My opinion (probably an unpopular one) is that tracking for advertising is merely the excuse to surveil people. I don't think all the advertising revenue that is purported to be used stacks up. I get that this is Google's business, but perhaps a large amount of their 'business' is actually from the government system (directly or indirectly) - they merely have to pretend to be running an advertising business.
I'm saying that the whole point of advertising was surveillance from the beginning.
At least the solution is obvious, even if the path to an ad-free web is not. And it's a solution that also has the advantage of being a solid public good.
Mass surveillance has been the only thing where capitalists and communists wholeheartedly agreed to go all in. It has been pushed into law at every opportunity, done in grey areas when possible, and secretly when illegal.
Whenever I read your articles, I get distracted by the space invaders and just play that instead. Maybe this is a problem with me being a bit ADHD, but I feel like I am not the only one
I just played for a couple of minutes and didn't even finish the article. Also suffering from ADHD but in my defense space invaders is pretty good with mouse controls.
When Apple first released App Tracking Transparency, I immediately used it to block the trackers and I have not even thought about it since because it is so simple and useful.
What a contrast to modern websites which require all sorts of weird clicking gymnastics to disable similar tracking.
Its amusing that Apple itself is one of the biggest ad companies that exists, fed entirely from their own users private data. Yet by simply pointing the finger away from themselves and helping their customers block other ad companies efforts, they seem to have gained complete trust of all their users and most dont even know how much Apple are making in ad revenue from their own data.
Yes, that is very true. Unfortunately, without a true non-Apple or non-Google OS, the ATT toggle is likely about as good as you can get. And it does stop the apps themselves getting raw access to your data, which is not something to sniff at.
Ironically Google couldn't disable third-party cookies even if they wanted to; it's seen as anti-competitive to other tracking networks and was blocked by the courts.
Really? Do you have a link? That sounds very interesting and very frustrating.
Regardless, because of such things I'm guessing the only ways to disable such tracking in the foreseeable future will still be 3rd party non-affiliated DNS/extensions or browsers such as Brave and Safari (to some extent).
Sorry to nitpick but tracking and surveillance are not the same thing. Go back to the last century for a second, before all this 21st-century tech came along. Just because your cell phone and towers would be able to track what rough region (let's call it "site") you were visiting, that doesn't mean they were surveilling you.
Surveillance implies things about bith intended usage and actual usage, etc. that -- simply put -- do not need to hold when you're tracking something. If the argument is genuinely that cookies have genuinely been used to place us under surveillance rather than mere tracking -- I have nothing inherently against it, but you need to support it with evidence. Simply pointing to the fact that they track some fact or metric that indirectly relates to you is not sufficient evidence of that.
And to be clear, I'm not saying I like tracking or we should be fine with it. I hate it too. But it's also a turnoff seeing people smearing one thing as another, and I don't think it's a great strategy to help win support for your cause.
The difference is the intention. A corporation maybe tracking. The same data, once given to the governance surveillance teams, is then used to surveil. Same info and mechanisms.
WHATWG wants to co-mingle document rendering with javascript (this is the real reason they are removing XSLT and not proposing a replacement, it skirts this enforcement) so that when you try to disable javascript or block tracking it breaks the document rendering, leaving the only option to leave Javascript enabled and ad blockers off. Other protocols gemini, gopher etc don’t have the same issues because they’re already excluding Javascript.
What is really needed is a hard fork of major browsers by a grass roots community to advance HTML standards to include partial template rendering solutions without the reliance on Javascript.
Of course this is a startup forum so the response is just going to be wittled down to observations about economic value. However if users start to change/fight then the economics will too.
It wouldn't be that weird a thought for me that, preferably a group of, nation states cough up some serious money and give this a real start, beginning, and end in the form of a stable release. This already happens with major science and space projects, with budgets of billions. A browser is not simply a bunch'a software, having a modular open browser is a major deal and benefit to society at this point. Perhaps arguably more valuable than pumping yet more energy in a particle accelerator and other of mankind's pet projects in search for the unknown unknowns and deal with more pressing known knowns first.
