
Trackers - henrik_w
http://jacquesmattheij.com/trackers
======
Doctor_Fegg
Believe it or not, some stores sympathise with you. They might actually be run
by people like you, people who read your story.

They still want to know how you proceed round the store, because that helps
them optimise shelf layout, identify hard-to-find items, and so on. So yes,
they might use the standard in-store CCTV to observe your journeys, and when
they figure that you and people like you always have difficulty finding the
eggs (seriously - why is it always so hard to find the eggs?), they'll move
the eggs somewhere more prominent, so they can sell more eggs and you can buy
what you came to buy.

But that's as far as it goes. They don't follow you out the store, let alone
into your bedroom. They don't match anything with third-party data, let alone
your mobile phone number. The store just wants to know where to put the eggs.

Unfortunately, your bouncers have simply been told to "hurt them if you have
to, I’ve really had enough of it". So last time they came in, they smashed the
CCTV cameras. The store-owner remonstrated with them a bit but the whole
debate around bouncers has become so polarised that there was really no point
arguing.

\---

And if this metaphor seems a little obscure, this is why it is irresponsible,
populist and ultimately self-defeating for uBlock and chums to block self-
hosted Piwik and other such internal analytics tools. Because some of us are
trying to do the right thing and your bouncers are still beating us up.

~~~
davb
I find it interesting that a lot of content producers have feel entitled to
users' participation in analytics at all.

Sure, it may be frustrating when a user blocks tracking tools (especially self
hosted ones) but that's the their choice.

We got by for decades without analysing user habits (even in a local only
context, without correlation with third party data). There are so few examples
of cases where analysing user behaviour was a make or break factor in a
store's survival. Sure, it can be useful to know what a user looked at and, as
you suggest, how difficult it is to find the eggs. But there are better ways.

Physical stores at one point (and still now, in many cases) respect that user
choice. Want to participate? Get a loyalty card. We'll watch how you spend,
but we'll give a little something back to participants.

On the web, the solution is simple. Do it on your application servers back
end. Have your request handler (which should probably know a lot more about
your user _in the context of your application_ than any third party tool) log
user requests and actions. You'll be able to tie data gathered to a logged in
user and their local purchase or browsing history.

You'll get to know your user better and you'll avoid third party tools that
creep out a growing proportion of your users.

You're not entitled to participation in analytics.

~~~
sdoering
In the "good ol' days" (TM the shop-owners in a community knew quite a lot
about their customers.

Oh Mary just gave birth, Henry is currently sick, Walter likes his coffee a
little stronger, James a little weaker (something with his stomach). Danielle
drinks only tee, has two kids and the marriage is not really happy. And so on.
A lot bordered on gossip, a lot was very valid and relevant information.
People talked.

So it was totally normal in a smallish community for the store owners to have
an extensive profile on every customer. All in their head for sure, but non
the less. And guess what - everybody benefitted. The clerk could recommend
based on what he knew. People would be directed to relevant produce.

By the way this works even today. If I buy at my normal place I get
personalized recommendations for cheese from the lady behind the counter. We
talk, she knows a little bit about my tastes and I get to try new things.

~~~
forgottenpass
_And guess what - everybody benefitted_

I grew up in a town with <1000 year round residents. We had a general store
like this. We avoided the general store as much as possible. Some families
went as far as getting their mail through another town because the local post
office was inside the store.

The reason is quite relevant to this thread. The shopkeeper, his wife, and all
the regular customers who sat around to chat while they drank their coffee
were gossip hounds.

People valued their private lives more than letting a social circle they
weren't involved in know anything about them. Not who sent them mail, and not
even what type of breakfast cereal they liked.

"Everyone benefitted"? Nah, I think you've just heard too much "small town
community" bullshit from politicians.

~~~
jakeva
Different strokes, different folks. Personally, I like that people in my town
know me. Gossip goes around, sure, people know more about me than I might be
comfortable with but in general that establishes in the long run a familiarity
that works for me. It feels like a very large family, and I like that.

~~~
vehementi
So what you're saying is that not everybody benefitted?

------
S4M
Thank you Jacques for writing how something that would be completely
unacceptable in the physical world is deemed perfectly fine online. It has
always bothered me.

Take for example how the FBI wants to have automatic access to the data in all
iphones through a backdoor. Would that be considered OK if they asked lockers
makers to make their locks accept a master key so they would be able to enter
in anybody's house, so they could monitor further people they suspect to be
terrorist?

Of course that would cause an uproar, but the general public being so
uneducated with technology, I guess they don't see how the two are related.

