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Why on earth is a government website linking anything from Facebook, Snapchat, etc? USPS isn't a trendy coffee shop or a designer brand, they're a federal agenc

Why on earth is a government website linking anything from Facebook, Snapchat, etc? USPS isn't a trendy coffee shop or a designer brand, they're a federal agency of the United States government and should be held to a higher trust and privacy standard.

mindslight 2y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with where you're coming from, but don't try to login to your IRS account these days without first taking some Xanax (tm).
- Klonoar 2y ago
  I am pretty sure they said they’d reevaluate that ID login change but instead rammed it through. I think about it every time I have to use it.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    The worst part is that it had been working just fine for me before. I already had a login that I think had been verified via postal mail. My IRS account obviously isn't going anywhere. Why do I have to create a completely new login, just to use less secure surveillance based authentication? It smells of corruption where someone gets a kickback based on how many people they can herd into the surveillance industry slaughterhouse. There are probably several layers of indirection (grift) because "government can't do anything", but that's still the underlying dynamic.
    - snotrockets 2y ago
      If I had to guess, the kickback isn’t from the auth provider. Maintaining a system takes people & resources. For 40+ years, there’s a push to not allow the government to actually hire and manage those itself, but use commercial entities, because “big government is bad”. So it is easier to get the approval to pay x2 as much for a 3rd party than do it for half the budget internally. And as things need to be done, you end up saying f*k it and help ruin public service because it was mandated you’ll do so. And then you end up with shitty services, which was the intent all along: it’s not about big government, it’s about outsourcing government contracts to you and yours.
cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago
You are all over the place. The person that you’re replying to already called it negligent. It’s clear that it’s negligent. That’s different from USPS not having some “legitimate” reason to use a Facebook tracking pixel somewhere. I’m not even American, but I just spent 30 seconds on the USPS site and came across an online store where you can buy gifts, etc. This reasonably puts them well within the ballpark of an organisation that’d seek to use this sort of tech. As anyone that’s worked with anyone in ecommerce marketing will tell you, there’s always organisational pressure to shove these ‘tracking pixels’ onto your site. Again, it’s negligent that they did it, from a privacy POV. But let’s not conflate that with ‘old man grumbling about social networks’.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Not the GP, but: > That’s different from USPS not having some “legitimate” reason to use a Facebook tracking pixel somewhere. I don't think the USPS has any legitimate reason to be hosting tracking pixels from any entity outside the US government. USPS should have analytics on their website, but the USG has a hosted analytics package[0], and that's what they should be using -- which they are[1], so they should already be getting the data they need. [0] https://digital.gov/guides/dap/ https://digital.gov/guides/dap/ [1] https://analytics.usa.gov/postal-service https://analytics.usa.gov/postal-service
  - efromvt 2y ago
    The USG solution is just Google Analytics though, so…
rty32 2y ago
As the parent comment has explained, all USPS is doing -- at least from their perspective -- is to use some third-party analytics tools, without intentionally or specifically linking to Facebook or Snapchat. Or put it this way -- is there a data analytics platform that is suitable & easy to use for any US government agency? Not that I am aware of (but please let me know). Without such infrastructure, these government organizations understandably are looking for those commercial options.
- uoaei 2y ago
  Security and similar audits are a big deal in government. Or, at least, they were...
- segasaturn 2y ago
  While I find it questionable that a government agency should be collecting analytics on its visitors in the first place, there are self-hosted analytics tools that they can use. One Google search turns up plausible.io which, even if its less convenient than Google would help with trust. It seems we've completely normalized the State conducting mass surveillance, tracking and metadata collection on citizens with the aid of corporate tech giants like Google.
  - adenylyl 2y ago
    The US government does run its own self-hosted analytics platform (https://analytics.usa.gov https://analytics.usa.gov), which the USPS does in fact use. Which makes it all the more questionable that they were additionally using third-party analytics.
    - mh- 2y ago
      Offtopic, I chuckled that the top* city visitors come from is Ashburn. That's definitely just a GeoIP database picking up AWS traffic. * (in the last 30 minutes, as of now)
    - nighthawk454 2y ago
      > The data come from a unified Google Analytics account for U.S. federal government agencies known as the Digital Analytics Program. Well…
jokoon 2y ago
because that's how the guberment collects data frankly I prefer when it's the government rather than companies selling it to foreign countries or scammers
Eumenes 2y ago
Defund the USPS. They absolutely suck. 60% of their volume is junk mail. Lets save the planet.
- colejohnson66 2y ago
  60% is junk mail because they’re not funded properly. Junk mail provides postage fees that fund them.
  - DangitBobby 2y ago
    This isn't exactly true. Even with junk mail they aren't profitable. But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people, not to allow 3rd parties to harass them endlessly.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      That's not really the point. If they didn't push junk mail so hard, they'd be insolvent and fail. Profitability is not the issue. > But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people Agree, but someone should probably tell Congress that. The situation is trash (literally; 95% of my mail goes directly to the recycling bin), but conservatives want the USPS to behave more like a business, and its funding -- and need to do crappy things -- reflects that.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - colejohnson66 2y ago
      I never said they should be profitable, just that junk mail funds them.
    - Eumenes 2y ago
      Sounds like they exist to serve big business pumping out tons and tons of land fill routed trash, subsidized by the federal government/taxpayers. Given they're unionized, they can just lobby whomever to keep this unicorn status. Federal agencies should not be allowed to unionize.

mindslight 2y ago

I wholeheartedly agree with where you're coming from, but don't try to login to your IRS account these days without first taking some Xanax (tm).