We did not - going to a website nowadays is akin to booting your grandma’s windows 95 PC - popups everywhere, banzai buddy, 20 toolbars, just utterly virus laden filth. The web is a place that used to have amazing views but it’s now only filled with billboards. Someday a new set of internets will come up and they’ll be good - it’s not expensive to make things good, it just needs to not be borne of utter libertarian zero-social-contract profit seeking.
Hell, I was shopping for furniture yesterday, and I swear all the popups even with ad blockers were there to prevent me from buying things. It doesn’t seem to be helpful for the stated goal.
Well, ever since the ads i see on iPhone Safari are utterly irrelevant bullshit because tracking there is crippled. Was 1996 88x31 banners world that just advertised random stuff, better than what we have today? They gave websites less money taking more space and annoyed users more.
My opinion (probably an unpopular one) is that tracking for advertising is merely the excuse to surveil people. I don't think all the advertising revenue that is purported to be used stacks up. I get that this is Google's business, but perhaps a large amount of their 'business' is actually from the government system (directly or indirectly) - they merely have to pretend to be running an advertising business.
I'm saying that the whole point of advertising was surveillance from the beginning.
Blog got the hug of death, I think. Archive link: https://archive.is/bpNAw
This is all well and good but as long as advertising is how folks make money on the web, the surveillance state will persist.
They'll still surveil even if you pay for the product. Why wouldn't they? It's an additional income stream.
> Why wouldn't they? It's an additional income stream.
If customers cared, the additional income from being someone who didn't surveil could outstrip the income stream from surveilling.
Advertising doesn't require surveillance though.
At least the solution is obvious, even if the path to an ad-free web is not. And it's a solution that also has the advantage of being a solid public good.
The free internet of the workers and peasants? I mean, how will the websites make money?
maybe we're better off without websites that only exist to make money.
Mass surveillance has been the only thing where capitalists and communists wholeheartedly agreed to go all in. It has been pushed into law at every opportunity, done in grey areas when possible, and secretly when illegal.
It's evident proof that information is power.
Whenever I read your articles, I get distracted by the space invaders and just play that instead. Maybe this is a problem with me being a bit ADHD, but I feel like I am not the only one
I just played for a couple of minutes and didn't even finish the article. Also suffering from ADHD but in my defense space invaders is pretty good with mouse controls.
Also played the game, but I'm just easily entertained, prone to procrastination given the chance... and kind of lazy sometimes.
If the author had something important to say, that really undermines it.
Play and read simultaneously. Its nice.
Are you guys 12
"When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." - C.S. Lewis
"If we let ourselves, we will always be waiting for distractions to end before we can get down to work"
- C.S. Lewis
famously, once you age past 12, you are no longer allowed to find anything fun.
> me being a bit ADHD
Wait, what article?
that was my experience too!
When Apple first released App Tracking Transparency, I immediately used it to block the trackers and I have not even thought about it since because it is so simple and useful.
What a contrast to modern websites which require all sorts of weird clicking gymnastics to disable similar tracking.
Its amusing that Apple itself is one of the biggest ad companies that exists, fed entirely from their own users private data. Yet by simply pointing the finger away from themselves and helping their customers block other ad companies efforts, they seem to have gained complete trust of all their users and most dont even know how much Apple are making in ad revenue from their own data.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/11/14/apples-4b-ad-busi...
Yes, that is very true. Unfortunately, without a true non-Apple or non-Google OS, the ATT toggle is likely about as good as you can get. And it does stop the apps themselves getting raw access to your data, which is not something to sniff at.
I trust Apple with my private data. I don't trust Google with it, and I don't trust Joe Blow's Sketchy Ass Apps & Ads Service with it. Simple as.
Exactly. Amusing indeed.
In my case firefox + arkenfox + ublock origin advanced mode require all sorts of weird clicking to enable similar tracking :)
Ironically Google couldn't disable third-party cookies even if they wanted to; it's seen as anti-competitive to other tracking networks and was blocked by the courts.
Really? Do you have a link? That sounds very interesting and very frustrating.
Regardless, because of such things I'm guessing the only ways to disable such tracking in the foreseeable future will still be 3rd party non-affiliated DNS/extensions or browsers such as Brave and Safari (to some extent).
We should pass laws that require the weird clicking gymnastics to opt-in to tracking.
