~7% per hour). | that_guy_iain wrote: | The thing is, they also block plausible. It's the ad blockers | that block. | platz wrote: | Adblocking an immoral tragedy of the commons type move. | Psychologically, It's not unlike NIMBYism or residents of a gated | community that figured out how to avoid paying their taxes. | JohnFen wrote: | > Adblocking an immoral tragedy of the commons type move. | | Adblocking is a reasonable defense against the constant and | expanding abuse (of both people and the commons) that the ad | industry brought on us. | | For the record, I don't engage in ad blocking as such. I block | scripts, which has the side effect of blocking much of the more | abusive ads. However, reasonable ads aren't blocked at all -- | it's just that there aren't many reasonable ads on the | internet. | raxxorrax wrote: | You mean because the free internet is infrastructure belonging | to all and ads are its maintenance? | | I fundamentally disagree with this parable. I don't think | common practices in advertising are a necessity, especially | when it comes to analytics. | devilduck wrote: | This is a hilarious take, thanks for the laugh! | batch12 wrote: | These poor, poor ad companies are being taken advantage of by | me. I have no shame. I even immorally block ads on thousands of | endpoints used by other people! Quite the tragedy! | dang wrote: | We detached this subthread from | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28365335. | jokoon wrote: | Are there relevant studies on the effectiveness of advertising? | | I remember spotting such study. | | I still wonder if advertising is always worth spending on, | beacuse google and facebook make a big amount of money with it, | but I'm still skeptical when I see the actual amount of people | "engaging" in ads, when you see how much it actually costs. | [deleted] | cookie_monsta wrote: | The old saw is that 50% of advertising works, it's just that | nobody knows which 50% | bertil wrote: | Yes, pretty much every company first data person runs Cost-per- | action (CPA) analysis to estimate how many sales can be | attributable to ads vs. other ways of raising your brand. It's | an imperfect science (just use the word "attribution" to | trigger shivers in any data person) but it's very clear that | targeted platforms offer dramatically cheaper leads for almost | every product. | | That's why the hostility to ads feels misplaced: it works, it | helps company to whom you want to give money to find you and | people like you. It's just that condescension from _some_ | people in Ad platform and a press that insistently favours the | worst people mean that people like me who argued for more user- | friendly interfaces (ban certain content, prevent repeated ads) | were routinely overruled. | JohnFen wrote: | > That's why the hostility to ads feels misplaced | | I have no hostility to ads themselves. I have a huge amount | of hostility to the spying that comes with them. | WJW wrote: | > it helps company to whom you want to give money to find you | | You mean, the companies who want me to give them money. I'm | sure there are a few companies out there whose product I | actually want and don't mind paying for, but their number is | absolutely dwarfed by the number of companies that seek to | induce FOMO/status anxiety/etc in order to get me to buy | things I don't need and would not want if not for | advertising. | foerbert wrote: | Yup. I find it amazing the quoted myth lives on. It doesn't | even make sense. | | How many problems do most people have that can be solved | with an existing product they are unaware of? The numbers | can't be very high. | | How do you explain well-known brands advertising the same | product for decades on end? Surely Coke and Pepsi aren't | suddenly enlightening many people to the existence of their | drinks. | | How about ads that get shown to the known-same individual | time and time again after mere minutes? (See Hulu, at least | back in the day, not sure what it's like now.) | | The whole line about ads being mere consumer education is | ridiculous and doesn't even stand up to a cursory thought. | throwaway2048 wrote: | every advertising platform wants to pretend they are | delivering useful products that people would otherwise be | unaware of, but almost exclusively deliver what you have | identified. | CerebralCerb wrote: | Every business with a competent marketing department will | continuously track and measure the effect of the ads they run, | like how many users who click the ads turn into paying users. | | My startup has tried a variety of marketing strategies from in- | person campaigns on the street, video ads on YouTube, "free" PR | through newspapers etc. In order to measure the effect of each | approach we only did one at a time. | | For us paid marketing on Facebook/Instagram was, unexpectedly, | the most efficient form of marketing by far. But I would not | assume that applies to all, or even most, businesses. So you | should experiment with different strategies for your business. | ulzeraj wrote: | I dislike ads in general. Specially Youtube ads. They are | hysterical and for some god knows reason advertisers think | its a good idea to repeat ad nauseum the same ad multiple | times even on the same video. I end up hating the brand more | than having some interest in the product. | | (Paid) reviews on the other hand like unboxing, configuring | and testing a product that I'm interested in are totally | another thing. This applies to furnitures, house appliances, | computers and so on. A good example is that I did not knew | how much I wanted to build a fully silent computer before | watching so many build videos of a certain fanless case that | looks like a metal cube. | jerrre wrote: | It's the tracking part here that's hard. How do you know that | the FB/IG ad was the first time the converting user heard of | your product, or that it was the deciding factor? If you | literally have no other way of discovering your product than | this works, but it's easy for FB/IG to show your ad to users | who were already going to convert and claim the conversion... | Nextgrid wrote: | I see this so many times. Someone Googles for <product | name> and then clicks on the _ad_ for said product instead | of their website which is the first organic result. Google | claims it's an ad conversion and gets the money, marketing | monkey will happily take this as credit for their work and | justification for further ad spend & their own salary, | while the truth is that this user already made their | decision to use this product (as they've searched for it) | and didn't need the ad. | yunohn wrote: | Ad platforms, like Google Search ads, will give you | metrics on clicks/conversion on a keyword basis | (obviously). | | No marketing dept is dumb enough to equate brand-keyword | traffic with organic traffic. | jonplackett wrote: | I think it's more like 75% for HN alone. | | I built a game - termsandconditions.game that got to #1 on HN a | few months back and for a while I couldn't understand why I had | such high CDN use and 4X less registered hits. This is why! | mrlatinos wrote: | plausible.io is also blocked | jillesvangurp wrote: | That's why apps are so popular with ad driven properties. No | cookie banners, hardly any limitations. And you get to keep users | nicely inside the walled garden. | | Anyway, I indeed use Firefox with ublock origin, multi account | containers, etc. I also use Firefox on Android. A lot of stuff | people assume they need apps for works just fine in that. | 63 wrote: | Same here. I particularly enjoy the mobile YouTube and Twitch | experiences much better than their respective apps (mostly | because of ad blocking). | driverdan wrote: | This is why it's important to block ads and trackers at a lower | level, such as using a hosts blocklist. | account42 wrote: | > No cookie banners | | You still need informed consent in the EU, GDPR is not specific | to websites. | hdjjhhvvhga wrote: | Why so little? Honestly, I believe the percentage is much higher, | we just deliberately unblock certain sites for market research | and so on. Most of the web is completely unusable w/o adblockers. | martinpw wrote: | Maybe browsing from work? Some companies have policies against | installing third party browser extensions. | jopsen wrote: | Or using default browser on your phone. | travisgriggs wrote: | And... | | 100% of Google Analytics authors are tech savvy. | | This is called irony. | cbsmith wrote: | In other news, water is wet. ;-) | cm2187 wrote: | ...but the same people stuff their own products with ads and | analytics. | scotty79 wrote: | How do you deal with "please disable adblocker" messages? I found | them way more annoying than the ads themselves. | jobigoud wrote: | Any website with a fully blocking message I disable JavaScript | entirely in uBO. If the site is still unusable after that I | just close the tab. | MiddleEndian wrote: | uBlock Origin eye dropper, select that element, and add it to | my blocklist. | nullc wrote: | The blockers also block most of those. When that fails I find | the back button works pretty well. | | If it's a popup for something I don't have a choice about using | (e.g. a government site), right clicking the offending element | choosing inspect and then deleting it out of the dom usually | solves the problem. | cookie_monsta wrote: | Strange, but I haven't seen one lately that actually blocks | you. Clicking outside of the modal tends to make them | disappear. | | Could be that I am visiting less annoying websites these days | though... | cyberpsybin wrote: | There are anti anti-adblockers built into uBlock. If that does | not work, just ditch the site. | skizm wrote: | Aside: I thought I heard a while back that Chrome and Safari were | changing their browser extension APIs such that it would make it | difficult to truly block ads / 3rd party scripts / blacklist | domains. Did this ever come to fruition? Was it overblown? Never | heard where that went. | dgudkov wrote: | It amazes me that over the last 10-20 years an astonishing amount | of money and intellectual capital have been invested in adtech | and crypto but nothing in micropayments. Ads are evil, but it | will remain a moot point until we have working micropayments. We | have (and will have) ads with all their downsides exactly because | we don't have micropayments, because ads basically work as a | substitute to micropayments. | NiloCK wrote: | Here's one cryptocurrency PoC on micropayments: | https://web3torrent.statechannels.org/ | | More directly to your point, I think lots of people have made | attempts at micropayment protocols. The difficulty is | psychological rather than technical - the cumulative mental | burden of repeatedly deciding whether to part with a tenth of a | cent "costs" much more than value being exchanged. | sofixa wrote: | > but nothing in micropayments | | That's not true. Web Monetization is built on top of the | Interledger and does precisely that - micropayments for web | content. When i wrote about it[0] and posted on HN[1] the | overwhelming response here was negative, presupposing greed and | lack of privacy of everyone ( as in the website would still | track and run ads to earn more money, etc.). The solutions | exist, people just don't want them, even supposedly privacy- | focused people. | | [0] https://atodorov.me/2021/03/07/please-support-web- | monetizati... | | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26375857 | jsymolon wrote: | > overwhelming response here was negative, presupposing greed | and lack of privacy of everyone | | Because the history of other platforms which have done this, | shows that ads didn't go away. | | Cable TV, full of ads. | | Satellite Radio, not too bad but still has ads. | cookie_monsta wrote: | But then again Netflix et al, zero ads | | Spotify premium, zero ads | | I think it's just a question of coming up with the right | model. Assuming that failed examples are the rule isn't all | that useful | kasabali wrote: | Some Netflix originals have a lot of product placement | wintermutestwin wrote: | Product placement is a slight annoyance compared to ads. | That said, I could see them becoming just as toxic. | perryizgr8 wrote: | For now, Netflix and Spotify have no ads. I have a | feeling that if these companies feel the pinch during a | bad quarter or two, they will 100% start introducing ads. | That's how business works, they want to maximize revenue. | TV publishers have traditionally charged a fee on top of | the ads. That demonstrates that audiences are fine with | it. 100% Netflix and Spotify will eventually have ads. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | > TV publishers have traditionally charged a fee on top | of the ads. | | While not wanting to get into a debate about what is and | isn't an ad in the context of US public broadcasting, | this claim is not true of public broadcasting worldwide. | sofixa wrote: | > TV publishers have traditionally charged a fee on top | of the ads. That demonstrates that audiences are fine | with it. 100% Netflix and Spotify will eventually have | ads. | | Or maybe the huge success of Netflix and to a lesser | extent Spotify is in no small part because they don't | have ads and they know it? | e3bc54b2 wrote: | Netflix doesn't have ads, yet. Spotify Premium doesn't | have ads, yet. | | Hulu didn't use to have ads on its most premium tier, and | from what I know, you now get ads on that too. | Corporations generally don't like leaving money on the | table. If you can pay, you are even better target for | ads. | whimsicalism wrote: | > Netflix doesn't have ads, yet. Spotify Premium doesn't | have ads, yet. | | Both of those are replacement products for models of | consumption that were previously pretty much entirely ad | based. | cookie_monsta wrote: | Hulu, in my country at least, is ad-free on premium. It's | not a hard thing to investigate rather than speculate[1] | | [1]https://help.hulu.com/s/article/how-much-does-hulu- | cost | whimsicalism wrote: | > Because the history of other platforms which have done | this, shows that ads didn't go away. | | This is classic negativity bias, I can think of plenty of | platforms that transitioned to paid models without ads | libertine wrote: | The reality is that you can't have it all. | | You live with the assumption that everyone would just accept | micropayments, and that's far from the truth. | | The result would be content for a small portion of those with | available income, and content for those without it (with | parallel markets for content distribution under paywalls - like | piracy). | | That's even more messed up than the current advertising model. | | Don't get me wrong, some brands would love that, to pile up | those with available income and serve them marketing | communication through press releases, reviews and stuff like | that. I can see Apple applauding this. | dijit wrote: | I'd be interested in working on stuff like this; I used to work | in a PCI-DSS Tier 1 company storing cardholder data on-premises | so if someone wants to work on this and would like my help with | this please reach out; my contact information is in my bio. | nonameiguess wrote: | I feel like most on the producer side are coming at this from a | totally wrong angle. A better web isn't a web in which content | is monetized in a different way. Consumers don't want to pay | because most content on the web is not worth paying for. Not | with ads, not with micropayments, not with anything. There's | the saying about five web sites consisting of screenshots of | the other four, but even with news, the vast bulk of it that | isn't legitimately old media like Al Jazeera or Reuters is 22 | year-olds being paid with exposure to summarize Reddit threads. | Much of it isn't even that at this point and is probably just | programmatically generated with no writer at all. When all you | have to go on is a link, you can't possibly know whether | something is worth paying for until after clicking, reading it, | and finding out. But if the first thing you see is some pop up | begging you to subscribe to content you've not even read yet, | turn off an ad blocker to a server you don't trust, or even | some gate requiring a micropayment, a whole lot of people are | just going to go elsewhere for what is likely to be identical | information content at a less annoying source. | | If content producers are willing to put in the hard work of | developing a reputation for quality output slowly, disseminated | through trusted sources, surely augmented by some form of paid | marketing but not by just spamming the web with links in the | hopes that they can get clicks and then use dark patterns to | keep people on the site long enough to monetize 20 seconds of | their eyeball time, then maybe they can get people to willingly | pay them. This is sort of what Substack is proving. The tiny | number of writers worth reading are actually being paid by | willing readers. But it's a tiny number. Micropayments can | never solve that most web content is worth 0 dollars and 0 | cents. | PaulDavisThe1st wrote: | > Consumers don't want to pay because most content on the web | is not worth paying for. | | This can be true at the same as another truth: consumers | would pay for _some_ content on the web if it was convenient | to pay small amounts for it on an ad-hoc basis. Nobody is | suggesting that most of the web is worth paying for, but that | doesn 't mean that none of it is, and it also doesn't mean | that