Klonoar 2y ago
I am pretty sure they said they’d reevaluate that ID login change but instead rammed it through. I think about it every time I have to use it.
- mindslight 2y ago
  The worst part is that it had been working just fine for me before. I already had a login that I think had been verified via postal mail. My IRS account obviously isn't going anywhere. Why do I have to create a completely new login, just to use less secure surveillance based authentication? It smells of corruption where someone gets a kickback based on how many people they can herd into the surveillance industry slaughterhouse. There are probably several layers of indirection (grift) because "government can't do anything", but that's still the underlying dynamic.
  - snotrockets 2y ago
    If I had to guess, the kickback isn’t from the auth provider. Maintaining a system takes people & resources. For 40+ years, there’s a push to not allow the government to actually hire and manage those itself, but use commercial entities, because “big government is bad”. So it is easier to get the approval to pay x2 as much for a 3rd party than do it for half the budget internally. And as things need to be done, you end up saying f*k it and help ruin public service because it was mandated you’ll do so. And then you end up with shitty services, which was the intent all along: it’s not about big government, it’s about outsourcing government contracts to you and yours.

cqqxo4zV46cp 2y ago

You are all over the place. The person that you’re replying to already called it negligent. It’s clear that it’s negligent. That’s different from USPS not having some “legitimate” reason to use a Facebook tracking pixel somewhere. I’m not even American, but I just spent 30 seconds on the USPS site and came across an online store where you can buy gifts, etc. This reasonably puts them well within the ballpark of an organisation that’d seek to use this sort of tech. As anyone that’s worked with anyone in ecommerce marketing will tell you, there’s always organisational pressure to shove these ‘tracking pixels’ onto your site. Again, it’s negligent that they did it, from a privacy POV. But let’s not conflate that with ‘old man grumbling about social networks’.

kelnos 2y ago
Not the GP, but: > That’s different from USPS not having some “legitimate” reason to use a Facebook tracking pixel somewhere. I don't think the USPS has any legitimate reason to be hosting tracking pixels from any entity outside the US government. USPS should have analytics on their website, but the USG has a hosted analytics package[0], and that's what they should be using -- which they are[1], so they should already be getting the data they need. [0] https://digital.gov/guides/dap/ https://digital.gov/guides/dap/ [1] https://analytics.usa.gov/postal-service https://analytics.usa.gov/postal-service
- efromvt 2y ago
  The USG solution is just Google Analytics though, so…

rty32 2y ago

As the parent comment has explained, all USPS is doing -- at least from their perspective -- is to use some third-party analytics tools, without intentionally or specifically linking to Facebook or Snapchat. Or put it this way -- is there a data analytics platform that is suitable & easy to use for any US government agency? Not that I am aware of (but please let me know). Without such infrastructure, these government organizations understandably are looking for those commercial options.

uoaei 2y ago
Security and similar audits are a big deal in government. Or, at least, they were...
segasaturn 2y ago
While I find it questionable that a government agency should be collecting analytics on its visitors in the first place, there are self-hosted analytics tools that they can use. One Google search turns up plausible.io which, even if its less convenient than Google would help with trust. It seems we've completely normalized the State conducting mass surveillance, tracking and metadata collection on citizens with the aid of corporate tech giants like Google.
- adenylyl 2y ago
  The US government does run its own self-hosted analytics platform (https://analytics.usa.gov https://analytics.usa.gov), which the USPS does in fact use. Which makes it all the more questionable that they were additionally using third-party analytics.
  - mh- 2y ago
    Offtopic, I chuckled that the top* city visitors come from is Ashburn. That's definitely just a GeoIP database picking up AWS traffic. * (in the last 30 minutes, as of now)
  - nighthawk454 2y ago
    > The data come from a unified Google Analytics account for U.S. federal government agencies known as the Digital Analytics Program. Well…

jokoon 2y ago

because that's how the guberment collects data frankly I prefer when it's the government rather than companies selling it to foreign countries or scammers

Eumenes 2y ago

Defund the USPS. They absolutely suck. 60% of their volume is junk mail. Lets save the planet.

colejohnson66 2y ago
60% is junk mail because they’re not funded properly. Junk mail provides postage fees that fund them.
- DangitBobby 2y ago
  This isn't exactly true. Even with junk mail they aren't profitable. But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people, not to allow 3rd parties to harass them endlessly.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    That's not really the point. If they didn't push junk mail so hard, they'd be insolvent and fail. Profitability is not the issue. > But being profitable is a non-goal; they exist to serve the people Agree, but someone should probably tell Congress that. The situation is trash (literally; 95% of my mail goes directly to the recycling bin), but conservatives want the USPS to behave more like a business, and its funding -- and need to do crappy things -- reflects that.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - colejohnson66 2y ago
    I never said they should be profitable, just that junk mail funds them.
  - Eumenes 2y ago
    Sounds like they exist to serve big business pumping out tons and tons of land fill routed trash, subsidized by the federal government/taxpayers. Given they're unionized, they can just lobby whomever to keep this unicorn status. Federal agencies should not be allowed to unionize.