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I appreciate the list of reasons to cookies are useful. Despite having worked in technology for 25 years, I couldn't have articulated that list off the top of m

I appreciate the list of reasons to cookies are useful. Despite having worked in technology for 25 years, I couldn't have articulated that list off the top of my head. I have never worked for a website that made money that way. I think that means not ALL websites need invasive tracking.

tonymet 9mo ago
can you give examples of serious online businesses that are not doing those things? Here are the industries that I've worked in that all did behavioral tracking for the above applications * gaming * music industry * healthcare * social media * news * internet search * online retail
- bflesch 9mo ago
  You don't seem to understand that one can do behavioral tracking without sharing all personal data with Facebook and Google. GDPR is mainly focused on who you share the data with. Performance tracking of core business processess including traffic sources can be done without involvement of Facebook and Google. It's totally legit to spend a career helping the folks at Facebook and Google to soak up more private information about everyone so the Trump campaign can improve targeting of the fake news advertisements for the presidential election campaigns. But it is not ethical.
  - tonymet 9mo ago
    No thats not true
    - Nextgrid 9mo ago
      Disagreed. You can absolutely do all analytics, personalization and marketing in-house on your properties. You only need data sharing if you want to influence advertising on other properties or if you display others' ads on yours. Whether you want to do so is a different matter. This obviously requires (potentially custom) software and infrastructure, vs throwing in GTM and calling it a day. If there is no regulatory reason for it (there isn't - this aspect of the GDPR is not enforced), most businesses won't bother and will take the easy option.
      - tonymet 9mo ago
        1st party behavior tracking still requires consent. And nearly every business needs third party integrations. I’m still waiting for someone to give me a working example (a real business )
        bflesch 9mo ago
        You are confidently incorrect. Consent is not needed if you only track for your own business and do not send the data to other businesses. One of the big GDPR-compliant website analytics tools, matomo, even has a dedicated page on this topic: https://matomo.org/blog/2021/10/matomo-exempt-from-tracking-consent-in-france/ https://matomo.org/blog/2021/10/matomo-exempt-from-tracking-... "Matomo has also been approved by the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) as one of the select few web analytics tools that can be used to collect data without tracking consent." more info: https://matomo.org/gdpr-analytics/ https://matomo.org/gdpr-analytics/
        tonymet 9mo ago
        You linked the wrong page
        bflesch 9mo ago
        technically the quote was included on the linked page, but I added a second link to make it more clear :)
        tonymet 9mo ago
        i meant the subject matter. a long list of specs doesn't help the discussion. Just give an example. If this hypothetical solution is so easy, why are examples hard to come by?
        Nextgrid 9mo ago
        The level of "tech" for a lot of trade and local businesses is often just a mobile phone and word of mouth, no online advertising industrial complex necessary. Those are still very real businesses. When advertising is used it's likely "old school" advertising with no tracking or analytics. Ironically, if you are looking for a tradesman and do stumble upon an online ad or very polished web presence, be wary as it's basically guaranteed to lead to a boiler room full of scammers who will overcharge you and farm out the actual work to the lowest bidder. Sample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locksmith_scam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locksmith_scam
- Hnrobert42 9mo ago
  B2B SaaS
  - tonymet 9mo ago
    Sales, marketing, CS, self-service all need behavioral tracking. Can you share a practical example?
    - Hnrobert42 9mo ago
      You asked for the websites that I worked for. I am saying the B2B SaaS sites that I have supported didn't use behavioral tracking. I can't share the exact sites due to NDAs.
      - tonymet 9mo ago
        how did they do sales, marketing, CS without behavioral tracking?
Nextgrid 9mo ago
> website that made money that way Some of those scenarios are dubious as to whether they actually bring profit and "make money". They can very well be a net loss and are merely there to justify the job of the advertising/marketing/analytics/etc team, who is conveniently charge of crunching those numbers and obviously would never put any adverse numbers forward. Same thing in advertising - there's a lot of middlemen in the industry that are happy to take their cut, cook the numbers and look the other way despite no actual impact on sales. So while I don't disagree these things can make money when in the right hands and done in moderation, the reality is that there's a shit ton of waste and deadweight in the industry. It may very well be that the actual (vs self-reported) profit from ad/marketing efforts is negative and merely covers the paychecks of said ad/marketing teams.