subscription models (which mostly avoid the micropayment | "problem") should be the only way to address this. | whimsicalism wrote: | > If content producers are willing to put in the hard work of | developing a reputation for quality output slowly, | disseminated through trusted sources, surely augmented by | some form of paid marketing but not by just spamming the web | with links in the hopes that they can get clicks and then use | dark patterns to keep people on the site long enough to | monetize 20 seconds of their eyeball time, then maybe they | can get people to willingly pay them. | | What do you think traditional print media organizations were | trying to do for decades before they gave up and embraced the | new normal with layoffs and consolidation? Substack is an | extremely, small, extremely premium part of what used to be | the whole. | | > Consumers don't want to pay because most content on the web | is not worth paying for. | | Maybe much content on the web is not worth paying for, but | the vast majority consumers don't want to pay _regardless_ of | the quality, not because of it. It has literally been | impossible for most news organizations to survive because | people would rather read the advertising-funded "22 year- | old" than a quality outlet where they have to pay any amount | of money. | nonameiguess wrote: | This is a complicated phenomenon and I can't possibly do | justice to the complexity in the space of a link | aggregation comment. Arguably, the truth of that very | statement is part of the problem here. Our attention spans | have shortened. When I was 8 and wanted to learn about | something, I'd gladly dive into the library and read | thousands of pages uninterrupted for hours a day. Now I'm | here, skimming thousands of comments to try and figure out | which seem interesting enough to make the link itself worth | visiting, then possibly actually visiting it or possibly | just putting in a tab I later close when I realize I'll | never get to it. | | Without any sort of gate to publishing, we're all inundated | with information overload. So yeah, print media got their | lunch eaten for many reasons, including being too slow to | pivot to digital delivery at all, but also with the payment | model. Outsourcing content curation to Hacker News or the | people you follow on Facebook is free. I used to read the | LA Times for two hours every single morning when I was in | middle school and high school. Do I trust Hacker News more | than I trust the LA Times editorial board today? Do I trust | the LA Times more but not $6 a month more or whatever | they're charging now? I have no idea, but I've changed my | information consumption habits anyway. | | At least part of the issue is the nature of news itself. | Events happen in the world. Someone out there finds out and | reports it to others. Eventually, it reaches me. It used to | be that people being paid by the LA Times had a level of | unique access both to the sources of information and to | dissemination channels I could readily access, and that was | worth paying for. Today, that no longer seems to be the | case. A thousand different people are going to post the | same information to a thousand different sources at exactly | the same time. Which of those thousands of people deserves | to be compensated? If you just split whatever the salary of | an LA Times reporter used to be a thousand different ways, | that isn't enough to make it into a viable profession. | | Maybe information about important events in the world has | become a public good in a world with such a low bar to | publishing. We can try to invent technical means of | preventing access and then charging for it, but it can | never possibly be enough to actually cover the costs of all | of the different people out there trying to publish, not | with micropayments, not with subscriptions, not with | anything. Maybe we need to just publicly fund some small | number of professionals doing this for a living and anyone | else that wants to try can do it without the expectation | they'll ever be compensated for it. Expecting high-quality | fact-based reporting paid for by consumers may just not be | possible any more. | wintermutestwin wrote: | >Micropayments can never solve that most web content is worth | 0 dollars and 0 cents. | | The irony is that most of the actually valuable content is | user generated. A site like Reddit could be actively curating | all of the great content that people give away for free and | people would pay for it. Then Reddit could actually pay their | content creators. And -poof- we have high quality content | that is worth paying for and people getting paid to generate | it - all without the scourge of ads. | qualudeheart wrote: | I'm still surprised more apps don't have inbuilt marketplaces | and then take a cut of payments. Reddit could do this. Users | sell to each other through an Etsy like interface. Reddit takes | 5% of each transaction. This solves Reddits existing inability | to monetize through ads as successfully as their major | competitors. | sodality2 wrote: | What would be sold on a Reddit market? | qualudeheart wrote: | Special goods catered to specific subreddits. | | On /r/fishing you obviously sell fishing supplies. On | /r/$political_faction you sell bumper stickers with | slogans. /r/nonbinary you sell pronoun pins. | | It would be like an etsy or a shopify store for each | subreddit with a UI that reflects that. It could also be a | big Amazon style UI for a sitewide shop. | whimsicalism wrote: | Like craigslist 2.0? They could capitalize on the fact that | there are existing sub-communities around various niches. | [deleted] | travoc wrote: | Moderator privileges and astroturfing opportunities. | wiether wrote: | Karma and insults ? | ignoramous wrote: | Cryptocurrencies, ironically, enable micropayments. Orchid.com | did an extensive write-up on how they achieve this | (https://www.orchid.com/assets/whitepaper/whitepaper.pdf | Chapter 5, Nanopayments) The Brave Attention Token is another | example. | | Although, I am not convinced micropayments would save the | Internet from this ad-winter: It is hard to beat _free_ at | scale. | lodovic wrote: | Not if the transaction cost is $10 | thehappypm wrote: | There's a little bit of a fundamental problem here. | | We're talking about paying a cent to avoid an ad. On a | blockchain, work needs to be done to register that | transaction. If the fee is a fraction of a penny, who is | going to want to do the work? I get that you'll make it up at | scale, but each transaction must be cryptographically secure | (and therefore take up some type of resource), so there's a | problem. | ignoramous wrote: | For "crypto" transactions, on-chain is no longer seen as a | stringent requirement. In fact, the entire DeFi ecosystem | wouldn't exist if there wasn't a cryptographically-secure | way of doing transactions off-chain on second-level chains | (0x, Polygon, Compound etc) or on chain of chains | (Polkadot, Cosmos, Kava etc), or on chains built for | payments (Celo, Diem, Stellar etc). | | Beside, Orchid.com whitepaper talks about doing | _nanopayments_ on-chain, which is quite a radical approach. | thehappypm wrote: | Sure, if you put a layer on top, you can do whatever you | want! It just adds more centralization, which isn't | better than something like a Venmo that would be based on | fiat. | emptyfile wrote: | "Enable micropayments". Where are they disabled? And in what | world is it easier to do a micro payment with cryptocurrency | instead of one of your cards? | bbarn wrote: | Micropayment are a non-starter, and even if they weren't, you'd | still have ads. There are companies lined up willing to pay | money to show you something they want to sell you, and even if | your favorite news site was micropayment enabled, even the most | righteous media companies would be fools not to keep taking | that money to expand their ability to give you more and better | news, as an example. | | But to my first point, they are a non-starter because too much | of the world has trouble managing their money, and mentally | don't want to pay for something until they've seen it. Why | should I pay a dollar to read an article that might be poorly | written, full of inaccuracies, etc.? | | The closest model I've seen to working is twitch. You have a | central content platform, with silly cosmetic awards for | subscription, and a sense of "credibility" among others there | in interactions because you've been subscribing for x amount of | time. This would require a more interactive news service, and | hell, that I would pay for. If I read an article by an expert | who answered (reasonable) follow up questions and owned their | journalism, that would be incredible. | throwaway4good