~~~
timr
_" Would that be considered OK if they asked lockers makers to make their
locks accept a master key so they would be able to enter in anybody's house,
so they could monitor further people they suspect to be terrorist?"_

I don't know. But I know that it would be absolutely normal to pick your lock
and/or knock down your door if they had a warrant. It would even be OK for
them to ask the lock company, door company, and landlord to help them do that.
For that matter, the landlord could even be compelled to surrender his _master
key_ for the entire apartment complex.

All of those things could happen out here in the big blue room, and nobody
would blink an eye. Funny how these metaphors to the physical world clear
things up, isn't it?

~~~
mschulze
But when the FBI gets the key or picks the lock it does not make any other
door more insecure, or enables other parties to get into other doors.

What if the FBI would ask all landlords to install a special door to every
apartment, but only the FBI has the key to this special door? What if someone
successfully copies that key? Now they have access to all apartments.

~~~
timr
Obviously, "making all locks insecure" is a different situation than bypassing
a single door. Which is why we don't do the former, but (currently) do the
latter, judiciously.

But hey: what if the lock company makes a standard lock, with a plain ol',
low-security, five-pin key, and attaches it to a bomb that destroys the
apartment when it's picked incorrectly? Does the lock company now get to beg
off when the police come looking for help opening a single door?

 _" Oh, we'd love to help you, officer, but you see...if we help you open this
particular lock, then all criminals will know that you can disable the bomb,
and that would make all of our locks less secure!"_

~~~
geekamongus
This makes no sense whatsoever.

------
terryf
I find it interesting that for most people the problem with ads is the
tracking part. For me it's the ads themselves - I don't like seeing them,
because I don't really want to buy stuff and think that a large part of the
first world's problems (obesity, depression) are caused in part by ads.

In the world of ads, I'm constantly reminded that I don't have the perfect
body and that my blender does not look as good as the latest model - I really
don't want that, because my blender works fine and looks ok.

So yeah, I block ads and I don't really see why I should feel bad about that,
the non-tracking feature is a nice bonus.

So the web will go back to sites that either require payment to enter or are
run by people who post stuff out of enthusiasm. Sounds like a nice place to
me.

~~~
flycaliguy
Your nice place will probably never happen. There are alternatives.

On the internet, you are actually better off allowing sites to make money with
these old fashioned banner style ads. The alternative on the web is baking
this predatory persuasion into the content itself.

By blocking ads, you are pushing your enemy deeper into the medium. Deeper
into the story selection process, deeper into the layout decisions, deeper
into an app's data harvesting, deeper into the entire editorial philosophy of
a publication.

~~~
terryf
Sure, but that has already happened. It is ridiculously easy to get almost any
newspaper to print a commercial article and already now it is hard to tell the
difference between for-pay articles and genuine ones.

If you have a instagram account with ~30k or so followers, you start getting
offers to promote products for example. If you have less, you can still get
deals, but then you have to hunt for them.

But this will happen regardless of ad blocking, because it is profitable. I
certainly don't know how to avoid it, except to generally assume that all
content is commercial content in for-profit sites. And also on some others.

------
akerro
Did you start visiting shops and places you didn't like just to mislead them?
So you have more and more of them tracking you until they run out energy and
money because their targeting is just wrong?

[http://adnauseam.io](http://adnauseam.io)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
GB/firefox/addon/adnauseam](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
GB/firefox/addon/adnauseam)

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
GB/firefox/addon/trackmenot](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
GB/firefox/addon/trackmenot)

~~~
jacquesm
That takes the confrontation to a wholly different level and I'm definitely
not yet so far that I'd do this but I can see why some would and who knows,
maybe one of these days I'll join the ranks. For now, I think that simply
blocking what I don't want and being strict in what I send out is my best bet
at reaching some kind of stable long term solution. Retaliation is - for now -
for me one step too far.

------
cm2187
One can make a very long list of things that would look really really creepy
in the physical world.

