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> NYT needs to know how long you spent, on which articles, etc. They need data to produce the product and you can only achieve that with javascript tracking pix

> NYT needs to know how long you spent, on which articles, etc. They need data to produce the product and you can only achieve that with javascript tracking pixels (Server logs aren't good enough). No they don't. They really don't need to know any of that. They don't even get a pass on tracking because they're providing a free whatever - I pay for a subscription to the NYT. The business, or a meaningfully substantial core of it, is viable without tracking. It would be nice if the things I pay for didn't start stuffing their content with bullshit. What and who do I have to pay to get single second page loads? It's not a given that advertising has to be so bloated and privacy-invasive. Various podcasts and blogs (like Daring Fireball) plug the same ad to their entire audience each post/episode for set periods of time. If you're going to cry about needing advertising then take your geographic and demographic based targeting. But no war of attrition will get me to concede you need user-by-user tracking. You want me to pay for your content? Fine, I like it well enough. You want to present ads as well? Okay sure, the writing and perspectives are worth that too I suppose. But in addition to all of this you want to track my behavior and correlate it to my online activity that has nothing to do with your content? No, that's ridiculous.

koolba 8y ago
Interestingly if you pay them, and thus are logged in when you view an article, then they can better track you. In contrast if you never sign up, disable JS, and periodically clear your cookies, then the entire site works fine and none of the third party trackers work. At best they can link your browser user agent and IP to a hit on the server side.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
closeparen 8y ago
NYT needs to produce and recommend content that people find engaging to continue earning their subscription dollars. The idea that tracking is purely or primarily there to support a business model of selling user data is a strawman invented by self-righteous HNers. You need to know what parts of your product are effective to make it competitive in today’s marketplace.
- bumholio 8y ago
  90% of that can be accomplished with server-side stats. Do you really need to track mouse movements and follow readers with super-cookies across the web to find out what articles people find engaging on your site? > The idea that tracking is purely or primarily there to support a business model of selling user data Purely, no. Primarily? You can bet your sweet ass.
  - chickenfries 8y ago
    I agree in general but there are some things which I don’t see going away any time soon that publishers need. Online advertisers want to know that their ads are being viewed by a human and not a bot, and that they were on screen for long enough and that the user didn’t just scroll past. Publishers want to know how far down you make it in their article, so they know where to put the ads in the body of the article.
- throwawaymath 8y ago
  I'm not accusing anyone of selling my data and I'm not trying to champion a crusade against the entire advertising industry. I'm asserting that the NYT can achieve the substantial majority of the advertising optimization and targeting it needs to do to be profitable 1) without doing user-specific tracking and 2) without making page loads extremely slow. Like I said, serve me an ad. I'm not an idealist, I understand why advertising exists. But don't justify collecting data about which articles I read to serve to some inscrutable network of advertisers by saying that it has to be this way. We don't need this version of advertising.
  - themacguffinman 8y ago
    > I'm asserting that the NYT can achieve the substantial majority of the advertising optimization and targeting it needs to do to be profitable Majority, not all. Why should they leave money on the table, exactly?
    - throwawaymath 8y ago
soared 8y ago
Except that the content is directly related to user behavior. If they see no one reads the style section, they'll cut it and move resources to financial news. If they didn't have tracking they'd never know that, be wasting resources and having a comparatively inferior product. They can't do UX anaylsis, nothing.
- zajd 8y ago
  You can do all of those analytics server side, there's no reason to deliver it via JS and have the client do the computation. You're already sending all the required info to track that sort of thing via the request itself.
  - smolder 8y ago
    It's amazing to me that no one out there seems to do server-local handling of ads, either... If you put ads directly into your page instead of relying on burdensome external systems, suddenly blocking isn't a thing anymore. ALL of the functionality supposedly needed for analytics and an ad-driven business model can happen server side, without the page becoming sentient and loading a billion scripts and scattered resources, with the one exception being filtering out headless browsers. If external systems need to be communicated with, most of that can happen before or after the fact of that page load. Advertising and analytics is implemented in the most lazy, user hostile way possible on the majority of sites.
    - zajd 8y ago
      It's because they use systems that identify the client via js to deliver the most "expensive" ad possible. It's complete garbage of course, Google/Facebook should be held liable for what they advertise, not run massive automated systems full of fraud. If Google delivers malware they shouldn't be able to throw their hands up and go "well, section 230!".
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      The way it's implemented has several "benefits": - It externalizes resource usage - the waste happens on users' machines. Who cares that it adds up to meaningful electricity consumption anyway? - It makes it easier for marketing people and developers to independently work on the site. Developers can optimize, marketers can waste all that effort by including yet another third-party JS. - It supports ad auctions and other services in the whole adtech economy. - You don't have to do much analytics yourself, as the third party provides cute graphs ideal for presenting to management.
notheguyouthink 8y ago
> No they don't. They really don't need to know any of that. They don't even get a pass on tracking because they're providing a free whatever - I pay for a subscription to the NYT. The business, or a meaningfully substantial core of it, is viable without tracking. Clearly they disagree. Or maybe you should let them know that they don't need that. To say it without sarcasm, what you feel you are entitled as a paying customer and what they feel they need/want to understand their customers are clearly at odds. Ultimately, what you think matters nothing in isolation and what they think matters nothing in isolation. What you two agree upon, is the only thing that matters. That is to say, if you think they shouldn't track you but you use their tracking product anyway, you've compromised and agreed to new terms. I imagine you could come up with a subscription that would adequately compensate them for a truly no tracking experience. But I doubt you two would agree on a price to pay for said UX.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > What you two agree upon, is the only thing that matters. That's precisely why many of us use (and promote the use of) adblockers and filtering extensions.
- wuliwong 8y ago
  Why is that doubtful? There's all kinds of examples of tiered subscriptions in the world. I think it would be doubtful because the NYT wouldn't want to explicitly admit all the tracking they are doing.
  - notheguyouthink 8y ago
    > Why is that doubtful? There's all kinds of examples of tiered subscriptions in the world. I think it would be doubtful because the NYT wouldn't want to explicitly admit all the tracking they are doing. Many reasons, one of which you said. What would the price tag be for them to admit all they are tracking?
    - DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
      Currently the price is free, and comes bundled with uMatrix, and a cookie flush. I’d like to pay the NYT for their journalism, but only with money, not the ability to track me. As a result they get no money, and no tracking.
excalibur 8y ago
I need to like this comment more than my single upvote allows.
confounded 8y ago
Reading without cookies or JavaScript enables seems to fix every problem the NYT has.
reitanqild 8y ago
FWIW: ars technica turns off tracking for paying customers (and provide full articles in the rss feed if you pay for it.)

