7 ms·

Marketers are panicking over Google's plan to yank cookies from advertising

35 points by arabadzhiev 7y ago

StanDavis 7y ago
Paywall
xpe 7y ago
The article is paywalled (or at least gated).
- errantmind 7y ago
  This extension is useful for bypassing sites that use 'article limits' : https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
  - eganist 7y ago
    so is the web button under OP's link.
    - pazimzadeh 7y ago
      Still paywalled
      - eganist 7y ago
        can't repro; worked fine for me. but here's an alternative i.e. what I see after I load the page and switch into reader view on firefox: https://i.imgur.com/uN0CU9Q.jpg https://i.imgur.com/uN0CU9Q.jpg
        ThePowerOfFuet 7y ago
        Thank you so much for having gone to the trouble of doing that for us. Unfortunately, imgur has compressed it into near-unreadability.
        eganist 7y ago
        https://i.imgur.com/uN0CU9Q_d.jpg?maxwidth=1920&shape=thumb&fidelity=high https://i.imgur.com/uN0CU9Q_d.jpg?maxwidth=1920&shape=thumb&... Imgur is only nice to Reddit. For everyone else, there's visiting the main imgur page, copying the image url, editing it, and opening it as such.
  - xingped 7y ago
    Doesn't allow me to read the article.
- masayoshis_son 7y ago
  It's not a paywall, just poor design: if you're outside the US, you might get redirected to a local version of that website, where the page doesn't exist. The workaround is apparently to add ?IR=C to the URL.
yawaramin 7y ago
TP;DR?* * Too Paywalled**, Didn't Read ** Although for some articles one might legitimately say 'Toilet Paper, Didn't Read'
- ErikAugust 7y ago
  https://beta.trimread.com/articles/5241 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/5241
Animats 7y ago
So Chrome is getting something Firefox has has for years. I've had third-party cookies blocked for the last decade. Plus Privacy Badger.
allovernow 7y ago
At this point I'm absolutely convinced that anything bad for adtech is good for society. Absolute profit driven evil. An entire industry built around psychological manipulation for the sole purpose of convincing people to consume products that they likely don't need, while simulataneously setting the stage for an Orweillian surveillance state... No one with a conscience should be working in adtech. And there are far more insidious consequences to adware. I'm just speculating, but I have a feeling that when non-technical society is bombarded by ads, its capacity for critical analysis of information is reduced. Given the ubiquity of ads, and the many decisions that humans must make personally and professionally every day, if this is true it has a seriously negative ripple effect which permeates much of human endeavor.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  I am certainly no fan of current advertising - it is fundamentally backwards from what is useful - the customer wants information on what would fufill their needs and desires and should shape the provider. Beyond sinple "this exists" advertising tries to shape their desire to the product. Unfortunately there isn't exactly even a good theory for a better information propagation mechanism for resource allocation let alone one in practice. I wouldn't go so far to go zero sum with ad tech vs society. To be a smartass bathing the worls in nuclear fire would be bad for adtech and bad for society. Not to mention society is horrifyingly vague and exploitable. You can call the downfall of the Kim Jonh dynasty, the military, and the rise of a free and democratic North Korea/unified Korea the a destruction of a society. Personally I suspect that critical analysis by default isn't used period and the issues of influencers far predate ad tech. One bit of accidental good they can engage in is building skepticism - a cure all claim is greeted with more incredulity today than in the old west.
  - petra 7y ago
    Sure, there isn't a good theory for information propagation. Everything we have is flawed. But advertising is, at it's core, based on lies and highly optimized manipulation. It's not hard to offer something better. The internet, with all the fake news, and the SEO's is still somewhat better, in my opinion. And if we aim higher, compare that to something like the WireCutter reviews - which tries(afaik) to offer an in-depth, unbiased reviews, and is backed by the reputation of the NY times.
MrPatan 7y ago
Is this a broadside against Facebook's trackers? Does anyone believe for one picosecond they will block their own cookies? I switched to Firefox when I tried to block all 3rd aprty cookies on Chrome and found some (Google's) that just wouldn't disappear.
- skymt 7y ago
  As noted in a recent (and very busy) thread, Chrome sends an installation-specific ID to Google domains in a special header. This can easily be used as an identifier for tracking in the absence of cookies, and it's an advantage that Google's competitors lack. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106
Izkata 7y ago
Amusingly, the paywall appears to be frontend-only. Stop the page from finishing loading before the modal appears and you can read the whole thing. > The IAB Tech Lab this week called for publishers, advertisers, and adtech companies to unite to create standards and a replacement for third-party cookies on browsers like Chrome, Apple's Safari and Mozilla-owned Firefox. Dubbed Project Rearc, the effort is eventually supposed to include a consumer ad campaign to reach 2 billion people. ...bwuh?
- olliej 7y ago
  IAB also wants things like safaris intelligent tracking prevention to be illegal. In their ideal world every browser would be required to include a persistent unique per user ID.
legitster 7y ago
I work in marketing. It's hard to anticipate the all the effects, but we have of yet no reason to be too concerned. Google is unclear on how it will affect the options of their advertisements, but we anticipate that however they implement the rules, their own network will come out on top, and we will have even less reason to use any other advertisement network (surprise, surprise). I wonder if this will finally be the death of display advertising - the value is already insanely low. And for the most part we have moved on to other channels.
olliej 7y ago
This is something safari has being doing by default for more than a decade (I think from the very first version). Firefox has been doing it for a while now as well iirc. Chrome only appears to be doing it now that they’ve got people logging into their browser, and even if not, sending a unique ID to googles servers - some far more powerful and persistent than anything a cookie ever gave.
rdiddly 7y ago
Tangent, it bugs me the degree to which Google is thought of, by people including this headline writer, as being in charge of the internet.
unexaminedlife 7y ago
Not sure, but it seems there may be a fundamental question being asked here. If I trust somedomain.com, does this automatically mean I trust advertisers on said website? In fact it becomes even clearer where the trust boundary lies when taking into account the fact that even somedomain.com is putting advertising decisions into the hands of a 3rd party. So, how far should the infrastructure of the web go in terms of assuming trust boundaries transcend the immediate trust and obvious relationship between end user and domain?
- eska 7y ago
  > If I trust somedomain.com, does this automatically mean I trust advertisers on said website? And vice versa, if I don't trust advertisers on somedomain.com, does this automatically mean I don't trust said website? The answer for many people is yes and it results in them not visiting them anymore.

