4 ms·

How could I prove my blog doesn't track you?

by sefrost 6y ago

matheusmoreira 6y ago
Allow experts to audit your blog, including the code running on the servers. Hosts should submit to similar audits.
- filoleg 6y ago
  Never thought I would see the day when people on HN would enthusiastically support making it much more difficult for anyone to publish their stuff on the web. All while, in the same breath, clamoring for the "good old days" of the web when publishing something was as easy as just uploading a folder with your HTML/CSS to your host. No, thank you, I don't want to go through audits and deal with bureaucracy when I just want to publish my side-project blog on the web. If you want to discourage people from building and publishing their personal projects and making them easily accessible to the public, that's how you do it. However, I am absolutely ok with EU doing this, given they seem to be hellbent on running their local tech industry into the ground. Truly great founders from EU will either manage to make their companies succeed despite EU or eventually end up creating their companies in the US, and both of those scenarios sound like a win-win to me (from the perspective of the US; from the perspective of the EU, I guess they are doing all of this knowingly, so they get what they wanted, which would count as a win in a way too).
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    Well, in the good old days people didn't abuse users with unwanted tracking and fingerprinting. Pages used to be just that: files someone uploaded to the internet. People came up with tracking techniques here and there but they weren't so pervasive. Now most pages aren't pages, they're hostile applications purposefully built to extract as much value out of you as they can by any means available whether you want it to or not. If all you did was publish an HTML+CSS page, your innocence is self-evident. Anyone can look at your page's source and confirm it. If you link to Google's javascripts though, that should put you into a completely different category of suspicion.
    - filoleg 6y ago
      >If all you did was publish an HTML+CSS page, your innocence is self-evident. Anyone can look at your page's source and confirm it. If you link to Google's javascripts though, that should put you into a completely different category of suspicion. Things change. Back in the day, HTML+CSS page was all it took. These days, wanting to know how people discover your page or how many new readers come to your blog is basics. Reliability and performance tracking is something that wasn't really a commonplace thing back then. For all of those things, you kinda do have to use JS. The question is, do you necessarily need those features? No. Would it be nice to have? Yes. When I publish a side project, I want to make it nice and great, since I am not getting paid to do it, I am doing it out of pure enthusiasm and motivation for creating the best I can. Forcing anyone in this situation to go through audits and deal with bureaucracy just to be able to publish their personal side-project is a certain way of discouraging people from ever doing so. All you end up with is a bunch of people who are willing to jump through all these hoops because they have something monetary to gain from it or those who know how to jump around those hoops really well.
- petre 6y ago
  Audits. Sounds much like scientology, only at EU level.

How could I prove my blog doesn't track you?

matheusmoreira 6y ago

Allow experts to audit your blog, including the code running on the servers. Hosts should submit to similar audits.

filoleg 6y ago
Never thought I would see the day when people on HN would enthusiastically support making it much more difficult for anyone to publish their stuff on the web. All while, in the same breath, clamoring for the "good old days" of the web when publishing something was as easy as just uploading a folder with your HTML/CSS to your host. No, thank you, I don't want to go through audits and deal with bureaucracy when I just want to publish my side-project blog on the web. If you want to discourage people from building and publishing their personal projects and making them easily accessible to the public, that's how you do it. However, I am absolutely ok with EU doing this, given they seem to be hellbent on running their local tech industry into the ground. Truly great founders from EU will either manage to make their companies succeed despite EU or eventually end up creating their companies in the US, and both of those scenarios sound like a win-win to me (from the perspective of the US; from the perspective of the EU, I guess they are doing all of this knowingly, so they get what they wanted, which would count as a win in a way too).
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  Well, in the good old days people didn't abuse users with unwanted tracking and fingerprinting. Pages used to be just that: files someone uploaded to the internet. People came up with tracking techniques here and there but they weren't so pervasive. Now most pages aren't pages, they're hostile applications purposefully built to extract as much value out of you as they can by any means available whether you want it to or not. If all you did was publish an HTML+CSS page, your innocence is self-evident. Anyone can look at your page's source and confirm it. If you link to Google's javascripts though, that should put you into a completely different category of suspicion.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    >If all you did was publish an HTML+CSS page, your innocence is self-evident. Anyone can look at your page's source and confirm it. If you link to Google's javascripts though, that should put you into a completely different category of suspicion. Things change. Back in the day, HTML+CSS page was all it took. These days, wanting to know how people discover your page or how many new readers come to your blog is basics. Reliability and performance tracking is something that wasn't really a commonplace thing back then. For all of those things, you kinda do have to use JS. The question is, do you necessarily need those features? No. Would it be nice to have? Yes. When I publish a side project, I want to make it nice and great, since I am not getting paid to do it, I am doing it out of pure enthusiasm and motivation for creating the best I can. Forcing anyone in this situation to go through audits and deal with bureaucracy just to be able to publish their personal side-project is a certain way of discouraging people from ever doing so. All you end up with is a bunch of people who are willing to jump through all these hoops because they have something monetary to gain from it or those who know how to jump around those hoops really well.
petre 6y ago
Audits. Sounds much like scientology, only at EU level.