[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

[EGreg]

Wow. OK, so the servers can just proxy the requests. Then what's Safari gonna do? Unless they totally eliminate all state and cookies in browsers, they can't prevent that!