wrote: | "All in all, the difference in stats would mostly come from | people blocking the Google Analytics script. Google Analytics is | listed on many blocklists while the Plausible proxy runs as a | first-party connection and is not." | | So what exactly does Plausible do to avoid being blocked in the | same manner? What prevents GA from doing the same? | Sebb767 wrote: | > So what exactly does Plausible do to avoid being blocked in | the same manner? | | It seems they serve plausible from the same server as the | origin website (first party), probably under an unique name, | which means you need to block the script manually on every | domain instead of simply blacklisting `plausible.io` (for | example). | | > What prevents GA from doing the same? | | That's a good question. Probably ease-of-use (no need to | explain how to host it, easier updates) and the lack of need to | do so. YouTube, for example, could also make it _far_ harder to | block ads by simply sending a single video stream, but they | don't for some reason. | maple3142 wrote: | IIRC, It is possible to serve Google Analytics script on your | server if you really insisted in doing it: | https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/save-your-analytics- | from-c... | WesolyKubeczek wrote: | Of course they do. Every invasive thing I'm made aware of, will | be blocked. | | My home network runs Pi-Hole, and every browser has uBlock | Origin. The Internet has been a bearable place. And then I | happened to show my 2 year old a cartoon from Youtube on a non- | adblocked device. | | My. Freaking. God. | | It's full of ads. | | The cartoon is 10 minutes. Every minute, an 15-second, at the | very least, ad rolls in. Like fucking gnats by the river in the | summer: you get one, two, and then you are swarmed in them. There | weren't the yellow markers anywhere on the progress slider, too. | | Not all of those ads were good for kids, too. One was, I kid you | not, an ad for Jira. An ad for the fucking Jira, in the middle of | a cartoon. Won't anybody think of the children!? | | My daughter was very much not impressed. So was I. | | I promptly got uBlock Origin running, and youtube-dl'd the whole | channel those cartoons were in, for good measure. | cyberpsybin wrote: | Only 58%?! | timdaub wrote: | Nice that Marko did a follow up by writing this blog post. A few | months ago (in May), I also asked myself the question of "How | _plausible_ are our web analytics? ", and I was able to see the | same phenomenon [1]. Many people in my audience block client-side | web trackers. | | One option would now be to host a plausible proxy on-premise. But | I didn't have time to try that out yet. | | PS: We're paying plausible customers and our stats are publicly | accessible [2]. | | -1: | https://rugpullindex.com/blog#HowPlausibleareOurWebsiteAnaly... | | -2: https://plausible.io/rugpullindex.com | nikkinana wrote: | Me too! You all suck, don't deserve tracking revenue. | bawolff wrote: | Its not that i care about google analytics per se, its that i | really want to kill more aggressive ads, and the easiest option | is an extension that does both. | | I certainly dont really like GA, but i wouldn't take specific | action to block it. Definitely not taking specific action to | unblock. | thinkingemote wrote: | One of the reasons for mobile apps is that adblocking is | disabled. Explains why Reddit promotes it so much. | | Similarly, wrapping websites like Discord or Slack in Electron | also gives the website owners full telemetry and tracking that | they can't get in a tech savvy browser. | | Would an always on VPN, a remote pihole be the only way for | privacy? | TeMPOraL wrote: | Not sure if VPN would help you much against telemetry in a | mobile app. A native foothold in your phone's system gives them | access to much better data than they could infer on the server | side. | | E.g. if I wanted to know where you're hailing from, I'd | browbeat you into granting me Location access privileges. If | that's too difficult, I'd get you to grant me Files/Photos | privileges (this one won't raise too many alarm bells with apps | like Discord or Reddit), and then try to read EXIF geotags off | your recent photos. | qualudeheart wrote: | Wouldn't it be possible to fingerprint users just based on | the images they have installed? | Rastonbury wrote: | I use nextdns to block ads on my phone | eitland wrote: | It doesn't need to be an actual VPN to somewhere else. Lockdown | for iOS can be run without using the VPN server. | deergomoo wrote: | > Explains why Reddit promotes it so much | | It must be very disheartening to work on reddit's mobile site. | Not only is it deliberately made a miserable experience by | forcing you through AMP via Google and insisting you "continue | in browser" every time, but then you're greeted with a banner | that outright says "this page is better in the app". | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: | > It must be very disheartening to work on reddit's mobile | site. | | If they cared that much about whether or not what they were | working on made the world better or worse they'd never have | taken a job at Reddit. | reayn wrote: | Literally this, it's hard for me to even consider a job at | Reddit without the companys' reputation coming to mind. | al_ak wrote: | Reddit literally does not care about the usability of their | mobile site: https://old.reddit.com/r/mobileweb/comments/o7wo | 1s/this_subr... | [deleted] | Mindwipe wrote: | > It must be very disheartening to work on reddit's mobile | site. | | You can probably cross "mobile" out of this entirely. | | Reddit have spent three years now building sites that are | worse in every way than the decade old junker it's trying to | replace. | chungy wrote: | It's ironic that I find old.reddit.com to provide a vastly | superior mobile experience than the mobile-focused | replacement is supposed to be. | wodenokoto wrote: | Say what you want about the implementation but the new | design is definitely better for watching memes. And I | wouldn't be surprised if the design doc simply said "focus | on memes" | arepublicadoceu wrote: | It's definitely not better then old reddit + reddit | enhancement suit. | | So, maybe, they should have improved the old design | instead of creating that insanity that is newreddit. | entropicgravity wrote: | Yes but if you use old.reddit.com and specify just the | subreddits you want (eg | http://old.reddit.com/r/truereddit+technology+science) then | you can still get something that's not too crappy. | falcrist wrote: | I wonder how long it'll be before they phase out the old | site. | | For now I still use it because it's significantly faster | and easier to use, but I strongly suspect they want me on | their new site. | Sohcahtoa82 wrote: | As long as reddit's API still exists, someone will make a | site that recreates the old reddit experience. | jccalhoun wrote: | Agreed. I don't mind the new layout but it is still amazing | that after years of this new layout that at least once a | week I go to reddit and it can't load comments. I'm not a | developer so maybe there is a valid reason but as a user it | just seems ridiculous that the site can't do its main | function reliably. | prox wrote: | Reddit's mobile site looks like it was made by a group of | 15 year olds and doing a my first website tutorial, falling | into all the traps there are. | | The amount of times it crashes on mobile platforms is | insane. | 3np wrote: | > Would an always on VPN, a remote pihole be the only way for | privacy? | | Maybe for now, but it's just a matter of time until use of DoH | to circumvent your attempts at redirecting DNS becomes more | widespread as well. | silon42 wrote: | Time to ban/firewall DoH then. | JohnFen wrote: | Good luck with that. I strongly object to DoH, but it | exists and we have to deal with it. | | The only approach that I could come up with to do so was to | install a proxy to MITM all HTTPS connections to allow me | to filter out DoH requests. | VadimPR wrote: | Pretty much - and there's a nice app developed by an Oxford | student that does this for Android: https://trackercontrol.org | | It works very well, I highly recommend it. | hotgeart wrote: | > One of the reasons for mobile apps is that adblocking is | disabled. | | That and revenue is much higher on apps than on the web. I made | an android apps for a website. And just alone the android apps | made more money than the web version. With less ads. | TchoBeer wrote: | Maybe it having less ads made it a better experience, thus | bringing in more ad revenue? | account42 wrote: | > Similarly, wrapping websites like Discord or Slack in | Electron also gives the website owners full telemetry and | tracking that they can't get in a