3 ms·

If you're willing to block JS, you can also trivially run an extension that strips all `ping` attributes from the page. And without JS you don't have to worry a

If you're willing to block JS, you can also trivially run an extension that strips all `ping` attributes from the page. And without JS you don't have to worry about the attributes being added back after the stripping. > Developer friction can add up -- if tracking is universally more complicated than writing normal code, more developers will do the "right" thing purely by virtue of laziness. Developers don't add ping attributes because it's easy. They add them because they're required to for analytics reasons. They will do this no matter what, so what we want to optimize for here is the user experience. You say that users will naturally migrate to sites that don't have the bad UX inherent in javascript-based or redirect-based link tracking, but experience shows that's not true. Some of the most popular sites on the planet do this and users haven't been driven away.

danShumway 8y ago
I'm not here to argue which of these reasons are correct; I'm only here to explain some of the arguments that exist. That being said, > If you're willing to block JS, you can also trivially run an extension that strips all `ping` attributes. Sure. Ublock Origin already does this today at the request level, so you don't even need to worry about pages re-adding the attributes. But we could just as easily use this argument to get rid of every privacy-protecting decision in the browser. Why should Firefox care about Canvas fingerprinting if an extension can block it instead? For better or worse (some would argue worse) browsers have been slowly pulling privacy/tracking improvements from extensions into their core. I don't think they're close enough to a full solution that anyone should skip extensions like Ublock Origin or UMatrix, but I don't fault them for trying. > Developers don't add ping attributes because it's easy. Like you correctly mentioned above, ping attributes are trivial to block. If a developer is being forced to implement tracking, even with ping attributes available more broadly, they're still gonna use an additional method that gets through the most widely used ad blockers on the market -- and that means Javascript click events. Force-enabling the ping attribute will not change a single thing about that developer's approach. The only developers who are going to be influenced by this change are hobbyists and engineers for small-time businesses that don't already have a massive analytics concern. I think it's reasonable to focus on its impact to them. > You say that users will naturally migrate to sites that don't have the bad UX... but experience shows that's not true. Don't be too pessimistic, loading speed is one of the primary reasons why the average person installs an adblocker to begin with. It is very hard to get people to care about privacy, but lots of people are still installing ad blockers purely because they improve the UX experience. That's a success story. Of course, 100 milliseconds on its own is not going to make someone abandon a site. But when you make a lot of tiny compromises, they add up to big ones. And as of 2018, Google is still publishing statistics that say a 3 second load time will lose you 53% of your potential visitors.[0] I know it seems like users don't care about this, but there's a nontrivial amount of data that suggests they do. [0]: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-measurement/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-mea...
- eridius 8y ago
  > Sure. Ublock Origin already does this today at the request level, so you don't even need to worry about pages re-adding the attributes. But we could just as easily use this argument to get rid of every privacy-protecting decision in the browser. Why should Firefox care about Canvas fingerprinting if an extension can block it instead? I view browsers supporting ping as absolutely a privacy-protecting measure. As long as the browser can be relied-upon to support it, developers will use it instead of more invasive techniques, which means not only is it a better UX for the users, but the amount of information collected by each ping is a known quantity, and browsers can also do things like defer executing ping requests for battery reasons or to reduce the amount of timing information given to the recipient. I would have no objection to browsers disabling pings if JavaScript is also disabled at the browser level, but that's a fairly niche edge case and I don't have any strong opinions there (and of course even with JS disabled a site could still serve up a static page where all outbound links go through a redirect domain anyway; supporting pings by default even with JS disabled encourages developers to just always use it, and then the people who really care can run an extension to disable it). > Like you correctly mentioned above, ping attributes are trivial to block. If a developer is being forced to implement tracking, even with ping attributes available more broadly, they're still gonna use an additional method that gets through the most widely used ad blockers on the market -- and that means Javascript click events. Force-enabling the ping attribute will not change a single thing about that developer's approach. The more privacy-protecting measures browsers have by default, the less aggressive people will be about using third-party extensions to do the same thing. And given what I said above, it might be a good idea fo adblockers to allow pings by default and only disable them upon request. As you said, if ping isn't reliable developers will use something else, so the goal here is make ping reliable. If it's reliable, people will use it, and using ping is far better than the other techniques available. > Don't be too pessimistic, loading speed is one of the primary reasons why the average person installs an adblocker to begin with. It is very hard to get people to care about privacy, but lots of people are still installing ad blockers purely because they improve the UX experience. That's a success story. We're talking about delays clicking on outbound links though. If a big site adds 100ms to the loading time of outbound links, most users are going to blame the external site for that because they don't understand that the delay is being added before the request is made. This means that big sites can add outbound link tracking with very little penalty, and in fact the additional delay, if anything, is going to encourage users to stay on the site instead of visiting external sites.

