[riogordo2go]

I'm using the matomo self hosted version and like it overall. I love you can track all outbound clicks without having to specifically add Dom elements to outbound links to make this possible. Unfortunately matomo is blocked just like Google Analytics by every ad/tracking blocker. Doesn't matter if you host it yourself and only track global stats vs tracking users across the web like GA does. The only solution seems to be writing your own analytics.

[belorn]

At this point in history, tracking on the web is no longer a trusted activity where people can assume that the person behind the tracking is doing it for benevolent purposes. It's the same thing with email and spam, especially when attachments are involved.

Writing your own analytics can give some additional benefits in that you are only collected what you need while taking into considerations your users needs. I expect however that in time browsers will block more and more by default, similar in how email clients and services has progressed in their arm race with spam.

[jeroenhd]

Why spend time undermining people's preferences?

[riogordo2go]

Because I think most people who use something like ublock don't want to see ads or have their privacy violated by being followed around the web using third party trackers.

A site owner observing some general, anonymized stats like visitor and page count, which outbound links are clicked, os, screen size, time on page and what have you is quite different. I understand a blocker must go all the way and cannot distinguish between these cases. Hence my effort to find an alternative.

[nolok]

Most people who are against trackers are not against the website they visit getting valuable information about which page they use or not, or the order in which they use each page to figure out which path work or not, etc ...

They are against the website chosing to not pay for it and instead getting it for free in exchange for giving all that data to a 3rd party (like GA / Google), who then uses it for its own purpose.

Doesn't mean no people are against that first scenario too, but then they better not make an account, visit several pages in a row on the same website or want to use a cart, or essentially anything beyond a static website.

Both scenarios are widely different, and convincing people on both side (even both extreme) of that line that the line doesn't exists is one of the greatest and most successfull trick tracking companies have played.

[gumby]

An ad/tracking blocker could discriminate between privacy-protecting trackers and spyware, but it would not be worth the time in practice.

Such a distinction would need an option and have to be on by default. Most people use the “out of the box” config, so only a few people (like me) would enable honest tracking.

The blockers would have to keep up with this option to make sure the thing they allow hadn’t switched to evil mode.

And so on. Basically another case where bad actors like google poisoned the well.

[RHSeeger]

If I build a web site, and it is my preference to know what pages get clicks on what elements (presumably, so I can make my site better)... whose preference gets priority; mine or my users? It's not as black and white as your question makes it sound.

[gregmac]

It kind of is black and white, from technology point of view.

You, the website owner, can control what your server does in response to HTTP requests a client makes. You control what data is sent, and under what conditions you'll send that data (ie: presence of a valid session cookie, correct username/password, cryptographly signed request, etc).

I, the user owning a computer, get to control what my computer does. I run a web browser, and can choose what happens in response to data your site sends me via HTTP.

Most notably, your site can send some javascript, but my computer doesn't have to run it. My computer can also selectively block what it does, including limiting its access to initiate web requests to other sites.

Anything beyond this is artificial, such as laws like DMCA or CFAA.

[RHSeeger]

Your response seems to completely miss the point of the thread you're replying to. The discussion in question was, effectively

>>> You can write your own code to gather statistics

>> You should respect your user's desires and not gather statistics

> The users aren't the only ones with desires

Sure, whether or not you "can" do it is black and white (and a game of whack-a-mole many times), but whether or not you "should" do it is very much a gray area.

[gumby]

The users have the ultimate authority whether you like it or not: they don’t have to read your whole page, they don’t have to look at that image (or even load it), they don’t even have to go to your site if their friends tell them not to.

It’s like going to pee when an ad appeared on TV back when TV was a thing. The broadcaster and advertiser had no control.

I am sympathetic to your desire (I’m assume your desire comes from a good place),* but at the end of the day I think we want to live in a world where the people are the important part.

* in my experience the best sales people really do believe the prospective customer does want what they are selling, be it pantyhose, homeopathic drugs, or specially formulated window washing fluid.

[EGreg]

I don’t get it, how can they stop you from recording this on your own server?

Are you talking about CNAME cloaking? Pretty sure Apple only cares if one specific server gets all the CNAMEs. It doesn’t block CNAMEs in general.

[RHSeeger]

I thought that was the whole point of what was being said; that things like metrics (what on the page gets clicked on) are getting blocked. Bear in mind, I'm not just talking about what pages get loaded. There's more to "clicked on the page" than just page loading.

[jhpacker]

ITP now also degrades first party server-set cookies to 7 days where the first part of the IPs don't match. So if you're using CNAMEs for your measurement and the you have a.a.x.x and b.b.x.x it will downgrade.

[EGreg]

Link?

[jhpacker]

https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/pull/5347

[chpatrick]

You can usually rename the tracker to something that's not on the blocklist.

[riogordo2go]

That used to work but current block filters analyse js variables and url parameters and are much harder to circumvent.

[teekert]

Is it also blocked when you don't even enable cookies? You loose some accuracy, but clients can't prevent ending up in your logs and they have to share some info with the server.

[soared]

> tracking users across the web like GA does

What does this mean?

[riogordo2go]

At least in prior Google Analytics versions, a third party cookie was used, giving the possibility to link you to every site that implements Google Analytics. But Google explicitly states not to do this, so you are correct in calling me out here.

[jhpacker]

GA4 still uses the doubleclick cookie. It also encourages the use of Google Signals and runs measurement requests off of the main google.com domain to help it track users based upon their Google login.

[nolok]

If site A and site B both uses GA, then GA track them across both internally for their stats (and it helps google in figuring out the same user has interest A and interest B).

Matomo promises to not do the same link across properties on their cloud hosted version.