tech savvy browser. | | Discord, Slack and other similar webapps can (and maybe do) | send telemetry in the same connections used for the app's | features. You can't reliably block that. | littlestymaar wrote: | DNSFilter[1] does the trick even for android apps though, but | yes it's even less mainstream than in-browser ad blockers. | | [1] https://www.zenz-solutions.de/personaldnsfilter-wp/ | tmslnz wrote: | I found NextDNS to be relatively convenient and easy to set up | even for a lay audience. Definitely easier than a PiHole or a | custom `dnsmasq` setup, and it offers mobile configuration | client apps. | | What I do not know is if it will work also when apps begin | using DNS over HTTPS... I suppose not? | tristor wrote: | NextDNS offers a DoH endpoint and is a selectable TRR in | Firefox. Unfortunately that doesn't help with apps doing DoH | to bypass DNS blocking. The current state of the Internet / | computing is a bit problematic, but there are ways forward. | | What I do and recommend everyone to do is: | | 1. Run an edge network device using network access controls | and filter which devices on your network get outbound network | access (in my case just the gateway device). Block all | inbound traffic except what you choose to pinhole, block all | outbound traffic except ports you choose to add to the allow | list. | | 2. On every client device run a local application firewall (I | like Vallum and Little Snitch on MacOS as examples) and | filter applications by domain + port on outbound requests, | block all inbound requests. | | 3. On every client device force it through a VPN to a gateway | device internal to your network to get internet access, | anything that falls off the VPN is then blocked from the | internet. The gateway device can forcibly route traffic and | perform additional filtering | | 4. On every client device, configure it to use an internal | DNS on your network with a fallback to a trustworthy external | provider, have the internal DNS use a trustworthy external | provider over DoH. Block outbound DNS at the edge device | (blocks all non-encrypted lookups). | | It's kind of a pain, and a mess, but it does greatly restrict | the damage that rogue IoT / Smart devices can do. | dgan wrote: | I have been using NextDNS for couple of days, but since I | don't have a static IP, it's obviously not so convenient, I | have to reset my IP every time it changes But otherwise, | absolutely great, awesome statistics about blocked/requested | domains, countries, etc... | perryizgr8 wrote: | They have ways to automatically detect your IP so you don't | have to update it manually. | Dah00n wrote: | Unless they provide a VPN it is only blocking the not-so-bad- | actors. Everyone else use hardcoded DNS IPs. If you look at | traffic from an Android phone you will get lots of DNS | requests to Google DNS no matter if you use NextDNS or not. | If you only provide one (primary) DNS IP in android 8.8.8 8 | (Google DNS) will even be used by default together with your | DNS provider. Same is going on in iOS. If they do provide a | VPN then it isn't really for a lay audience IMO but it is the | only thing that isn't like pissing in the wind. | lucasverra wrote: | IOS have the NextDnS app as a vpn setup. So I guess yes? | quickthrower2 wrote: | I use a third party Reddit app! No ads and better experience | than web | KozmoNau7 wrote: | Blokada and others work by using the VPN functionality in | Android, to implement DNS blacklists. Alternatively, AdGuard | and NextDNS run DNS servers where you can customize the block | list, a remote Pi-Hole as you said. | | I'm using NextDNS as the system-wide private DNS on my Android | phone, it works great and eats less battery than Blokada. | Hnrobert42 wrote: | I use Little Snitch on my Mac desktop. There is about a week | burn-in where you are constantly clicking to accept things. | After that it's great. | timdaub wrote: | Honestly, if they'd abuse their power given through electron - | surely, we the users would start boycotting one way or another. | Ultimately, this purpusefully regressing UX for revenue - | nobody likes it except the finance department. | poisonborz wrote: | A DNS with adblock blacklist is a simpler solution. Also, it's | the only way for system-wide adblock for rootless Android. | Procedural wrote: | I don't. | megamix wrote: | Might as well stop the whole damn thing :). For the better | internet health | jccalhoun wrote: | I am amazed at how non-techy people use the internet. I teach | college and I will sometimes have students go to some web site. I | am amazed at how few use adblocking and just accept all the ads | and popups and overlays and crap. Even more than that, I will see | them using something like google docs and google will put an | overlay for some new feature and they don't click the X to close | it. They just type away with that overlay in the corner. That | drives me crazy. I don't know how they do it. | rapnie wrote: | Yes, and it goes further than that: "Should I add an ad-blocker | to your browser for an ad-free internet experience.. it'll only | take 2 sec." and they respond: "Nah, not needed". | | And also "You are using the worst browser available to you | (Samsung), shall I install Firefox?" and then "Nah, don't | care". | mardifoufs wrote: | The Samsung browser isn't actually that bad at all. Has some | neat features that can't be found in Firefox or even Chrome, | like the enhanced video playback tools. Plus it supports | adblocking plug ins (though only FF has the much better | ublock origin). Keep in mind that tons of website just | outright won't work with Firefox mobile too, and it has a | very annoying bug that has been known for years where _all_ | your tabs will very oftem reload whenever you switch to | another app and come back. And that 's regardless of how much | free ram you have. Samsung browser just... Works. | JohnFen wrote: | I don't trust any Samsung software to respect my privacy. | Tom4hawk wrote: | > Keep in mind that tons of website just outright won't | work with Firefox mobile | | I know this anecdotal but I'm using FF on Android (Lineage | OS without google apps/micro g etc. - only F-Droid) and the | only site that causes issues is google.com. For some | <sarcasm>unknown</sarcasm> reason it servers images in much | lower quality. Of course it's not a technical limitation. | If you change your UA to chrome everything goes back to | normal. That was the biggest reason I moved to DDG. | | > it has a very annoying bug that has been known for years | where all your tabs will very often reload whenever you | switch to another app and come back | | I definitely don't have this issue. I have over a thousand | tabs opened, it definitely doesn't reload all of them while | I'm switching between apps. | mardifoufs wrote: | I've had some issues with layout mostly and I never use | google products on Firefox, but that may be due to ublock | being aggressive with it's filters. And yeah the tab | reloading is weird because it only affects some people | and when it does it's very constant. Honestly I didn't | mind since I'm not affected by the bug anymore since I've | upgraded my phone. | | The real problem was the add-on removal. I know you can | still get them through the collections work around on | Firefox nightly but... It's a pain and I'm still honestly | baffled that Mozilla would just remove one of the only | "selling" points for their mobile browser. I'm not averse | to change and I get that it is sometimes needed to cut | complexity, so I got why they needed to depreciate stuff | likd XAML. But in this case afaik nothing was | communicated, the new engine already supports the add | ons... but only on nightly? Very puzzling | [deleted] | rapnie wrote: | Ah, could be. But I was not really referring to how good | the browser is, but the extent to which I trust Samsung to | protect my privacy. They are particularly greedy for your | PII on their mobile phones. For instance, after I minimised | permissions for my apps, the Samsung Gallery app suddenly | popped an "Allow location data" dialog coming from | Foursquare. | | Edit: | | Here's a video showing the Foursquare dialog | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_e-P0hy5QY and also: | | _" For Korean phone giants Samsung and LG, Foursquare's | API will be used in some of their default apps. If you take | a picture using a Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+, the phone will | tag your location based on Foursquare's Places database."