8 ms·

Cool, sounds great! I went to NextDNS website only to find out they run Google Analytics...

by cocochanel 7y ago

Krasnol 7y ago
Is it blocked if you use their DNS? ;)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Terretta 7y ago
  Yes
MrStonedOne 7y ago
What should they use? And don't say matomo until it supports drilling down byond one level.
- Kovah 7y ago
  In this particular case I find it very dishonest: they talk about net neutrality and privacy protection but use Google Analytics. It does not matter if GA or Matomo is the best solution, they made the decision to use GA and thus don't seem to value their customers data that much.
  - franga2000 7y ago
    What is it with this all-or-nothing attitude? GA provides objectively superior data and they probably get a lot of value from it, otherwise they wouldn't be using it - value which allows them to grow their business which ultimately benefits their users. (at least for me) Considering the value of their service, GA on their marketing page seems like a very small compromise. If you don't like it you are free to block it - hell, they literally provide a service to do so.
    - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
      What is it with this all-or-nothing attitude? Matomo is good enough.
      - franga2000 7y ago
        Depends on what you're looking for. Demographic data can be really important for a business and Matomo couldn't possibly provide that.
        pcmaffey 7y ago
        If you’re collecting and relying on demographic data than privacy probably isn’t very important to you.
        Nextgrid 7y ago
        What is demographic data and how is it collected?
        aratakareigen 7y ago
        The age, gender, etc. distributions of the people who visit your website. I don't know anything about GA, but I'm guessing they'd know this from the currently signed in Google account.
        Nextgrid 7y ago
        What if people don't want to volunteer this information?
        tripzilch 7y ago
        Where are you getting this demographic data? You don't get that from server logs. Sound like you're not arguing against Matomo but arguing that you really in fact do want to share data with a third party to extract information that your users very much did not consent to. It's terrifying what comes out of the wood works sometimes.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  They should not use anything. Or server logs, if they really must.
  - mrweasel 7y ago
    It seem like most people have forgotten that before Google Analytics, we all just looked at our server logs. Sure, you can't get the exact same information, but you can get enough to do capacity planning and some basic stats. I've started to wonder why people care about Google Analytics, what does it tell you that you actually need to know. Again capacity planning is useful, but other than that, isn't sort of pointless?
    - mr__y 7y ago
      >exact same information you could actually get more from plain old log parsing in some cases. First of all with GA you can't access the raw data. With logs you can create new type of stats/metrics/charts and apply them on past data. Also, IIRC GA uses random sampling - only a % of connections are recorded and the data being shown is extrapolated from those samples. While I'm not arguing that given the vast amount of data at disposal, huge capacity and great engineers they can make those extrapolations very accurate, I'm not entirely convinced it is precise for (very) small traffic websites. And since a small traffic logging requires both small storage space and small processing capacity the resources needed for keeping and processing your own logs are insignificant while the results might be useful.
    - duckworth 7y ago
      Some of the larger website builders/hosting , e.g. Wix don’t even give you access to server logs. Sure you can setup and run your own site and CMS easily enough, but running even hourly bulk log ingestion is usually not as straight forward and the information you can derive is very limited comparative to js based tracking. Matamo ( formerly Piwik) is decent but still takes some time to setup and get right. The main thing that the analytics tells you if you are promoting anything, is which of those promotions is actually working and driving visitors to your site.
- jamil7 7y ago
  Nothing? why do they need analytics?
  - ryanmercer 7y ago
    To see what content is popular, to see what countries users are coming from, to how long a given page is retaining a visitor... all of this lets a business know what they need to change/offer/stop to better serve their customers and attract more customers. I had a very niche ecommerce site for a couple of years, for ease I was only shipping to U.S. customers. I noticed that something like 20% of my traffic was coming from Canada so I decided to enable shipping to Canada but added a 5$ premium on top of the actual shipping cost. I had a sale to Canada the first hour of enabling it in my cart and Canada ended up being roughly 10% of my orders, even after I raised the premium/handling fee to 10$. Looking at my GA page once caused more money to be going into my pocket and filled a need for Canadian customers. I didn't need to learn a programming language or spend tens of hours trying to figure out, through articles, how to copy paste a bunch of code together to recreate something comparable.
    - Kovah 7y ago
      My question then would be, why do you need to use especially Google Analytics for that? Stats like "visitors per country" are a core feature of all major analytics suites. I set up analytics for many site on my job and I never experienced a use case where GA offered that specific feature no other software had.
      - ryanmercer 7y ago