For instance I can draw a little cat in my agenda to remind myself to call a
particular friend that day. The police will tell me: "what? you have not
written that in plain english? You must tell me what it means and if you don't
you will go to prison". (In the UK one can go to jail for refusing to decrypt
one's own data)

I go buy the Telegraph at my local newsstand and the guy will tell me: "can I
see your papers please?" "But I just want to buy a newspaper" "yes but I must
report to the police every day who reads what, by the way I must also know
which pages you intend to read" (the UK is passing a law that would force all
ISP to record what websites their customers view)

Etc etc

------
karmacondon
Where this analogy breaks down is that the people sent to track you are
invisible and can't be seen without the aid of special technology. So what you
end up telling people is that they are being followed everywhere by invisible
ghosts, who's only desire is to change what ads appear in their newspaper. And
it appears that the reaction of most people is about what you'd expect.

If a store has policy of "If you come into our store, we'll have employees
follow you home" and you don't like that policy, then don't go to that store.
That simple. It doesn't make sense to go into the store and have your goons
beat up their employees. That might mean that you can't go to the stores you
want to go to, but that's how it goes. It seems as clear online as it does in
the physical world.

(tldr without the analogy: The overwhelming majority of people don't care
about being tracked online because there are no obvious ill effects. The
problem with ad blockers is that it makes more sense to just avoid sites that
show ads, but most people don't want to do this because it would exclude their
favorite sites.)

~~~
jacquesm
If that's all you got from it then I should really do my best to write better.
One of the key parts - to me - is that the data silos start trading your data
as if it is theirs to whoever pays for it, and that goes a lot further than a
real time bidding on ad space, even if that was the initial drive to collect
that data.

~~~
dhimes
Maybe an allegory about how, based on the tracking data, the price you pay for
something (say airline tickets) changes. Or the availability of health
insurance for your kids? I don't have any _facts_ on which to base the latter,
however, but I suspect it's either happening or only a matter of time.

~~~
robbiemitchell
Health insurance is regulated way beyond what you would expect. At least for
the individual market, many plans are standardized across all carriers as
mandated by the ACA. And in New York (if not elsewhere), rates are proposed in
advance to the state and either approved or rejected (and forced to adjust),
which can happen for being too high or too low compared to other players. The
rates are then set for the year. This is not something subject to real-time
bidding.

------
hoopsho
I got tired of seeing a drill show up on a bunch of sites after I just
searched for it on Home Depot... I block ads on my workstation, but with
tablets I just could not find an easy way to block trackers for my whole
family.

So Metiix Blockade was born out of this frustration... Now I have "bouncers"
protecting my whole network for every one of my devices.

I hate when a web page decides what ads and trackers it wants to pull down
from the Internet. With Blockade, I have taken back control of that process
and I get to dictate when and where I want to provide my information.

I love feeling like I have the real internet back. No more of these ads and
trackers taking over every place I go.

~~~
jacquesm
Added a link at the end of the article, it looks like your project is free and
clean as far as I can see.

~~~
Borating
Also consider pi-hole [1], notrack [2], uMatrix [3], dnsgate [4] and
hostsblock [5]

[1] [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/) [2]
[https://github.com/quidsup/notrack](https://github.com/quidsup/notrack) [3]
[https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix](https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix) [4]
[https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate](https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate) [5]
[https://gaenserich.github.io/hostsblock/](https://gaenserich.github.io/hostsblock/)

~~~
jacquesm
All added, thank you.

------
wouterinho
It is funny how things change when you use the physical world metaphor. There
was a campaign recently by the Dutch regulatory agency that made people aware
of the implications of allowing permissions in "free" apps.

They made an (anecdotal) video by promising a free cup of coffee in exchange
for your contact list on your phone:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYXM56YJWSo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYXM56YJWSo)
(Dutch unfortunately)

~~~
WA
Nice video.

My wife has an Android phone, I have an iPhone. Recently, I wanted to install
some app on her phone and it is still beyond my understanding, why Google
still doesn't allow to deny certain permissions. It's all or nothing.

And no, a fucking video editor shouldn't require access to my contacts, my
browsing history and the accounts on my phone.

Android imho is unusable until they let me deny certain permissions, because
often, the "best" apps ask for basically everything.

