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I think the GDPR is a good opportunity to reflect how much tracking we really need. Tracking has become so ubiquitous, it's become the default to put Google An

I think the GDPR is a good opportunity to reflect how much tracking we really need. Tracking has become so ubiquitous, it's become the default to put Google Analytics on a site, to put a tracking pixel into every email, to personalize every link we send out... But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary. I've stopped tracking website visitors and stopped including tracking pixels in emails a few years ago, and nothing has really changed. So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. But who cares? I wouldn't even know what to do with the information anyway. I'd rather focus on making my product better.

tom_mellior 7y ago
> So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. You didn't know before either since many mail programs block tracking pixels. This was always garbage data to a large extent.
- arielm 7y ago
  Gmail doesn’t (kind of), and that’s a big enough slice of email users these days...
  - rypskar 7y ago
    Doesn't gmail load images when the email get to the server and not when the email is opened? (That is at least what some who know more about email than I do say) So the only thing tracking pixel really have shown is if the user uses gmail or not
    - iamacyborg 7y ago
      Nope, the image loads when the email is opened by the unique recipient.
  - martin_a 7y ago
    Only for the US market, outside of that there are lots of mail providers which are instead used. GMail addresses are a scarcity in Europe.
arielm 7y ago
Just because you don’t know what to do with the information doesn’t mean we all don’t. Analytics provide great insight and enable optimization that companies who are serious need to actively engage in to grow and succeed. Dismissing analytics is like saying you don’t need a debugger. Just put log statements all over the place... (or, write classic ASP :))
tiborsaas 7y ago
> But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary. I've just launched my e-commerce platform and I see 34 unique visitors and no sales. Analytics is key to figure out if something is wrong and I'm not talking about the code. > I'd rather focus on making my product better. How do you make it better? Having numbers without analyzing user engagement is shooting in the dark with a shotgun.
- martin_a 7y ago
  > How do you make it better? How about asking? What about some live chat to gather information? We have found this to be highly valuable for our shop(s). It automatically pops up after 30 seconds on a product page, on other pages the badge is always present. Lot of good chats, lots of "I'm looking for XY"-feedback that helped us improve.
  - tiborsaas 7y ago
    They are not substitutes. It's one thing what users say they do or want and another what they actually do.
- iamacyborg 7y ago
  Do you need to know that they were 34 unique visitors or would properly anonymised data be enough? I suspect it would be. The GDPR doesn't say you can't have analytics, but it quite rightly tries to prevent the kind of tracking you're talking about without explicit consent from the user being tracked.
  - tiborsaas 7y ago
    Yes, properly anonymised data would be enough. I'm not talking about anything intrusive. I don't care who they are, I care about how they use my product. That can be done in a GDPR complaint way.
    - criddell 7y ago
      That's a good point and not one that is expressed often enough. Usage data and user data aren't the same thing.
navigatesol 7y ago
>So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. But who cares? I wouldn't even know what to do with the information anyway. So you were tracking people without even needing the information? Why? >I'd rather focus on making my product better. Yeah, analytics are useless for that. Use your gut! Everyone knows that's better than using data.
buboard 7y ago
GDPR wants 0 tracking. That's wrong too, the internet can't work that way, even governments can't work that way. EU wants advertising to go back to the popup / animated gifs & flash / interstitial era to maximize clickthroughs in the off-chance one of them is actually interested in your ads. That's regression
- martin_a 7y ago
  > GDPR wants 0 tracking. That's wrong too, the internet can't work that way, even governments can't work that way. How did it work like that all the time? It can work perfectly without all the tracking. Tracking is just so omni-present that some people can not imagine a world without it. > EU wants advertising to go back to the popup / animated gifs & flash / interstitial era to maximize clickthroughs in the off-chance one of them is actually interested in your ads. That's regression Actually that would be a great regression! I'd soooo love to have static images delivered to me again, instead of some JS bullshit which is tracking me all over the web. Let's just kill all the ad networks over night. It will be a great time and we have a second chance to make the internet a great place.
- DanBC 7y ago
  > GDPR wants 0 tracking That's wrong. You're allowed to track users. You just need a legal basis to do so.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  GDPR wants 0 tracking without explicit, informed consent. That's the key thing in this regulation: informed consent. Dealing with people fairly. > EU wants advertising to go back to the popup / animated gifs & flash / interstitial era to maximize clickthroughs in the off-chance one of them is actually interested in your ads. Not true, unfortunately. EU wants the ads to not track people without their explicit, informed consent. GDPR isn't an anti-advertising law, it's a data protection law (says so literally in the name). > That's regression No. That's remission.
  - buboard 7y ago
    - users could always install an adblocker if they dont consent. - users could consent once for each tracker if thats what the law cared for. Consenting for each tracker x for each website is purposeful obstruction in order to make advertising optional
nickjj 7y ago
> But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary. The problem with Google Analytics and tracking is it's hard to tell what the motive is for putting it onto your site from the visitor's POV. Not everyone who uses GA is using it for evil purposes. They use it because GA makes it easy to gain useful business metrics, such as 100 people visited this page, 30 people filled out the account form, 5 people completed the checkout. Now you have a way to measure how good or bad your checkout flow is working and implementing this took almost no work at all. Rigging up your own DB model and tracking this stuff locally is a huge burden (especially if you account for bot traffic). GA is also really useful to track referring URLs (with UTMs) because if you use these links from Youtube videos or blog posts, suddenly you can see exactly which posts are doing well. And "doing well" isn't just being more profitable if you're selling something. It helps you know what to write about or make videos on because this is what people want. At the very least it's also good for just answering "am I growing?" where you look at unique visitors on a monthly basis and hope to see your chart moving up per month. I just see it as a pragmatic tool to help you measure things. It's unfortunate it can also be used in other more malicious ways.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  From the POV of someone who's both just a visitor on most sites and used GA himself: GA is often used for evil purposes, and as a tool it's optimized to enable and support evil purposes. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume, in absence of evidence to the contrary, that the site that loads it uses it for evil purposes. Does it inconvenience honest people who'd like to use those tools for honest purposes? Sure. But think of it this way: it would be much more convenient for me if I could just give a merchant or service provider my on-line banking login and password, so they could take care of billing me directly. Would I ever do this if asked? No fucking way (even ignoring that my bank would consider it a TOS violation). Problem is, there's no good way to signal honest intentions between parties that aren't already in a long-term relationship (and no, "we only use cookies to improve your experience" doesn't count; in fact, it's an anti-signal; thank marketers for that). So the only option for honest people is to not do the same things evil people would do.