        GA is free and takes seconds to set up. Not everyone knows how to code, not everyone is a professional web dev or CS ninja, not everyone has piles of VC money to throw at such things. GA works, is well organized, and is often integrated with a lot of cart/web builder services where you simply have to plug in a short string and pop over to the GA website. I needed a vegetable knife recently. I could have (and I do have the skills, and have made many knives over the past 25 years) purchased some appropriate steel and made one myself in 3-5 hours and had it incredibly sharp but I opted to buy a Mercer stainless steel one on Amazon for 20$~ because it required much less effort. I also couldn't care less about Google or the NSA or Lectroids from another dimension tracking me so I don't rush to go "I'd better cater to the small percentage of my potential customers that want to leave zero trace on the internet, there are countless tools out there they can use to minimize that trail of breadcrumbs. This data is usable to me and Google makes it easy" and I imagine, even the company in question was like "some people want privacy but those that are concerned can easily block this with a browser extension, in their hosts file, and/or at a hardware level so we'll go ahead and use it and save a bunch of time".
- CannoloBlahnik 7y ago
  I’d be using GoAccess if it meant not giving up my users to Google. Matomo is a dream.
- nulbyte 7y ago
  What do you mean drilling down beyond one level? I use Matomo and find it just as useful as Google Analytics. Actually, I like their interface better than Google's.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  Simple analytics? What would they even use the data for...
- class4behavior 7y ago
  There are plenty of alternative solutions: Piwik, GoatCounter, GoAccess, Open Web Analytics, clicky, Snowplow, Gauges, etc. The correct solution is to self-host all analytics involving data that can be used to identify, track, or analyze individuals.
  - mwexler 7y ago
    And none of these offer the ease of setup, ease of analysis, or ease of recognizing what actions to take that GA offers for $0 license and no hosting fees. These on the list are all admirable (esp. Snowplow) but all assume savvy users to be able to get things that are out-of-box with GA.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  > don't say matomo until it supports drilling down byond one level. everybody, this is what your privacy is worth to some people.
donohoe 7y ago
To be slightly reasonable on this, GA on their site is nothing in comparison to the larger surface they provide. It’s not all-or-nothing.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  Can you qualify that? In what sense is GA "nothing in comparison"? Because the other companies are less well-known? Because it's just one among 200 others? Even though it's owned by the largest adtech corp in the world? Or is it because you told yourself that Google will probably do "less bad things" with that same data, after you give your users data away, completely out of your control.
AlexandrB 7y ago
I love how in this thread about, ostensibly, why tracking is bad and trackers should be blocked people are arguing that using GA is ok because doing anything else is "too hard". Why can't this same argument be applied recursively to any of the trackers in the NYT tracking sphere? I'm sure it can, and I'm sure that's why loading a NYT page loads dozens of various third-party tracking scripts: because doing anything else would have been "too hard" for the NYT marketing & technology departments.
JohnFen 7y ago
> they run Google Analytics... That's seriously disappointing. While I block GA and it's commonly used, my opinion of a site/service falls a fair amount when I see they're using it.
tripzilch 7y ago
I'm not into the analytics business, but how does it come that, somehow, of all the major tech companies, it just happens to be Google to provide the one irreplaceable analytics service? In particular, how that apparently never worried anyone before they became the "seriously nothing else can scratch this itch" quality analytics?? Because I saw it happen and it worried me. Some people must remember, about a decade (!!) ago, that half-joking nervous realisation that there was a single corporation whose server-controlled javascript ran on 90% of all webpages. Or the part where you share all of your site's analytics with a third party you had no choice in? That wasn't even a thing before GA came around. What is Google Analytics doing that it can't be replaced by anything that's not quite as ruthless with your visitor's data? (I really want to ask "is it that hard?" but I'm gonna assume there's something hard about it that I'm not thinking of) Personally I'm afraid the reasons are dumb and shameful. I suppose Google Analytics is providing some additional details and data that it just happens to be unable to provide unless it tracks the everloving shit out of your visitors and accumulates this data on, say, Google servers. And people don't want to give that up, because weeeeell if it's spying on everybody and combining and keeping data anyway, they might as well get a slice of that pie, right? Flawed reasoning that work very well in unscrupulous people's heads. And then you get someone complaining that the UX of the alternative isn't top notch. Which really tells you everything you need to know someone is willing to even begin thinking about sticking out a limb for. I get this sinking feeling that in large parts of this industry there's less than 5% of people who actually think about and critically look at the ethics of what THEY are building, and they're probably listened to even less. It's probably even less, I've been talking to people that I consider very responsible engineers whose principles just wither as soon as you ask where the analytics data goes ... usually pointing at the client's choice. Except they're working on it and it's built into the infrastructure of the company and they provide it. So easy to get the top thread in this comment section arguing fervently against any and all forms of tracking ... and then you get this massive back peddling when someone dares to suggest not using GA.