~~~
WillKirkby
As of 6.0 Marshmallow, you can disable any permission you want.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZqDdvhTZj0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZqDdvhTZj0)

------
buro9
Really well put.

I've been operating browser separation (Google in Chrome, social in Chrome
incognito, and everything else in a locked-down privacy mode only Firefox -
all with uBlock) for a while, and also use anonymising VPNs for anything I
really don't trust, and my own VPN with streisand and Dnsmasq (with a hosts
very similar to
[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/)
).

On my mobile every link I click in any app I open in Dolphin Zero (still on
that DNS blocking VPN - which blocks all trackers in apps too), and I only
keep apps I actually use and trust the publishers of on my device.

It feels like a chore (manually copying links from one browser to another
depending on trust level), I wonder whether it's worth it sometimes... but
then I occasionally get to see someone else's experience of the web and it's
so incredibly and perniciously been invaded by advertisers that I am glad I do
all of this.

It's become so bad that I even had to change my uBlock origin rules for my
online bank (
[https://banking.smile.co.uk/SmileWeb/start.do](https://banking.smile.co.uk/SmileWeb/start.do)
) to block even first-party scripts... because they use Adobe, Omniture and
Tealium tools to measure stuff and for A/B testing of their online banking
features.

I now block absolutely everything and tell others to do so too, but
unfortunately there is collateral damage.

The very sites I care about may not require advertising revenue, but do value
tracking data that helps them spot errors, debug things, find out what screen
resolutions they should cater for. Their analytics, client-side debugging,
this is all now rendered useless to them.

PS: If you happen to work on Firefox for Android, please enable
browser.privatebrowsing.autostart to be configured via about:config. I would
_love_ to default enable private browsing in a UA capable of running uBlock on
my mobile.

~~~
phillc73
I don't know enough about how uBlock works, but I'm mostly concerned about
blocking trackers, and dislike invasive advertising. I use Ghostery with
everything blocked.

I also bank with smile.

I've just confirmed that Ghostery is blocking Adobe, Omniture and Tealium
trackers, but I was able to log into my account no problem. I also transferred
some funds to a linked account.

What aren't you able to do with smile? And is it something specifically with
the way uBlock blocks?

~~~
buro9
I noticed with Smile that when I first went to the login page it would fail to
login the first time... they have some server-side code to track sessions
linearly and force log-out if it detects background operations.

Their use of one of their trackers meant that the first time I ever arrived at
their site (every time, because private browsing) it would set things up that
touched their server and triggered Smile's security thing.

It was a minor inconvenience... but then I looked into it and noticed how much
tracking they were doing.

My view on bank websites is that the _only_ party that I should be speaking to
is the bank, securely. No other party, ever.

I now block absolutely everything on my banking website, but I was very
surprised this had to be done. A bank, of all sites, should never ever use a
third party anything.

~~~
Tepix
It's not just banking. How can sites be so credulous to include 3rd party
javascript into their login form pages? It's an invitation to steal your
users' credentials! If you really must rely on a 3rd party captcha service put
the captcha into an iframe or put it on a separate page.

------
raverbashing
I think that better than an ad-blocking solution would be to feed all those
trackers with fake information

Oh you want location data here it is, this morning I've been all over the
planet. Want to know all the websites I'm visiting, sure, here's a million of
them.

Just based on the fact that they keep trying to sell you the thermometer after
you already don't care kind of points out that they're being had, and I'm all
for helping it happen

~~~
Baghard
The marketing industry is moving beyond trackers and cookies. Hastened by the
mobile/tablet revolution (users switch devices way more often) and the
stricter privacy laws in Europe (anti-cookie laws).

Now they either require you to login to get the "mobile" experience, like
Facebook or Twitter, or they use probabilistic statistics to identify you
without cookies.

That guy reading a newspaper in the park with a paper bag over his head and 4
goons on the lookout, feeding us uninformative/unlikely data, that guy is with
90% certainty Jacques Mattheij.

(When cookie-tracking was more common we set up a cookie-swap program. Stopped
after a few months out of security concerns.)

~~~
jacquesm
This is - unfortunately - spot on, and there is much worse to come.

It's funny how a law that actually confirms a right that is solidly anchored
in the declaration of human rights would result in technological circumvention
rather than - the expected outcome - compliance.

