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Usually I think stratechery is spot on. But though I agree with a lot of points and it ends on a great note, I have some strong disagreements in this one! (1)
by bo1024 7y ago
Usually I think stratechery is spot on. But though I agree with a lot of points and it ends on a great note, I have some strong disagreements in this one!
(1) Anything loaded from a third party is potentially a tracker until proven otherwise. If you load Google Analytics, Google gets pinged some information about every visitor. Typekit definitely collects tracking data, although they claim it is anonymized and not identifiable. I believe same goes for New Relic, and both share (or sell?) aggregate user data to other parties as far as I know. Etc.
(2) A beneficial outcome from Apple's stance and the privacy debate would be self-hosted analytics and login-type services that don't connect to any third parties. A site like stratchery could pay for a license to use this software, but host it on their own servers, and have a strong privacy policy around what data is recorded/shared.
- skybrian 7y agoThe response to (2) is likely to be more proxying of requests. Websites will still want to outsource and they can send data server-side, via rpc. The current way of doing things via client-side requests is transparent to any web developer who can use the network panel in a debugger, though not to end users. Do it all server-side and nobody will be able to see what's going on. It will be more like how credit card data is shared.
- bo1024 7y agoThat's a good point that it could decrease transparency in practice (of course in theory sites can already do server-side data sharing now). But it's beneficial if we have strong enough requirements for disclosing / privacy policies. It makes the website directly responsible since they're handling the data.