koolba 8y ago

Interestingly if you pay them, and thus are logged in when you view an article, then they can better track you. In contrast if you never sign up, disable JS, and periodically clear your cookies, then the entire site works fine and none of the third party trackers work. At best they can link your browser user agent and IP to a hit on the server side.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

closeparen 8y ago

NYT needs to produce and recommend content that people find engaging to continue earning their subscription dollars. The idea that tracking is purely or primarily there to support a business model of selling user data is a strawman invented by self-righteous HNers. You need to know what parts of your product are effective to make it competitive in today’s marketplace.

bumholio 8y ago
90% of that can be accomplished with server-side stats. Do you really need to track mouse movements and follow readers with super-cookies across the web to find out what articles people find engaging on your site? > The idea that tracking is purely or primarily there to support a business model of selling user data Purely, no. Primarily? You can bet your sweet ass.
- chickenfries 8y ago
  I agree in general but there are some things which I don’t see going away any time soon that publishers need. Online advertisers want to know that their ads are being viewed by a human and not a bot, and that they were on screen for long enough and that the user didn’t just scroll past. Publishers want to know how far down you make it in their article, so they know where to put the ads in the body of the article.
throwawaymath 8y ago
I'm not accusing anyone of selling my data and I'm not trying to champion a crusade against the entire advertising industry. I'm asserting that the NYT can achieve the substantial majority of the advertising optimization and targeting it needs to do to be profitable 1) without doing user-specific tracking and 2) without making page loads extremely slow. Like I said, serve me an ad. I'm not an idealist, I understand why advertising exists. But don't justify collecting data about which articles I read to serve to some inscrutable network of advertisers by saying that it has to be this way. We don't need this version of advertising.
- themacguffinman 8y ago
  > I'm asserting that the NYT can achieve the substantial majority of the advertising optimization and targeting it needs to do to be profitable Majority, not all. Why should they leave money on the table, exactly?
  - throwawaymath 8y ago