~~~
HillaryBriss
Yes. And yet, you've also described a general phenomenon, I think. (e.g. the
discovery of loopholes in tax law.)

If necessity is the mother of invention, profitability is the mother of
circumvention.

(Great blog post, btw.)

------
tux3
It's funny how much more relatable the whole privacy debate becomes when
transposed to the physical world.

Some will disagree, but I think the comparison was spot on.

~~~
raldu
Exactly. I am using the same analogy to explain non-technical people about
tracking, ads, surveillance etc. so that they can relate. Otherwise the
abstract technical concepts seem like coming out of a science fiction story to
them.

------
austinjp
Add the part where one of the bouncers starts their own targeting company and
does deals with some of the other targeters.

~~~
jacquesm
Good one, will do.

------
return0
The solution would be a decentralization. Tracking is a real threat when we
only have 1 search engine, 2 social networks, 1 retailer and a single ad
network. The web has created global-scale monopolies faster than before , and
it seems like the centralization of VC capital and IT talent is permanent.
Tracking becomes less of a problem when they are unable to follow you
everywhere.

------
harryf
This reminds me of the surveillance camera man -
[http://youtu.be/jzysxHGZCAU](http://youtu.be/jzysxHGZCAU)

------
brlewis
I just disabled third-party cookies on my phone and computer. I'll see if it
causes me any problems.

I already have adblock plus on my computer.

------
elorant
Once upon a time I used to work for a multinational company that did retail
audit. They had developed a program which adjusted the ads a selected group of
people were watching on their TVs. Then they provided them with special debit
cards and monitored the relevance between viewed ads and purchases of goods in
super markets. All that around 1999. And that was just once of a multitude of
technologies they used. They also had a technology where a camera was tracing
face movement to identify which items on the shelves attracted more attention
by gender and age. I can’t even fathom what they’ll be using these days.
Profiling is the holy grail of the marketing world. At least online we have
the option of ad blocking. Offline we’re helpless.

------
atirip
I have blocked as much trackers as i can. Having said that, i know why they
exists. See, when John produces shampoo, he needs to sell it. The only way is
to advertise, one way or another, because without advertising, public
knowledge, the shampoo does not sell. Now John does want to spend as less to
ads as possible, that makes sense, since we, the customers, end up paying
about that too. To spend less, John needs to show ads only to core group of
buyers, for that he needs to know, who you are. Tracker does that. Shampoo
costs 5 bucks. How much you agree to pay for that with advertising costs
included? 6? 16? Really, are you ready to eat up 200% advertising markup? I
have no idea, frankly.

------
ap22213
Reminds me of Surveillance Camera Man:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/SurveillantCameraMan](https://www.youtube.com/user/SurveillantCameraMan)

------
theshadowmonkey
What you probably missed is if I am a big enough retailer, I can pay off your
bouncers to still follow you from a distance and still show up on your
newspaper on one side since I have more than you and can pay off your bouncers
to work for me while they still pretend they are protecting you. Just an
example:

[https://adblockplus.org/about](https://adblockplus.org/about)

~~~
jacquesm
No, that's in there (near the end).

~~~
theshadowmonkey
Cool. But, do you think a paid model for consuming content would work given
the number of content sources and the frequency with which a user visits a
single source? Don't content creators depend on some form of revenue and
trackers are used to optimize the revenue.

~~~
jacquesm
I don't think advertising and tracking need to go hand-in-hand the way they do
right now.

------
blfr
I'm all for blocking ads, tracking or non-tracking, analytics, etc. and wish
swift bankruptcy on the propaganda-advertising industrial complex but this is
silly. The analogy between physical world and the Internet is not valid or
insightful, just like it isn't in case of piracy/stealing. Collecting info on
what you read online is nothing like breaking into your house.

~~~
xuhu
Picture your insurer scrolling through your browser history when you're
renewing your health plan.

------
superuser2
In small towns and pre-industrialization, stores had a tracking regime that
puts Silicon Valley to shame: the shopkeepers _knew_ you.

They didn't need credit cards or scores because they could identify your store
credit account by your face, and your creditworthiness by your family's
reputation.