Instead of the default opt-in hidden in the terms and conditions nobody reads.
The EU did that and people still bitch about GDPR banners on websites.
GDPR didnt do it, lazy site owners that didnt want to read the legislation did.
Most sites dont even need those popups, but its easier to just shove one on your site than try to understand the specific situations which do need it.
They took what should have been a browser on/off switch and turned it into something almost worse.
Sorry to nitpick but tracking and surveillance are not the same thing. Go back to the last century for a second, before all this 21st-century tech came along. Just because your cell phone and towers would be able to track what rough region (let's call it "site") you were visiting, that doesn't mean they were surveilling you.
Surveillance implies things about bith intended usage and actual usage, etc. that -- simply put -- do not need to hold when you're tracking something. If the argument is genuinely that cookies have genuinely been used to place us under surveillance rather than mere tracking -- I have nothing inherently against it, but you need to support it with evidence. Simply pointing to the fact that they track some fact or metric that indirectly relates to you is not sufficient evidence of that.
And to be clear, I'm not saying I like tracking or we should be fine with it. I hate it too. But it's also a turnoff seeing people smearing one thing as another, and I don't think it's a great strategy to help win support for your cause.
The difference is the intention. A corporation maybe tracking. The same data, once given to the governance surveillance teams, is then used to surveil. Same info and mechanisms.
WHATWG wants to co-mingle document rendering with javascript (this is the real reason they are removing XSLT and not proposing a replacement, it skirts this enforcement) so that when you try to disable javascript or block tracking it breaks the document rendering, leaving the only option to leave Javascript enabled and ad blockers off. Other protocols gemini, gopher etc don’t have the same issues because they’re already excluding Javascript.
What is really needed is a hard fork of major browsers by a grass roots community to advance HTML standards to include partial template rendering solutions without the reliance on Javascript.
Of course this is a startup forum so the response is just going to be wittled down to observations about economic value. However if users start to change/fight then the economics will too.
It wouldn't be that weird a thought for me that, preferably a group of, nation states cough up some serious money and give this a real start, beginning, and end in the form of a stable release. This already happens with major science and space projects, with budgets of billions. A browser is not simply a bunch'a software, having a modular open browser is a major deal and benefit to society at this point. Perhaps arguably more valuable than pumping yet more energy in a particle accelerator and other of mankind's pet projects in search for the unknown unknowns and deal with more pressing known knowns first.
> preferably a group of, nation states cough up some serious money and give this a real start, beginning, and end in the form of a stable release
It doesn't take serious money. It takes a constant stream of "sub-serious" money, stable for a long time.
A large city could pay for that project. It doesn't take a group of stations, what it takes is non-standard politics.
Page does not load in Safari and Chrome for various reasons
> and Chrome
Works fine here Version 147.0.7727.101 (Official Build) (64-bit) (.102 is the Mac version)
Edit: Based on a comment below, you may have cookies disabled.
The government is going to surveil. That's not going to change.
It's whether or not warrantless searches are admissible; and they generally arent.
There's also the issues of geo-fenced warrants and the FISA courts in the U.S.
Warrant processes and issuance should not be secret nor generic enough to allow for "blanket" hoovering of Personally Identifiable Information.
We did not - going to a website nowadays is akin to booting your grandma’s windows 95 PC - popups everywhere, banzai buddy, 20 toolbars, just utterly virus laden filth. The web is a place that used to have amazing views but it’s now only filled with billboards. Someday a new set of internets will come up and they’ll be good - it’s not expensive to make things good, it just needs to not be borne of utter libertarian zero-social-contract profit seeking.
Hell, I was shopping for furniture yesterday, and I swear all the popups even with ad blockers were there to prevent me from buying things. It doesn’t seem to be helpful for the stated goal.
The irony of using AI to generate an article on this topic...
More irony: with cookies disabled the article gets stuck in a continuous reload loop.
I agree. Was annoyed by it.
Well, ever since the ads i see on iPhone Safari are utterly irrelevant bullshit because tracking there is crippled. Was 1996 88x31 banners world that just advertised random stuff, better than what we have today? They gave websites less money taking more space and annoyed users more.