tonymet 9mo ago

can you give examples of serious online businesses that are not doing those things? Here are the industries that I've worked in that all did behavioral tracking for the above applications * gaming * music industry * healthcare * social media * news * internet search * online retail

bflesch 9mo ago
You don't seem to understand that one can do behavioral tracking without sharing all personal data with Facebook and Google. GDPR is mainly focused on who you share the data with. Performance tracking of core business processess including traffic sources can be done without involvement of Facebook and Google. It's totally legit to spend a career helping the folks at Facebook and Google to soak up more private information about everyone so the Trump campaign can improve targeting of the fake news advertisements for the presidential election campaigns. But it is not ethical.
- tonymet 9mo ago
  No thats not true
  - Nextgrid 9mo ago
    Disagreed. You can absolutely do all analytics, personalization and marketing in-house on your properties. You only need data sharing if you want to influence advertising on other properties or if you display others' ads on yours. Whether you want to do so is a different matter. This obviously requires (potentially custom) software and infrastructure, vs throwing in GTM and calling it a day. If there is no regulatory reason for it (there isn't - this aspect of the GDPR is not enforced), most businesses won't bother and will take the easy option.
    - tonymet 9mo ago
      1st party behavior tracking still requires consent. And nearly every business needs third party integrations. I’m still waiting for someone to give me a working example (a real business )
      - bflesch 9mo ago
        You are confidently incorrect. Consent is not needed if you only track for your own business and do not send the data to other businesses. One of the big GDPR-compliant website analytics tools, matomo, even has a dedicated page on this topic: https://matomo.org/blog/2021/10/matomo-exempt-from-tracking-consent-in-france/ https://matomo.org/blog/2021/10/matomo-exempt-from-tracking-... "Matomo has also been approved by the French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) as one of the select few web analytics tools that can be used to collect data without tracking consent." more info: https://matomo.org/gdpr-analytics/ https://matomo.org/gdpr-analytics/
        tonymet 9mo ago
        You linked the wrong page
        bflesch 9mo ago
        technically the quote was included on the linked page, but I added a second link to make it more clear :)
        tonymet 9mo ago
        i meant the subject matter. a long list of specs doesn't help the discussion. Just give an example. If this hypothetical solution is so easy, why are examples hard to come by?
      - Nextgrid 9mo ago
        The level of "tech" for a lot of trade and local businesses is often just a mobile phone and word of mouth, no online advertising industrial complex necessary. Those are still very real businesses. When advertising is used it's likely "old school" advertising with no tracking or analytics. Ironically, if you are looking for a tradesman and do stumble upon an online ad or very polished web presence, be wary as it's basically guaranteed to lead to a boiler room full of scammers who will overcharge you and farm out the actual work to the lowest bidder. Sample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locksmith_scam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locksmith_scam
Hnrobert42 9mo ago
B2B SaaS
- tonymet 9mo ago
  Sales, marketing, CS, self-service all need behavioral tracking. Can you share a practical example?
  - Hnrobert42 9mo ago
    You asked for the websites that I worked for. I am saying the B2B SaaS sites that I have supported didn't use behavioral tracking. I can't share the exact sites due to NDAs.
    - tonymet 9mo ago
      how did they do sales, marketing, CS without behavioral tracking?

Nextgrid 9mo ago

> website that made money that way Some of those scenarios are dubious as to whether they actually bring profit and "make money". They can very well be a net loss and are merely there to justify the job of the advertising/marketing/analytics/etc team, who is conveniently charge of crunching those numbers and obviously would never put any adverse numbers forward. Same thing in advertising - there's a lot of middlemen in the industry that are happy to take their cut, cook the numbers and look the other way despite no actual impact on sales. So while I don't disagree these things can make money when in the right hands and done in moderation, the reality is that there's a shit ton of waste and deadweight in the industry. It may very well be that the actual (vs self-reported) profit from ad/marketing efforts is negative and merely covers the paychecks of said ad/marketing teams.