tom_mellior 7y ago

> So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. You didn't know before either since many mail programs block tracking pixels. This was always garbage data to a large extent.

arielm 7y ago
Gmail doesn’t (kind of), and that’s a big enough slice of email users these days...
- rypskar 7y ago
  Doesn't gmail load images when the email get to the server and not when the email is opened? (That is at least what some who know more about email than I do say) So the only thing tracking pixel really have shown is if the user uses gmail or not
  - iamacyborg 7y ago
    Nope, the image loads when the email is opened by the unique recipient.
- martin_a 7y ago
  Only for the US market, outside of that there are lots of mail providers which are instead used. GMail addresses are a scarcity in Europe.

arielm 7y ago

Just because you don’t know what to do with the information doesn’t mean we all don’t. Analytics provide great insight and enable optimization that companies who are serious need to actively engage in to grow and succeed. Dismissing analytics is like saying you don’t need a debugger. Just put log statements all over the place... (or, write classic ASP :))

tiborsaas 7y ago

> But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary. I've just launched my e-commerce platform and I see 34 unique visitors and no sales. Analytics is key to figure out if something is wrong and I'm not talking about the code. > I'd rather focus on making my product better. How do you make it better? Having numbers without analyzing user engagement is shooting in the dark with a shotgun.

martin_a 7y ago
> How do you make it better? How about asking? What about some live chat to gather information? We have found this to be highly valuable for our shop(s). It automatically pops up after 30 seconds on a product page, on other pages the badge is always present. Lot of good chats, lots of "I'm looking for XY"-feedback that helped us improve.
- tiborsaas 7y ago
  They are not substitutes. It's one thing what users say they do or want and another what they actually do.
iamacyborg 7y ago
Do you need to know that they were 34 unique visitors or would properly anonymised data be enough? I suspect it would be. The GDPR doesn't say you can't have analytics, but it quite rightly tries to prevent the kind of tracking you're talking about without explicit consent from the user being tracked.
- tiborsaas 7y ago
  Yes, properly anonymised data would be enough. I'm not talking about anything intrusive. I don't care who they are, I care about how they use my product. That can be done in a GDPR complaint way.
  - criddell 7y ago
    That's a good point and not one that is expressed often enough. Usage data and user data aren't the same thing.