_ | | https://mashable.com/article/foursquare-asia-tencent- | samsung | noway421 wrote: | In terms of product tours, I'm totally on-board with your | students. I don't know how to access that product tip later on, | often times revisiting a product tip later on is not even | implemented so I'd rather have it stay in place until I have | some time to study it. Hopefully I'll be off of the website | before I need that. | massysett wrote: | I don't use adblocking because if a site is so revolting that | it requires adblocking to make it usable, I just don't visit | the site at all. | | I used to use adblocking but the tiny site Distrowatch made an | impression on me. The owner rigged something so that those | using adblock also would not see non-ad images. He said it's | really not fair to visit a free site and then block the thing | that allows it to be free. | | Also, I then read that one of the adblockers would take | payments from advertisers to unblock their ads. What a racket. | | So I block no ads. This does mean that I don't look at the vast | bulk of news sites because they have obnoxious ads. However, | most decent news sites are now pay walled, and those that | aren't are junk anyway. I get my news from some sites I pay | for, and from non-profit email newsletters, and from sites my | employer pays for. These have few ads. | | So I have found no loss from not using adblock. Adblock is like | putting on a bulletproof vest to walk through a warzone. Better | to just keep out of warzones. | Moru wrote: | Adblock is like having a bodyguard running ahead of you, | making sure the neighbourhood is still safe to walk, just in | case someone shady moved in. Added bonus is he drags you | along on a rope so you can move faster and bring more | groceries from the store. | | Adblock makes my slow computer and phone bareable to use on | "modern" homepages. Without them the load times multiplies. | mywittyname wrote: | My phone isn't even slow and ad blockers are required for | most sites to be usable. | yumraj wrote: | Oh it's not just non-techy, I think you/we overestimate the | techiness of techy people. | | I have yet to meet a _single_ person, and yes they are all in | the Bay Area tech industry, who knew about pi-hole before I | told them. | MomoXenosaga wrote: | Been blocking pretty much all advertising on mobile and desktop | for years and I couldn't go back. At work I see how the | internet is SUPPOSED to look like and it is horrible. | distances wrote: | Why don't you use adblocking at work too? | recursive wrote: | Why are you directing your students to ad-laden sites that are | burning CPU? | | I don't use an ad-blocker, and nor do I accept sites with | unreasonable ads. I block the whole site by closing the tab or | hitting the back button. | bredren wrote: | I know a CTO with plenty of wealth and space that sits at a | kitchen table with a laptop instead of setting up a home work | station. | | I know information workers who have workplaces that would | gladly pay for nicer monitors or keyboards but don't bother to | even request them. | | I know a couple with a brand new house that has a miserably | squeaky front door that could be silenced a half dozen ways in | under a minute. | | People of all kinds contortion themselves into knots, giving | little notice to the daily, near constant twinge of their | circumstances but don't improve them. | | Tolerating ads is just one example of this. | yosito wrote: | A kitchen table? That's way more fancy than I bother with. I | do most of my programming work from a couch or a hammock. | It's a feature, not a bug. I have a workstation with a fancy | dock, keyboard and trackpad, but I never really feel like | using it. I will, however, close every unnecessary popup that | comes my way. | bradstewart wrote: | I'd love to work from a hammock, but I get crazy neck and | wrist pain when I use a laptop for several hours. | drdeadringer wrote: | One contracting job I had, on my first day one of my tasks | was to do some grunt work right in front of the bathrooms. | The men's door was squeaky as all hell. | | "Oh don't worry, it's always done that." | | I lasted as long as I could but I finally walked over to the | shop crew and asked if I could borrow some WD-40. "I'll bring | it back in 10 minutes." | | 10 minutes later it's all "Thanks guys!" "No problem" and | "Wow you really did mean 10 minutes!". | | And the door never squeaked again. My sanity was saved. | | If anyone else ever noticed, they never said a word. The door | had always squeaked and literally everyone either didn't care | or did nothing about it; it just was how it was. | [deleted] | [deleted] | schiem wrote: | I was doing some pair programming with a colleague not too long | ago, and after several minutes he was said something to the | effect of "Could you close that [expletive] dialogue?" that had | popped up to tell me that VS Code couldn't deal with some file | extension or other. It had apparently been there the entire | time. | | I hadn't even noticed it (at least not consciously). I've | apparently been trained somewhere to ignore dialogues, and I | would hazard a guess that it has something to do with the | prevalence of hostile UX patterns. | dredmorbius wrote: | You all but certainly overestimate typical technological | literacy. | | About 5% of computer users have "advanced" literacy, defined as | "Some navigation across pages and applications is required to | solve the problem. The use of tools (e.g. a sort function) is | required to make progress towards the solution. The task may | involve multiple steps and operators. The goal of the problem | may have to be defined by the respondent, and the criteria to | be met may or may not be explicit" | | https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/106841164116074208 | | Even just _general_ literacy and numeracy are ... far lower | than you 'd expect: | https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp | | An OECD 20-country survey gives the 5% "advanced" technological | literacy statistic: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264258051-en | | Jacob Nielsen discussed that at the time: | https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ | | This is a substantial aspect of my "Tyranny of the Minimum | Viable User": | https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr... | nebula8804 wrote: | This data is incredible. I cannot believe how the most | powerful/richest/most influential country in the world has | these kinds of numbers. I notice that it tends to follow a | standard distribution but even then, I was expecting the | window to be more towards highly educated. | | This is so depressing. I have been wondering for a while as | to why ~40 percent of the country rarely if ever votes in | elections. This might help to explain it. | | This also shows that technology people are amassing an | unbelievable amount of power in their knowledge of how these | systems work and operate given that the masses don't know how | to weld that knowledge. | dredmorbius wrote: | Note that most countries report only _basic_ literacy | rates, not _functional literacy_ levels.[1] The apparent | poor performance of the US here is largely a function of | its own investigation and reporting of of the full extent | of literacy. | | Note too that lack of _English_ literacy is pronounced in | regions with a high _immigrant_ or _migrant_ workforce and | population. Illiteracy can exceed 30% amongst Texas | counties bordering on Mexico in particular. It 's possible | that many of those testing with no English proficiency are | at least somewhat literate in Spanish or other languages. | | But you're mostly confirming my earlier statement: you very | likely overestimate typical technological literacy. | | ________________________________ | | Notes: | | 1. That I'm aware of. If anyone has references on | comprehensive functional literacy assessments _elsewhere_ | than the US, I 'd appreciate it. I've not found any on a | somewhat cursory search. | 63 wrote: | Even with an ad-blocker, there are still huge cookie and "join | our email list" banners. Banner blindness is just the way | things go for most people. Fun little anecdote, in high school | I had to work at a pizza joint but the screens where they | showed the orders had a gui that looked just like a website. | Thanks to banner blindness, I missed important info all the | time because it was in places that brain had internalized as | looking like ads. I had to really focus on it. | _fat_santa wrote: | Last year I was building a "Cookie Consent" banner for one of | my sites. I wanted to be transparent as possible with it so I | had this box come up in the corner to ask for permission, big | blue button for OK, big red button (of the same size) to | decline, zero dark patterns. | | Looking at the analytics after the fact made me realize why | these cookie consent boxes use so many dark patterns. My | acceptance rate for the box was like 4%, I tossed out cookies | (and the