4 ms·

> If the person signing the paychecks wants the page to have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS, then the page will have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS. I was aske

> If the person signing the paychecks wants the page to have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS, then the page will have 15MB of sketchy third-party JS. I was asked by management to add Google Tag Manager to the company site. When I saw that GTM included 15-20 tracking scripts I told them that unfortunately we can't include it until we have ensured that all of them act in accordance with GDPR. Legal was involved and agreed. Marketing gave up. You're technically correct, but people who write pay checks often can be argued with. They often don't want to be on record taking decisions which can cause issues, and legal typically don't want to sign of on including 15MB unknown scripts on your site accepting credit cards.

jakelazaroff 5y ago
> You're technically correct, but people who write pay checks often can be argued with. That's true, but the proliferation of ad tech junk is strong evidence that this is the exception rather than the rule. Capital will persuade labor to do its bidding far more often than not.
- lapnitnelav 5y ago
  What's the solution? If anything, the proliferation of ad tech junk and 15MB of various ad-related things is probably better than just that 1MB of only Google Ads scripts, no? Or are we going to talk about how online advertising has been the economic backbone of the web? Not that I'm advocating for it, by hiding the true cost of things, publishers have brought this onto themselves really. So no more ads? That's probably going to kill a lot of sites, whether they are contributing anything to mankind or not.
  - jakelazaroff 5y ago
    IMO, the only feasible solution is to regulate surveillance capitalism out of existence. The market is not going to solve this.
    - lapnitnelav 5y ago
      Yeah sure let's bury our head in the sand and pretend all forms of media will thrive while only selling subscriptions but so far, we've seen how it went for the older ones (newspaper, radio, tv ...) Or we can acknowledge that advertisment is there to stay and we instead develop a proper framework to make it work sanely rather than all the duct-taping we've done so far. The real failure is the unwillingness to confront the fact that ads were there to stay and should have been baked into a W3C standard ages ago instead but here we are.
      - jakelazaroff 5y ago
        Surveillance capitalism isn't the same as advertising. But I think your point is undercut by the fact that most of the industries you mentioned are doing… fine? TV is thriving selling ads (broadcast/cable) and also subscriptions (Netflix/etc). Radio is thriving selling ads (terrestrial) and also subscriptions (Spotify/etc). Even newspapers are figuring this thing out; NYT added a record number of subscribers last year.
- wutwutwutwut 5y ago
  Do you have strong evidence that developers think about these things and bring it up with legal? I'd not, then the only strong evidence is that developers are sloppy.
  - jakelazaroff 5y ago
    A more charitable interpretation is that most developers simply don’t want to risk their paycheck over a small battle they’d likely lose anyway.
paulcole 5y ago
What options or alternatives did you suggest to marketing so they could accomplish their goal?
- wutwutwutwut 5y ago
  None? I have no clues what marketings goal are and frankly I don't care. If they want to insert some junk.js into their web page they need at least to ensure it is legal.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    If you work at the same company on the same product don’t you both have the same end goal?
    - wutwutwutwut 5y ago
      Not really, no. There are 500 people in marketing organization and I doubt there are less than 20 conflicting end goals within that organization. Unless you're going all fluffy and talk about company goal as said by the owners. Either way, if their process of reaching their end goal included steps which legal dismissed then they needed to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new strategy, right? It would be strange for me who doesn't work in their profession come and tell them how to solve their issues.
      - paulcole 5y ago
        > It would be strange for me who doesn't work in their profession come and tell them how to solve their issues. You're not telling them, you're helping them. I guess I can't get past the idea of telling someone I work with that their solution won't work and then being like, "sorry you're on your own". Although I'm sure you don't care, the disdain you show for marketing wouldn't make me super excited to work with you.

jakelazaroff 5y ago

> You're technically correct, but people who write pay checks often can be argued with. That's true, but the proliferation of ad tech junk is strong evidence that this is the exception rather than the rule. Capital will persuade labor to do its bidding far more often than not.

lapnitnelav 5y ago
What's the solution? If anything, the proliferation of ad tech junk and 15MB of various ad-related things is probably better than just that 1MB of only Google Ads scripts, no? Or are we going to talk about how online advertising has been the economic backbone of the web? Not that I'm advocating for it, by hiding the true cost of things, publishers have brought this onto themselves really. So no more ads? That's probably going to kill a lot of sites, whether they are contributing anything to mankind or not.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  IMO, the only feasible solution is to regulate surveillance capitalism out of existence. The market is not going to solve this.
  - lapnitnelav 5y ago
    Yeah sure let's bury our head in the sand and pretend all forms of media will thrive while only selling subscriptions but so far, we've seen how it went for the older ones (newspaper, radio, tv ...) Or we can acknowledge that advertisment is there to stay and we instead develop a proper framework to make it work sanely rather than all the duct-taping we've done so far. The real failure is the unwillingness to confront the fact that ads were there to stay and should have been baked into a W3C standard ages ago instead but here we are.
    - jakelazaroff 5y ago
      Surveillance capitalism isn't the same as advertising. But I think your point is undercut by the fact that most of the industries you mentioned are doing… fine? TV is thriving selling ads (broadcast/cable) and also subscriptions (Netflix/etc). Radio is thriving selling ads (terrestrial) and also subscriptions (Spotify/etc). Even newspapers are figuring this thing out; NYT added a record number of subscribers last year.
wutwutwutwut 5y ago
Do you have strong evidence that developers think about these things and bring it up with legal? I'd not, then the only strong evidence is that developers are sloppy.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  A more charitable interpretation is that most developers simply don’t want to risk their paycheck over a small battle they’d likely lose anyway.

paulcole 5y ago

What options or alternatives did you suggest to marketing so they could accomplish their goal?

wutwutwutwut 5y ago
None? I have no clues what marketings goal are and frankly I don't care. If they want to insert some junk.js into their web page they need at least to ensure it is legal.
- paulcole 5y ago
  If you work at the same company on the same product don’t you both have the same end goal?
  - wutwutwutwut 5y ago
    Not really, no. There are 500 people in marketing organization and I doubt there are less than 20 conflicting end goals within that organization. Unless you're going all fluffy and talk about company goal as said by the owners. Either way, if their process of reaching their end goal included steps which legal dismissed then they needed to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new strategy, right? It would be strange for me who doesn't work in their profession come and tell them how to solve their issues.
    - paulcole 5y ago
      > It would be strange for me who doesn't work in their profession come and tell them how to solve their issues. You're not telling them, you're helping them. I guess I can't get past the idea of telling someone I work with that their solution won't work and then being like, "sorry you're on your own". Although I'm sure you don't care, the disdain you show for marketing wouldn't make me super excited to work with you.