If you were buying something out of the ordinary, you better believe your
parents/spouse/church/friends/entire town would hear about it from the
shopkeeper, who knew them all as well as he knew you.

A juicy conversation on a party line telephone shared with neighbors,
interesting metadata on the postal mail also handled by people who know you
and your business, a sighting in public with someone not your spouse, a
visitor at an odd time of night, a strange car in your driveway - all these
things could quickly become a public affair.

Technology is not bringing us a particularly _new_ invasion, but it is helping
at least that side of the "tight-knit communities" of old scale to modern
population size and density. I think this is a horrific development, and it's
certainly quantitatively unprecedented, but not qualitatively.

~~~
jacquesm
A large enough degree of quantity difference has it's own qualitative
difference. This has been observed many times in other fields.

------
jalk
Are there any publicly know examples of hackers that have used tracking data
for malicious stuff. As nasty as it is to have a large amount of your web
history stored in a profile, I don't see a clear path to crime (perhaps
extortion). Or didn't I get the burglar metaphor?

~~~
jacquesm
Burglar => malware or phishing through ad networks.

Sorry for being unclear, I'll see if I can tidy that up.

------
esaym
This might help getting rid of those that follow you:
[https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate](https://github.com/jakeogh/dnsgate)

------
pjuu
WOW! This is a great way to put it. Well done.

------
t0mislav
I didn't quite understand bouncers. Those are some tools for private browsing?

~~~
glward
Ad/tracker blockers, I assume.

------
urbushey
What's the analogue for "clearing your cookies"?

~~~
imglorp
Go to every business you've ever visited, go to their filing cabinet, and
remove every record that you've been there. Go to every library and bookstore
and remove every record of things you've read and bought. Etc.

That's not the same as cancelling all your accounts and credit cards; you'd
still have them, just not your visit data.

The most extreme thing you could do in the real world is delete your identity
and start over from birth.

------
shostack
Disclaimer: I do digital media and online marketing for a living.

I used to help lead the paid search group at a top search agency and had a
real birds-eye view of where things were moving in that role.

Everything is moving towards audiences. While keywords and search queries are
signals that highlight intent, ultimately the audience piece is what the
advertiser cares about--that's just one component of it. This is why FB,
Google and everyone else under the sun wants companies to upload their CRM
data, and then they use that for retargeting (1st party, or 1P data), or
building lookalikes.

Then you have Adobe and other companies trying to get companies to sell this
data on a marketplace as 2nd party (2P) audience data for retargeting.

There are also companies like LiveRamp and others that try to get companies
with login data to provide cookie matches against hashed email addresses to
keep cookies fresh and prevent them from just being deleted once and forever.
I've been approached by these companies, and always turned them down because
it just felt dirty.

That said, this thread seems to draw the usual crowd of everyone who hates
anything related to advertising. I'm not going to try to change your opinions
because I know that is not going to happen. However the reason all of this
data gets shared is because it allows better targeting which leads to more
relevant ads, which leads to more purchases.

Think about that for a second.

People are purchasing more when the content is more relevant to them. Nobody
is holding a gun to their head making them take out their wallets and hit
"Purchase." They are saying "this product/service is relevant to me and I want
to buy it."

In that manner, advertising is helping people who want to purchase said thing.
The issue comes in with the fact that because targeting isn't perfect (and I
doubt anyone wants the level of tracking needed to make it so), and because a
lot of advertising is building awareness (not simply retargeting and reminding
you to buy something you initially displayed interest in), it becomes
intrusive in a manner people dislike.

Unfortunately, because of the data available, there's still plenty of people
who say "hmmm, I didn't know about this, but it seems interesting, I'll check
it out" and then they purchase. So from an advertiser's standpoint looking at
a spreadsheet of data they see "this audience segment had a conversion rate of
X and an ROI of Y" and they keep doing it if it is profitable because that is
what they are optimizing for.

I actually enjoyed Jacques piece, and I do think that there is some very
questionable stuff going on in the ad space. The example of a random app
tracking and selling data totally unrelated to said app is a great example.
Companies are finding that they can monetize their data without visibly
degrading the user experience by showing ads, and still get paid on a CPM rate
for it, so expect to see more of that.