banner) in the next update. | gpas wrote: | The best cookie banners have a small neutral button labeled | OK to accept only required cookies and then, on the right, | a happy big blue button to Accept All. Transparency! | JohnFen wrote: | I never click on cookie consent banners, period. It has | nothing to do with me not noticing them. I just leave them | where they are unless they are too intrusive. If they're | too intrusive, I leave the page. | | The reason that I don't click on them is because I've had | bad experiences clicking on them in the past. | b3morales wrote: | Zapping them with uBlock is also a good option. | JohnFen wrote: | True. | | I've been using an old version of Waterfox until | recently, when I finally had to change to a modern | browser. Looking at the alternatives, I chose Firefox as | the least bad of the available options. On the plus side, | this means that uBlock/uMatrix is an option for me now. | zo1 wrote: | Big game changer that, right-click what is bothering you | and choose "Block element", then drag sliders to get it | perfect. Done. | distances wrote: | Nice, hadn't seen those sliders before. Must be a new | feature. | ibelong2u wrote: | https://how-i-experience-web-today.com/ | coldpie wrote: | NoScript goes a long way to fixing this. Yes, it's a chore, | but it's less of a chore than the modern web. | LordRishav wrote: | The best way to prevent that is by disabling JavaScript. | Generally, JavaScript is what enables such banners to popup | and obstruct your vision with newsletter requests. | gpas wrote: | The best way is to install uBlock (or your preferred ad | blocker), not to disable javascript. | | Javascript is like a knife. Do I want people who know how | to use a knife in my house? Yes of course. Do I want people | that stab other people in my house? No. Nowadays there are | tools to leave those people outside your door. | | It's time to end the association between javascript and bad | web practices. | yosito wrote: | I use uMatrix. It allows me to block all third party | scripts by default, easily unblock them one by one if I | need to, and save my changes for sites I visit often. | chrismorgan wrote: | There are cosmetic filter lists that filter out most of that | stuff, e.g. Fanboy's Annoyances. | ravenstine wrote: | Not only that but some of them actually think there's a moral | problem with blocking ads. | | Perhaps if the advertising industry didn't already prove for | 20+ years that they are entirely made up of scum, I would | agree. People use ads to make money. I feel bad that they | aren't making money passively that way. | | But I grew up with ad networks, including Google themselves, | turning a blind eye to deceptive ads, bait and switch, fake | window popups, and outright scams. The online advertising | industry has done everything they could to fuck us over and big | tech companies were complicit in the crime. | | So that's why I don't care about running an ad blocker. Maybe | the advertising industry will have a code of ethics after I'm | dead, but until then I'll keep using uBlock Origin and NoScript | (and other extensions) to screw with the ad business as much as | possible. | | Putting aside the ethics, advertising turns the internet into a | race to the bottom. Ad blocking is good for the internet | because it means that your ads had better be good, minimally | intrusive, and also be integrated with the content you are | providing. In other words, do things like preroll and midroll | sponsorships and referrals rather than slap a bunch of banners | on your site that peddle crap du juor. | ukyrgf wrote: | I hate those tutorial popups and refuse to engage them. | mdoms wrote: | Technical literacy among young people is so depressing. I'm 36 | so I grew up in the last of the non-digital native cohort - I | vaguely remember life before the internet. But growing up | surrounded by computers and the internet, but seeing many of my | peers miss out, I was certain that the next generation would be | so much more tech savvy. As full digital natives they will | learn to code, understand the protocols on which their primary | communications are built and just be steeped in this stuff from | birth. | | How naive I was. No one actually cares. It was like assuming | everyone born after 1908 would fully understand how cars work. | kixiQu wrote: | I'm a very techy person and I interact with modals as little as | possible, even if that means ignoring a chunk of my screen. I | have a probably-unreasonable sense that it's only going to | trigger a bunch of JS or something unsafe [1]. | | [1]: https://archive.is/TZ7oe was the best, but is kinda dead | now. https://blog.malwarebytes.com/threat- | analysis/2016/01/clickj... | tempestn wrote: | We had to make an adjustment on our site to account for that | second one. I had just assumed if you have some kind of notice | that can be closed, people would close it after they'd had a | chance to digest the info (or decided they didn't care, or | whatever). But no, turns out the vast majority never close | anything unless it's physically preventing them from using the | site. (Of course the vast majority also never bother to read | anything that doesn't prevent what they're trying to do either, | but we already knew that.) | bhauer wrote: | Bear in mind that many younger people grew up with mobile | computing first. So they're not as familiar with the "power | user" desktop computing behaviors us older people have | developed. | | Not dismissing that Google Docs overlay may be explained by any | of the following: (a) learned behavior from mobile computing | that very few things are configurable (mobile apps tend to have | far fewer preferences on how things are displayed; (b) pop ups | on mobile often don't close when clicked; and (c) they are used | to operating with very tight screen real-estate. I think (c) is | most likely. | | As someone brought up on desktop computing, I fight to | eliminate anything that needlessly wastes screen real-estate | such as bloated window chrome. But I think someone brought up | on small screens might actually feel agitated by "too much" | space. | thewebcount wrote: | I think there might be a 4th option, which is that users are | trained that clicking on anything other than links will | result in pain. Clicking a dialog you didn't read may take | you to another page and ask you to enter information. Or it | may opt you in to something you don't want or need. It's just | a needless distraction. This gets back to what I was saying | about "cookie consent" dialogs a few weeks ago. I never click | on them. I usually read in Reader view to not even see them. | If I can't get the content without clicking something | additional, I simply press the back button. | Tarsul wrote: | there are too many popups, especially now with how many cookie | pop-ups work. So the easiest way is try to ignore it if | possible. Ok, yeah, the best way would be to block it | completely but as this shows again: humans are lazy creatures. | Every click is a click too much. | pachico wrote: | That remaining 42% surprises me even more... | Yuioup wrote: | It would be 100% if I could do it on mobile. | dave_sullivan wrote: | For Android, I'm using fennec with ublock origin and it's | great. Also YouTube Vanced is very useful. And Infinity for a | tolerable reddit experience on mobile. | RedShift1 wrote: | I use Blokada and it works well. | BiteCode_dev wrote: | ublock origin is available on firefox mobile is you use | android. | buro9 wrote: | Android offers Private DNS, just point that at nextdns.io and | block things even within apps that aren't browsers. | | The biggest benefit is definitely the sheer speed at which news | websites load on my phone now, even when I'm on a crap | connection. | | Another benefit: This isn't a VPN, so you can still use a VPN | whilst using Private DNS. | | Edit: Also... lol, I can't access TFA as plausible.io is also | blocked on my network and phone. I'm going to assume that the | article is actually an analytics competitor whose pitch is "GA | is blocked, use us instead!". | | Edit 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=plausible.io | Yes, assumption was correct. | | Edit 3: NextDNS stats from my home network: 11.45% of DNS | requests blocked, but from my phone 23.7% of DNS requests | blocked. You need this more on your mobile than in a web | browser! | dalu wrote: | Nextdns is giving me an ID. Why would I want to be tracked by | unique ID? That's even worse than GA | buro9 wrote: | You don't have to do that... NextDNS ultimately uses | Cloudflare DNS under the hood, so just point yourself at | 1.1.1.1 and you're done but it will block nothing. | | If you want a DNS server to block things, know that the | definition of what to block