35 points by arabadzhiev 7y ago

StanDavis 7y ago

Paywall

xpe 7y ago

The article is paywalled (or at least gated).

errantmind 7y ago
This extension is useful for bypassing sites that use 'article limits' : https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
- eganist 7y ago
  so is the web button under OP's link.
  - pazimzadeh 7y ago
    Still paywalled
    - eganist 7y ago
      can't repro; worked fine for me. but here's an alternative i.e. what I see after I load the page and switch into reader view on firefox: https://i.imgur.com/uN0CU9Q.jpg https://i.imgur.com/uN0CU9Q.jpg
      - ThePowerOfFuet 7y ago
        Thank you so much for having gone to the trouble of doing that for us. Unfortunately, imgur has compressed it into near-unreadability.
        eganist 7y ago
        https://i.imgur.com/uN0CU9Q_d.jpg?maxwidth=1920&shape=thumb&fidelity=high https://i.imgur.com/uN0CU9Q_d.jpg?maxwidth=1920&shape=thumb&... Imgur is only nice to Reddit. For everyone else, there's visiting the main imgur page, copying the image url, editing it, and opening it as such.
- xingped 7y ago
  Doesn't allow me to read the article.
masayoshis_son 7y ago
It's not a paywall, just poor design: if you're outside the US, you might get redirected to a local version of that website, where the page doesn't exist. The workaround is apparently to add ?IR=C to the URL.

yawaramin 7y ago

TP;DR?* * Too Paywalled**, Didn't Read ** Although for some articles one might legitimately say 'Toilet Paper, Didn't Read'

ErikAugust 7y ago
https://beta.trimread.com/articles/5241 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/5241

Animats 7y ago

So Chrome is getting something Firefox has has for years. I've had third-party cookies blocked for the last decade. Plus Privacy Badger.

allovernow 7y ago

At this point I'm absolutely convinced that anything bad for adtech is good for society. Absolute profit driven evil. An entire industry built around psychological manipulation for the sole purpose of convincing people to consume products that they likely don't need, while simulataneously setting the stage for an Orweillian surveillance state... No one with a conscience should be working in adtech. And there are far more insidious consequences to adware. I'm just speculating, but I have a feeling that when non-technical society is bombarded by ads, its capacity for critical analysis of information is reduced. Given the ubiquity of ads, and the many decisions that humans must make personally and professionally every day, if this is true it has a seriously negative ripple effect which permeates much of human endeavor.