soared 8y ago

Except that the content is directly related to user behavior. If they see no one reads the style section, they'll cut it and move resources to financial news. If they didn't have tracking they'd never know that, be wasting resources and having a comparatively inferior product. They can't do UX anaylsis, nothing.

zajd 8y ago
You can do all of those analytics server side, there's no reason to deliver it via JS and have the client do the computation. You're already sending all the required info to track that sort of thing via the request itself.
- smolder 8y ago
  It's amazing to me that no one out there seems to do server-local handling of ads, either... If you put ads directly into your page instead of relying on burdensome external systems, suddenly blocking isn't a thing anymore. ALL of the functionality supposedly needed for analytics and an ad-driven business model can happen server side, without the page becoming sentient and loading a billion scripts and scattered resources, with the one exception being filtering out headless browsers. If external systems need to be communicated with, most of that can happen before or after the fact of that page load. Advertising and analytics is implemented in the most lazy, user hostile way possible on the majority of sites.
  - zajd 8y ago
    It's because they use systems that identify the client via js to deliver the most "expensive" ad possible. It's complete garbage of course, Google/Facebook should be held liable for what they advertise, not run massive automated systems full of fraud. If Google delivers malware they shouldn't be able to throw their hands up and go "well, section 230!".
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    The way it's implemented has several "benefits": - It externalizes resource usage - the waste happens on users' machines. Who cares that it adds up to meaningful electricity consumption anyway? - It makes it easier for marketing people and developers to independently work on the site. Developers can optimize, marketers can waste all that effort by including yet another third-party JS. - It supports ad auctions and other services in the whole adtech economy. - You don't have to do much analytics yourself, as the third party provides cute graphs ideal for presenting to management.

notheguyouthink 8y ago

> No they don't. They really don't need to know any of that. They don't even get a pass on tracking because they're providing a free whatever - I pay for a subscription to the NYT. The business, or a meaningfully substantial core of it, is viable without tracking. Clearly they disagree. Or maybe you should let them know that they don't need that. To say it without sarcasm, what you feel you are entitled as a paying customer and what they feel they need/want to understand their customers are clearly at odds. Ultimately, what you think matters nothing in isolation and what they think matters nothing in isolation. What you two agree upon, is the only thing that matters. That is to say, if you think they shouldn't track you but you use their tracking product anyway, you've compromised and agreed to new terms. I imagine you could come up with a subscription that would adequately compensate them for a truly no tracking experience. But I doubt you two would agree on a price to pay for said UX.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> What you two agree upon, is the only thing that matters. That's precisely why many of us use (and promote the use of) adblockers and filtering extensions.
wuliwong 8y ago
Why is that doubtful? There's all kinds of examples of tiered subscriptions in the world. I think it would be doubtful because the NYT wouldn't want to explicitly admit all the tracking they are doing.
- notheguyouthink 8y ago
  > Why is that doubtful? There's all kinds of examples of tiered subscriptions in the world. I think it would be doubtful because the NYT wouldn't want to explicitly admit all the tracking they are doing. Many reasons, one of which you said. What would the price tag be for them to admit all they are tracking?
  - DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
    Currently the price is free, and comes bundled with uMatrix, and a cookie flush. I’d like to pay the NYT for their journalism, but only with money, not the ability to track me. As a result they get no money, and no tracking.

excalibur 8y ago

I need to like this comment more than my single upvote allows.

confounded 8y ago

Reading without cookies or JavaScript enables seems to fix every problem the NYT has.

reitanqild 8y ago

FWIW: ars technica turns off tracking for paying customers (and provide full articles in the rss feed if you pay for it.)