Cool, sounds great! I went to NextDNS website only to find out they run Google Analytics...

Krasnol 7y ago

Is it blocked if you use their DNS? ;)

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Terretta 7y ago
Yes

MrStonedOne 7y ago

What should they use? And don't say matomo until it supports drilling down byond one level.

Kovah 7y ago
In this particular case I find it very dishonest: they talk about net neutrality and privacy protection but use Google Analytics. It does not matter if GA or Matomo is the best solution, they made the decision to use GA and thus don't seem to value their customers data that much.
- franga2000 7y ago
  What is it with this all-or-nothing attitude? GA provides objectively superior data and they probably get a lot of value from it, otherwise they wouldn't be using it - value which allows them to grow their business which ultimately benefits their users. (at least for me) Considering the value of their service, GA on their marketing page seems like a very small compromise. If you don't like it you are free to block it - hell, they literally provide a service to do so.
  - GoblinSlayer 7y ago
    What is it with this all-or-nothing attitude? Matomo is good enough.
    - franga2000 7y ago
      Depends on what you're looking for. Demographic data can be really important for a business and Matomo couldn't possibly provide that.
      - pcmaffey 7y ago
        If you’re collecting and relying on demographic data than privacy probably isn’t very important to you.
      - Nextgrid 7y ago
        What is demographic data and how is it collected?
        aratakareigen 7y ago
        The age, gender, etc. distributions of the people who visit your website. I don't know anything about GA, but I'm guessing they'd know this from the currently signed in Google account.
        Nextgrid 7y ago
        What if people don't want to volunteer this information?
      - tripzilch 7y ago
        Where are you getting this demographic data? You don't get that from server logs. Sound like you're not arguing against Matomo but arguing that you really in fact do want to share data with a third party to extract information that your users very much did not consent to. It's terrifying what comes out of the wood works sometimes.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
They should not use anything. Or server logs, if they really must.
- mrweasel 7y ago
  It seem like most people have forgotten that before Google Analytics, we all just looked at our server logs. Sure, you can't get the exact same information, but you can get enough to do capacity planning and some basic stats. I've started to wonder why people care about Google Analytics, what does it tell you that you actually need to know. Again capacity planning is useful, but other than that, isn't sort of pointless?
  - mr__y 7y ago
    >exact same information you could actually get more from plain old log parsing in some cases. First of all with GA you can't access the raw data. With logs you can create new type of stats/metrics/charts and apply them on past data. Also, IIRC GA uses random sampling - only a % of connections are recorded and the data being shown is extrapolated from those samples. While I'm not arguing that given the vast amount of data at disposal, huge capacity and great engineers they can make those extrapolations very accurate, I'm not entirely convinced it is precise for (very) small traffic websites. And since a small traffic logging requires both small storage space and small processing capacity the resources needed for keeping and processing your own logs are insignificant while the results might be useful.
  - duckworth 7y ago
    Some of the larger website builders/hosting , e.g. Wix don’t even give you access to server logs. Sure you can setup and run your own site and CMS easily enough, but running even hourly bulk log ingestion is usually not as straight forward and the information you can derive is very limited comparative to js based tracking. Matamo ( formerly Piwik) is decent but still takes some time to setup and get right. The main thing that the analytics tells you if you are promoting anything, is which of those promotions is actually working and driving visitors to your site.
jamil7 7y ago
Nothing? why do they need analytics?
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  To see what content is popular, to see what countries users are coming from, to how long a given page is retaining a visitor... all of this lets a business know what they need to change/offer/stop to better serve their customers and attract more customers. I had a very niche ecommerce site for a couple of years, for ease I was only shipping to U.S. customers. I noticed that something like 20% of my traffic was coming from Canada so I decided to enable shipping to Canada but added a 5$ premium on top of the actual shipping cost. I had a sale to Canada the first hour of enabling it in my cart and Canada ended up being roughly 10% of my orders, even after I raised the premium/handling fee to 10$. Looking at my GA page once caused more money to be going into my pocket and filled a need for Canadian customers. I didn't need to learn a programming language or spend tens of hours trying to figure out, through articles, how to copy paste a bunch of code together to recreate something comparable.
  - Kovah 7y ago
    My question then would be, why do you need to use especially Google Analytics for that? Stats like "visitors per country" are a core feature of all major analytics suites. I set up analytics for many site on my job and I never experienced a use case where GA offered that specific feature no other software had.
    - ryanmercer 7y ago
      GA is free and takes seconds to set up. Not everyone knows how to code, not everyone is a professional web dev or CS ninja, not everyone has piles of VC money to throw at such things. GA works, is well organized, and is often integrated with a lot of cart/web builder services where you simply have to plug in a short string and pop over to the GA website. I needed a vegetable knife recently. I could have (and I do have the skills, and have made many knives over the past 25 years) purchased some appropriate steel and made one myself in 3-5 hours and had it incredibly sharp but I opted to buy a Mercer stainless steel one on Amazon for 20$~ because it required much less effort. I also couldn't care less about Google or the NSA or Lectroids from another dimension tracking me so I don't rush to go "I'd better cater to the small percentage of my potential customers that want to leave zero trace on the internet, there are countless tools out there they can use to minimize that trail of breadcrumbs. This data is usable to me and Google makes it easy" and I imagine, even the company in question was like "some people want privacy but those that are concerned can easily block this with a browser extension, in their hosts file, and/or at a hardware level so we'll go ahead and use it and save a bunch of time".
CannoloBlahnik 7y ago
I’d be using GoAccess if it meant not giving up my users to Google. Matomo is a dream.
nulbyte 7y ago
What do you mean drilling down beyond one level? I use Matomo and find it just as useful as Google Analytics. Actually, I like their interface better than Google's.
Aeolun 7y ago
Simple analytics? What would they even use the data for...
class4behavior 7y ago
There are plenty of alternative solutions: Piwik, GoatCounter, GoAccess, Open Web Analytics, clicky, Snowplow, Gauges, etc. The correct solution is to self-host all analytics involving data that can be used to identify, track, or analyze individuals.
- mwexler 7y ago
  And none of these offer the ease of setup, ease of analysis, or ease of recognizing what actions to take that GA offers for $0 license and no hosting fees. These on the list are all admirable (esp. Snowplow) but all assume savvy users to be able to get things that are out-of-box with GA.
tripzilch 7y ago
> don't say matomo until it supports drilling down byond one level. everybody, this is what your privacy is worth to some people.