is subjective and some people | may disagree with what you want to block. | | For that reason you get an account, which allows you to | have a configure, and that needs to be resolve to you... so | at some level an identifier of the configuration is needed. | This is the id. | gpas wrote: | Thanks for sharing nextdns. I just registered and I'm very | impressed. | toastal wrote: | AdAway (root) from F-Droid helps me out | lambdaba wrote: | On Android I use personaldnsfilter | (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dnsfilter.android/), which | creates a local VPN, there are also actual VPN apps that allow | blocking ad hosts, and you can also use AdGuard DNS directly. | azalemeth wrote: | Out of curiosity, what does this bring you over hosts file | blocking, and how much does it affect battery life? I use | dead-simple modifications to /etc/hosts and it seems to be | remarkably good. Do you MITM yourself for further adblocking, | or just use it for the modified DNS? | lambdaba wrote: | My phone is not rooted, and I just switched to nextdns.io | on suggestion of another commenter here. I can't say about | the phone battery, but I don't think it makes a big | difference. | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: | https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/ | | Also on F-Droid: | | https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:IceCat/icecat-help-help | | https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.stoutner.privacybrowser.... | kklisura wrote: | Use Brave. | underscore_ku wrote: | so brave! | azinman2 wrote: | iOS has content blocking extensions. | isoprophlex wrote: | NextDNS does comprehensive blackholing of tracking and ads, | very limited battery impact. | | Works on ios and android. | | I think their free tier is very generous at 300k lookups/month; | otherwise it's something cheap like 2EUR/month if you want | unlimited lookups (i use this to block tracking on all my | devices + home network) | aembleton wrote: | > very limited battery impact. | | Why would it use any extra battery? The phone has to make DNS | lookups whether its with the one from nextDns or from the | DHCP server. | isoprophlex wrote: | I've had bad experiences, battery-wise, using on-device | adblocking solutions (that inspect DOM). An alternative i | tried was tunneling to my raspberry pi that ran pihole (dns | blocker), and bouncing all my traffic off the home | connection, but that was also battery intensive. | | You're right, this dns solution is very unobtrusive when it | comes to energy use. | ddaalluu1 wrote: | Are you working for them? | | When I want to "try for free" I'm assigned a unique ID which | is then used in all DNS resolution requests. How is that even | remotely tracking-safe? | isoprophlex wrote: | No, not working for them. | | The unique id is to retain settings across different | devices. | | Of course you have to trust them not to sell you out. | leokennis wrote: | If on iPhone, install NextDNS and enable a blocklist which | blocks GA, flip the switch, now NextDNS handles your DNS and | will answer requests to GA with a "sorry cannot find this". | kunagi7 wrote: | Use Bromite, Vivaldi or Brave on Android. They have built-in ad | tracker protection. The first two even support custom filtering | lists. | | On iOS the options are a bit worse but Brave has some kind of | adblocking that works. Safari also supports blocking lists via | AdGuard but it's more limited. | marak830 wrote: | Or just use Firefox. Android of course, your screwed on | Apple. | teekert wrote: | AdGuard (local app) works in Safari. I don't like safari, | but the AdGuard blocking does not work in FireFox! I use | DDG browser mostly and it works well. I do see the | occasional ad. | | The whole browser situation in iOS is really user | unfriendly. | kunagi7 wrote: | Firefox is another nice alternative if you have a good | Android phone I guess. | | Sadly, I have a quite old Android device (but its battery | life it's still good) where Chromium-based browsers are | already quite slow and Firefox feels even slower and drains | the battery faster (the old Fennec was worse than the new | one, it hanged for 30 seconds). | throwawayswede wrote: | Get yourself a PiHole&PiVPN or NextDNS and never look at ads on | any of your devices again | vmoore wrote: | Oh yeah because sending all your DNS requests to a US company | that's probably under duress by the NSA to hand over logs | sounds like a great idea! | throwawayswede wrote: | Newsflash: most of your data is reaching a US based company | anyway | zorked wrote: | Use Firefox mobile then. | ohazi wrote: | Seriously, this. | | There may be an argument that Chrome is marginally faster | than Firefox on desktop, and while this may also technically | be true on mobile, it's completely dwarfed by the fact that | Chrome is being asked render 5x as much _crap_ (with | animations and sound and video and nagbars and ...) compared | to Firefox mobile with uBlock Origin. | | You will literally regain hours of battery life. Those Joules | belong to you -- don't just shrug and hand them to Google. | jobigoud wrote: | > Those Joules belong to you | | My Joules, my rules. | robin_reala wrote: | You can: use Firefox Mobile and turn on Enhanced Tracking | Protection. | kubav wrote: | You can install ublock on mobile firefox too. | robin_reala wrote: | On Android, yes. On iOS you can't, but at least you've | still got ETP and Firefox Focus's ad blocking. | faeyanpiraat wrote: | You can use adblockers on ios aswell, I use adguard. It | works for youtube ads which is nice. | azalemeth wrote: | I wish you could install umatrix, and it had a decent | mobile UI. Umatrix has just transformed the way I browse | the web and if anything it has educated me at the same | time. I _like_ seeing that this random site has about 2^5 | different domain names contacted, ranging from ad-junk to | CDNs. It tells me quite a lot about its developer. Sites | with one hostname, minimally awful JS and few-to-none XHR | requests get a thumbs up. | | On the other hand, it probably means that I am a "false | negative" in TFA's report. I'd love to know the correlation | between the server logs and what Plausible shows for a | connection. I'd also like to know how they infer OS -- e.g. | for privacy reasons, my reported user agent is _not_ | accurate... | jobigoud wrote: | > I like seeing that this random site has about 2^5 | different domain names contacted | | You can see that in uBlock Origin already. The summary | info has the number of domains connected and if you click | on "more" you have the details, just like on desktop. You | can also block JavaScript altogether for a particular | site. | CyanBird wrote: | You can install noscript in Firefox mobile without problems, | that's what I did | aomobile wrote: | Just use the private/anonymous browsing feature - problem | solved | qwerty456127 wrote: | I'm surprised the number is so low. I would expect it to be way | higher for this specific group. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | hmm, so this means it's about time for the newest how to hire | guideline being - come to our site, if you block Google Analytics | that means that you can go to the potential interview pool. | gigatexal wrote: | only 58% of us? I thought that number would be much closer to 99% | bob229 wrote: | Only idiots use google services | t0bia_s wrote: | PC: SimpleWall, uBlock, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger Android: | AdAway, uBlock, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger Home network: Pi- | hole | | I never asked for ads and telemetry, so there is no other option | for me. | eterevsky wrote: | This is a bit concerning. I would like to block ad, but would | prefer to keep analytics enabled, since it helps improve the | products that I'm using. I'm using Brave and I don't see any | obvious way to set it up like that. | cesarb wrote: | > Plausible proxy runs as a first-party connection and is only | blocked by those visitors who block JavaScript entirely. | | Which means it still underestimates; those who selectively | disable Javascript, through things like uBlock Origin's advanced | mode or uMatrix, will not be counted. So the real percentage is | probably higher than that 58%, and we don't know how much higher. | masswerk wrote: | For the tech-savvy audiences and blog writers: Google provides a | dedicated opt-out plugin [0] for various browsers. (So it's not | just browsers interfering, ad-blockers and disabled JS.) | | [0] https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout | fergie wrote: | Well done lads! | SeanFerree wrote: | Great article! I have always wondered about this ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-31 23:00 UTC)