Nasrudith 7y ago
I am certainly no fan of current advertising - it is fundamentally backwards from what is useful - the customer wants information on what would fufill their needs and desires and should shape the provider. Beyond sinple "this exists" advertising tries to shape their desire to the product. Unfortunately there isn't exactly even a good theory for a better information propagation mechanism for resource allocation let alone one in practice. I wouldn't go so far to go zero sum with ad tech vs society. To be a smartass bathing the worls in nuclear fire would be bad for adtech and bad for society. Not to mention society is horrifyingly vague and exploitable. You can call the downfall of the Kim Jonh dynasty, the military, and the rise of a free and democratic North Korea/unified Korea the a destruction of a society. Personally I suspect that critical analysis by default isn't used period and the issues of influencers far predate ad tech. One bit of accidental good they can engage in is building skepticism - a cure all claim is greeted with more incredulity today than in the old west.
- petra 7y ago
  Sure, there isn't a good theory for information propagation. Everything we have is flawed. But advertising is, at it's core, based on lies and highly optimized manipulation. It's not hard to offer something better. The internet, with all the fake news, and the SEO's is still somewhat better, in my opinion. And if we aim higher, compare that to something like the WireCutter reviews - which tries(afaik) to offer an in-depth, unbiased reviews, and is backed by the reputation of the NY times.

MrPatan 7y ago

Is this a broadside against Facebook's trackers? Does anyone believe for one picosecond they will block their own cookies? I switched to Firefox when I tried to block all 3rd aprty cookies on Chrome and found some (Google's) that just wouldn't disappear.

skymt 7y ago
As noted in a recent (and very busy) thread, Chrome sends an installation-specific ID to Google domains in a special header. This can easily be used as an identifier for tracking in the absence of cookies, and it's an advantage that Google's competitors lack. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236106

Izkata 7y ago

Amusingly, the paywall appears to be frontend-only. Stop the page from finishing loading before the modal appears and you can read the whole thing. > The IAB Tech Lab this week called for publishers, advertisers, and adtech companies to unite to create standards and a replacement for third-party cookies on browsers like Chrome, Apple's Safari and Mozilla-owned Firefox. Dubbed Project Rearc, the effort is eventually supposed to include a consumer ad campaign to reach 2 billion people. ...bwuh?

olliej 7y ago
IAB also wants things like safaris intelligent tracking prevention to be illegal. In their ideal world every browser would be required to include a persistent unique per user ID.

legitster 7y ago

I work in marketing. It's hard to anticipate the all the effects, but we have of yet no reason to be too concerned. Google is unclear on how it will affect the options of their advertisements, but we anticipate that however they implement the rules, their own network will come out on top, and we will have even less reason to use any other advertisement network (surprise, surprise). I wonder if this will finally be the death of display advertising - the value is already insanely low. And for the most part we have moved on to other channels.

olliej 7y ago

This is something safari has being doing by default for more than a decade (I think from the very first version). Firefox has been doing it for a while now as well iirc. Chrome only appears to be doing it now that they’ve got people logging into their browser, and even if not, sending a unique ID to googles servers - some far more powerful and persistent than anything a cookie ever gave.

rdiddly 7y ago

Tangent, it bugs me the degree to which Google is thought of, by people including this headline writer, as being in charge of the internet.

unexaminedlife 7y ago

Not sure, but it seems there may be a fundamental question being asked here. If I trust somedomain.com, does this automatically mean I trust advertisers on said website? In fact it becomes even clearer where the trust boundary lies when taking into account the fact that even somedomain.com is putting advertising decisions into the hands of a 3rd party. So, how far should the infrastructure of the web go in terms of assuming trust boundaries transcend the immediate trust and obvious relationship between end user and domain?

eska 7y ago
> If I trust somedomain.com, does this automatically mean I trust advertisers on said website? And vice versa, if I don't trust advertisers on somedomain.com, does this automatically mean I don't trust said website? The answer for many people is yes and it results in them not visiting them anymore.