At the end of the day, I say all of this to highlight the fact that often is
left out of pieces like this, which is that things are the way they are now
because it works. Advertisers wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work, which
means consumers are voting with their wallets in large enough numbers to keep
fueling this behavior. In Jacques restaurant example, he was put off by the
restaurant special promoted on his phone. I'd probably behave the same way
because I've developed an aversion to the more invasive aspects of my industry
and I'm overly sensitive to it now. But Joe Consumer? They see a relevant deal
that will save them money and say "hmm, I like what they are offering, and it
is a fair price, I guess that just made my decision easier" and they go eat at
the restaurant. So the restaurant sees that of all the Jacques that see the ad
and keep walking, for the pittance they pay they get enough Joe's in the door
to make it profitable, and they keep doing it.

The positive feedback loop created by more targeting leading to higher profits
means that it is working and we'll see more of it until the feedback loop is
broken. Ad blockers are one avenue towards attempting to break it, and
legislation is another. The question is whether pulling on those two levers
will be enough to reduce the efficacy of the feedback loop to the point where
advertisers stop doing this.

And a final note to those who might respond to my post. Please note that I'm
not trying to paint an overly rosy picture of what advertising does or in any
way trying to defend some overreaching aspects of it. I think people should
own their data and be entitled to controlling how it is used. That is not the
reality of the world we live in though, and so I'm simply making observations
about how it impacts the various parties involved beyond just the protagonist
of Jacques' story. I think there are more "clean" ways of doing advertising,
that rely on a strong creative message, etc. Or viral ads that get shared
because they are creating great content. But at the end of the day the media
person's job is to take that ad/content and get it in front of the audience
they are targeting.

~~~
jacquesm
Ads and tracking going hand-in-hand is the problem. If the advertising
industry had not embraced tracking I think that the backlash against
advertising would not be as strong as it is. It should be possible to receive
an advert _without_ also giving up a huge chunk of privacy.

~~~
shostack
That's one stance, but do you think it results in a more relevant experience
for most people (emphasis on "most) viewing ads when they see products that
are more likely to interest them (because of audience data or retargeting
data) vs. a generic ad?

And from an advertiser standpoint, if the targeted approach is vastly more
profitable than the untargeted approach of how things worked in the early Mad
Men days (and it most definitely is), I have to say I can't really blame them
for taking that path.

I'd be curious if there are any companies out there who position themselves as
"ethical advertisers" and do what you outlined in terms of advertising without
the privacy tradeoff. I'd also be curious how they might fare against
competitors who don't take that stance. Again, people are voting with their
wallets, and right now they are saying that they are ok giving up their data
in exchange for free content, and that they'll continue buying things from
companies who leverage said data to communicate with them.

~~~
jacquesm
> That's one stance, but do you think it results in a more relevant experience
> for most people (emphasis on "most) viewing ads when they see products that
> are more likely to interest them (because of audience data or retargeting
> data) vs. a generic ad?

They may spend less money, so it is clearly a 'win' for the advertiser and the
property to do as much tracking and profiling as they can get away with (and
they do).

> And from an advertiser standpoint, if the targeted approach is vastly more
> profitable than the untargeted approach of how things worked in the early
> Mad Men days (and it most definitely is), I have to say I can't really blame
> them for taking that path.

I don't blame them either, but then they should not blame the users for the
inevitable backlash.

> I'd be curious if there are any companies out there who position themselves
> as "ethical advertisers" and do what you outlined in terms of advertising
> without the privacy tradeoff.

Unfortunately the good are suffering with the bad.

> I'd also be curious how they might fare against competitors who don't take
> that stance.

They made less money in the short term. But in the longer term there may be
some life there, too early to tell.

> Again, people are voting with their wallets, and right now they are saying
> that they are ok giving up their data in exchange for free content, and that
> they'll continue buying things from companies who leverage said data to
> communicate with them.

That's mostly because people have no idea what is in their profiles in the
various silos.

It's a bit like getting people to click blindfolded on a EULA and then later
to say 'hey, you agreed to this', which in my opinion is simply not fair and
taking advantage.