navigatesol 7y ago

>So, I guess I won't know if 10% open my marketing emails or 50%. But who cares? I wouldn't even know what to do with the information anyway. So you were tracking people without even needing the information? Why? >I'd rather focus on making my product better. Yeah, analytics are useless for that. Use your gut! Everyone knows that's better than using data.

buboard 7y ago

GDPR wants 0 tracking. That's wrong too, the internet can't work that way, even governments can't work that way. EU wants advertising to go back to the popup / animated gifs & flash / interstitial era to maximize clickthroughs in the off-chance one of them is actually interested in your ads. That's regression

martin_a 7y ago
> GDPR wants 0 tracking. That's wrong too, the internet can't work that way, even governments can't work that way. How did it work like that all the time? It can work perfectly without all the tracking. Tracking is just so omni-present that some people can not imagine a world without it. > EU wants advertising to go back to the popup / animated gifs & flash / interstitial era to maximize clickthroughs in the off-chance one of them is actually interested in your ads. That's regression Actually that would be a great regression! I'd soooo love to have static images delivered to me again, instead of some JS bullshit which is tracking me all over the web. Let's just kill all the ad networks over night. It will be a great time and we have a second chance to make the internet a great place.
DanBC 7y ago
> GDPR wants 0 tracking That's wrong. You're allowed to track users. You just need a legal basis to do so.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
GDPR wants 0 tracking without explicit, informed consent. That's the key thing in this regulation: informed consent. Dealing with people fairly. > EU wants advertising to go back to the popup / animated gifs & flash / interstitial era to maximize clickthroughs in the off-chance one of them is actually interested in your ads. Not true, unfortunately. EU wants the ads to not track people without their explicit, informed consent. GDPR isn't an anti-advertising law, it's a data protection law (says so literally in the name). > That's regression No. That's remission.
- buboard 7y ago
  - users could always install an adblocker if they dont consent. - users could consent once for each tracker if thats what the law cared for. Consenting for each tracker x for each website is purposeful obstruction in order to make advertising optional

nickjj 7y ago

> But so much of that tracking isn't really necessary. The problem with Google Analytics and tracking is it's hard to tell what the motive is for putting it onto your site from the visitor's POV. Not everyone who uses GA is using it for evil purposes. They use it because GA makes it easy to gain useful business metrics, such as 100 people visited this page, 30 people filled out the account form, 5 people completed the checkout. Now you have a way to measure how good or bad your checkout flow is working and implementing this took almost no work at all. Rigging up your own DB model and tracking this stuff locally is a huge burden (especially if you account for bot traffic). GA is also really useful to track referring URLs (with UTMs) because if you use these links from Youtube videos or blog posts, suddenly you can see exactly which posts are doing well. And "doing well" isn't just being more profitable if you're selling something. It helps you know what to write about or make videos on because this is what people want. At the very least it's also good for just answering "am I growing?" where you look at unique visitors on a monthly basis and hope to see your chart moving up per month. I just see it as a pragmatic tool to help you measure things. It's unfortunate it can also be used in other more malicious ways.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
From the POV of someone who's both just a visitor on most sites and used GA himself: GA is often used for evil purposes, and as a tool it's optimized to enable and support evil purposes. Therefore, it's reasonable to assume, in absence of evidence to the contrary, that the site that loads it uses it for evil purposes. Does it inconvenience honest people who'd like to use those tools for honest purposes? Sure. But think of it this way: it would be much more convenient for me if I could just give a merchant or service provider my on-line banking login and password, so they could take care of billing me directly. Would I ever do this if asked? No fucking way (even ignoring that my bank would consider it a TOS violation). Problem is, there's no good way to signal honest intentions between parties that aren't already in a long-term relationship (and no, "we only use cookies to improve your experience" doesn't count; in fact, it's an anti-signal; thank marketers for that). So the only option for honest people is to not do the same things evil people would do.