donohoe 7y ago

To be slightly reasonable on this, GA on their site is nothing in comparison to the larger surface they provide. It’s not all-or-nothing.

tripzilch 7y ago
Can you qualify that? In what sense is GA "nothing in comparison"? Because the other companies are less well-known? Because it's just one among 200 others? Even though it's owned by the largest adtech corp in the world? Or is it because you told yourself that Google will probably do "less bad things" with that same data, after you give your users data away, completely out of your control.

AlexandrB 7y ago

I love how in this thread about, ostensibly, why tracking is bad and trackers should be blocked people are arguing that using GA is ok because doing anything else is "too hard". Why can't this same argument be applied recursively to any of the trackers in the NYT tracking sphere? I'm sure it can, and I'm sure that's why loading a NYT page loads dozens of various third-party tracking scripts: because doing anything else would have been "too hard" for the NYT marketing & technology departments.

JohnFen 7y ago

> they run Google Analytics... That's seriously disappointing. While I block GA and it's commonly used, my opinion of a site/service falls a fair amount when I see they're using it.

tripzilch 7y ago

I'm not into the analytics business, but how does it come that, somehow, of all the major tech companies, it just happens to be Google to provide the one irreplaceable analytics service? In particular, how that apparently never worried anyone before they became the "seriously nothing else can scratch this itch" quality analytics?? Because I saw it happen and it worried me. Some people must remember, about a decade (!!) ago, that half-joking nervous realisation that there was a single corporation whose server-controlled javascript ran on 90% of all webpages. Or the part where you share all of your site's analytics with a third party you had no choice in? That wasn't even a thing before GA came around. What is Google Analytics doing that it can't be replaced by anything that's not quite as ruthless with your visitor's data? (I really want to ask "is it that hard?" but I'm gonna assume there's something hard about it that I'm not thinking of) Personally I'm afraid the reasons are dumb and shameful. I suppose Google Analytics is providing some additional details and data that it just happens to be unable to provide unless it tracks the everloving shit out of your visitors and accumulates this data on, say, Google servers. And people don't want to give that up, because weeeeell if it's spying on everybody and combining and keeping data anyway, they might as well get a slice of that pie, right? Flawed reasoning that work very well in unscrupulous people's heads. And then you get someone complaining that the UX of the alternative isn't top notch. Which really tells you everything you need to know someone is willing to even begin thinking about sticking out a limb for. I get this sinking feeling that in large parts of this industry there's less than 5% of people who actually think about and critically look at the ethics of what THEY are building, and they're probably listened to even less. It's probably even less, I've been talking to people that I consider very responsible engineers whose principles just wither as soon as you ask where the analytics data goes ... usually pointing at the client's choice. Except they're working on it and it's built into the infrastructure of the company and they provide it. So easy to get the top thread in this comment section arguing fervently against any and all forms of tracking ... and then you get this massive back peddling when someone dares to suggest not using GA.