~~~
shostack
I think your last point on comparing against EULA's isn't the best fit here.
If I see an ad, the actual data that led to me seeing that ad doesn't suddenly
make the product I'm seeing an ad for less of what I might need. It might make
me question the business I would buy it from, but there's a big difference
between agreeing to purchase something where the terms of the transaction are
known (you are buying X, this is the return policy, etc.) vs. clicking an EULA
where you decided not to read it (which is the other reason I think this was a
poor example...the EULA is there, people just choose not to read it).

~~~
jacquesm
Ah, but you got the timing wrong. The EULA reference is about the terms and
conditions under which you are viewing the website - and therefore the
advertising and all associated tracking mechanisms -, this happens _prior_ to
you viewing the ad and once you are on the page you are somehow magically
bound by these terms but all the bad stuff has already happened.

~~~
shostack
Ah--sorry, I thought you were drawing an analogy against software installation
EULA's that people typically click through.

I definitely concede this is a valid point in that visitors aren't exactly
given a chance to opt out. I think we can both agree that if it were opt in,
that wouldn't satisfy advertisers, but I think the EU approach around cookies
is a bit heavy handed and ruins web experiences. I wonder if there isn't a
happy middle ground somewhere.

Again, make no mistake, I think users should be in control of their data and
data ownership is going to be one of the hot button issues of the next decade
as tracking only becomes more pervasive and data storage becomes cheaper. But
I also think that a large number of people like to jump to the conclusion of
"I hate advertising" while at the same time buying stuff because of relevant,
highly-targeted ads. What people don't realize is that publishers and such
would have to resort to even more aggressive placements and approaches to make
up the greater lack of revenue they'd suffer if they weren't able to offer
highly-targeted inventory.

Jacques, you are definitely one of the standout posters on HN and I've come to
recognize and respect your viewpoints as someone who has a pretty solid
understanding of the ad industry and its various components. While I
appreciate the perspective you painted in this piece, I'd challenge you to
play devil's advocate and write another version of the story from the
standpoint of an advertiser, a publisher, or a consumer who is less sensitive
to advertising than you or I may be. This is a complicated issue and I don't
think it is as black and white as your story makes it out to be. Exploring all
sides of a problem tends to bring out those gray areas than just a single
viewpoint.

Plus I'm a fan of your writing style, so I'd love to see this sort of analogy
extended to the other players in the game ;)

~~~
jacquesm
Tough challenge, but I just might take you up on that. Keep in mind it took me
> than a month in wall clock time to write this post so it will be a while if
anything comes of it. I don't write these things in one go, I write an
outline, let them sit for a bit, then update and bit by bit it becomes what
I'd like to send out. So no 'quick response time' on anything like this.

But that's definitely a valid request, the viewpoint shift alone would be
worth doing because it may help to figure out what could be done instead.

I think the publisher is the most interesting perspective of the options you
listed and one that I can identify with.

~~~
shostack
Awesome and glad you find it to be an interesting challenge. Of course totally
understand if it falls off the list, but I for one would love to read it if
you decide to do it.

~~~
jacquesm
I'll do it. Can you drop me a line, I'd like to email with you on the subject.

------
kp25
For the first few seconds, i thought you're talking about real people who're
tracking you. Later i realized.. Great writeup. So, true.

------
9248
I find it infuriating how much traction this whole anti ad/tracking war is
getting.

People mention there's no choice anymore. Wrong! It's still there, just like
it was 10 or 15 years ago. Stop sharing your personal information online and
the whole tracking thing doesn't matter anymore.

This analogy seems completely flawed imho. Nobody can get inside my home, or
force my door or any of that nonsense, unless I specifically allow them when
they ask!

I fail to understand how all these trackers can read my browsing history
without me installing <popular plugin> and allowing it access to my browser?
Or how are they going to read my contact list from my Android phone, or the
one from my Thunderbird? Through thin air?

Nobody took the choice from us, we just happened to open wide our front and
back doors, and then complain that random people come in and look through our
stuff.

~~~
jacquesm
That you don't understand how it works even in the abstract is maybe an
explanation for why you think it is infuriating that others are more concerned
than you.

Being online is no longer optional, giving merchants and authorities your
information is in many cases also no longer optional.

If you stop sharing your personal information online you will not be able to
participate in a very large chunk of society's functions, some of which are
mandatory. Heck I can't even the local tax office website without receiving a
bunch of stuff that tracks me.