danShumway 8y ago

I'm not here to argue which of these reasons are correct; I'm only here to explain some of the arguments that exist. That being said, > If you're willing to block JS, you can also trivially run an extension that strips all `ping` attributes. Sure. Ublock Origin already does this today at the request level, so you don't even need to worry about pages re-adding the attributes. But we could just as easily use this argument to get rid of every privacy-protecting decision in the browser. Why should Firefox care about Canvas fingerprinting if an extension can block it instead? For better or worse (some would argue worse) browsers have been slowly pulling privacy/tracking improvements from extensions into their core. I don't think they're close enough to a full solution that anyone should skip extensions like Ublock Origin or UMatrix, but I don't fault them for trying. > Developers don't add ping attributes because it's easy. Like you correctly mentioned above, ping attributes are trivial to block. If a developer is being forced to implement tracking, even with ping attributes available more broadly, they're still gonna use an additional method that gets through the most widely used ad blockers on the market -- and that means Javascript click events. Force-enabling the ping attribute will not change a single thing about that developer's approach. The only developers who are going to be influenced by this change are hobbyists and engineers for small-time businesses that don't already have a massive analytics concern. I think it's reasonable to focus on its impact to them. > You say that users will naturally migrate to sites that don't have the bad UX... but experience shows that's not true. Don't be too pessimistic, loading speed is one of the primary reasons why the average person installs an adblocker to begin with. It is very hard to get people to care about privacy, but lots of people are still installing ad blockers purely because they improve the UX experience. That's a success story. Of course, 100 milliseconds on its own is not going to make someone abandon a site. But when you make a lot of tiny compromises, they add up to big ones. And as of 2018, Google is still publishing statistics that say a 3 second load time will lose you 53% of your potential visitors.[0] I know it seems like users don't care about this, but there's a nontrivial amount of data that suggests they do. [0]: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-measurement/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/ https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-resources/data-mea...

eridius 8y ago
> Sure. Ublock Origin already does this today at the request level, so you don't even need to worry about pages re-adding the attributes. But we could just as easily use this argument to get rid of every privacy-protecting decision in the browser. Why should Firefox care about Canvas fingerprinting if an extension can block it instead? I view browsers supporting ping as absolutely a privacy-protecting measure. As long as the browser can be relied-upon to support it, developers will use it instead of more invasive techniques, which means not only is it a better UX for the users, but the amount of information collected by each ping is a known quantity, and browsers can also do things like defer executing ping requests for battery reasons or to reduce the amount of timing information given to the recipient. I would have no objection to browsers disabling pings if JavaScript is also disabled at the browser level, but that's a fairly niche edge case and I don't have any strong opinions there (and of course even with JS disabled a site could still serve up a static page where all outbound links go through a redirect domain anyway; supporting pings by default even with JS disabled encourages developers to just always use it, and then the people who really care can run an extension to disable it). > Like you correctly mentioned above, ping attributes are trivial to block. If a developer is being forced to implement tracking, even with ping attributes available more broadly, they're still gonna use an additional method that gets through the most widely used ad blockers on the market -- and that means Javascript click events. Force-enabling the ping attribute will not change a single thing about that developer's approach. The more privacy-protecting measures browsers have by default, the less aggressive people will be about using third-party extensions to do the same thing. And given what I said above, it might be a good idea fo adblockers to allow pings by default and only disable them upon request. As you said, if ping isn't reliable developers will use something else, so the goal here is make ping reliable. If it's reliable, people will use it, and using ping is far better than the other techniques available. > Don't be too pessimistic, loading speed is one of the primary reasons why the average person installs an adblocker to begin with. It is very hard to get people to care about privacy, but lots of people are still installing ad blockers purely because they improve the UX experience. That's a success story. We're talking about delays clicking on outbound links though. If a big site adds 100ms to the loading time of outbound links, most users are going to blame the external site for that because they don't understand that the delay is being added before the request is made. This means that big sites can add outbound link tracking with very little penalty, and in fact the additional delay, if anything, is going to encourage users to stay on the site instead of visiting external sites.