[quesera]

I didn't downvote him, but I can understand why others might.

His comment seems willfully ignorant of the problem, which is that Ghostery calls itself a tracker-blocker, but squirrels that obviously-desirable config option away under "advanced" settings.

If Ghostery was on our side, really and truly, that would be the default. Indeed, it probably wouldn't even be an option.

Of course when the tracker list is updated, I want to block the new ones!

No post on HN, no matter how helpful, correct, and civil, changes that this operating model is essentially a trick.

I just spent 45 seconds explaining it, but it would have been faster, and pretty defensible, to just downvote.

On the other hand, nuking his comment into gray-land would obscure useful instructions for making Ghostery do what it is assumed to do in the first place. So I agree, downvoting here is destructive.

[aroch]

> His comment seems willfully ignorant of the problem, which is that Ghostery calls itself a tracker-blocker, but squirrels that obviously-desirable config option away under "advanced" settings.

Err, the option under Advanced just lets you set it to auto-block new elements as they're added. When you first install Ghostery, the walk through lets you pick that option as well without having to be "advanced" (oo, scare quotes!) in your preference setting.

[quesera]

"advanced" here is a string literal, not an adjective, so it belongs in quotes.

[fixanoid]

Quesera, this is a good point I didn't cover.

Ghostery does not call itself a tracker-blocker, our users do. This is an obvious oversight for most users, and its somethign that we will address, but at this time, Ghostery is designed to reveal the invisible web and give user the control over it, not make decisions for the users...

As far as the feature, at the implementation time, we've queried a set of users that agreed that when new trackers are added, there is no need to let the user know until s/he encounters it for the first time and reviews it. Obviously, this is another setting we will be moving away from advanced and into wizard so the users may review and select this option at install time.

[quesera]

> Ghostery does not call itself a tracker-blocker, our users do.

Sorry, I cannot accept that answer.

From your home page, in big letters, right now:

https://www.ghostery.com/

  > Knowledge + Control = Privacy
  >
  >    See which companies are tracking you
  >    Block over    1 6 0 0    trackers
  >    Learn how they track
  >    Ghostery is FREE

What do you call yourself then?

Please be honest with us. How do you view your operation internally? What services do you provide, and to whom?

Thank you.

[fixanoid]

As I said, we are adjusting to fit what our users think rather than what we preached. The site is 2 month old, and it reflects the new updated stance, and as I said earlier, the extensions will also be updated with pre-configured settings.

I'm not sure what you mean by that question? Ghostery is a separate team inside Evidon with full control over what we do. I'm one of the people managing the product and my customers are users of Ghostery. As such, my primary goal isn't improved blocking, its education - to let users know that they are being tracked, to provide relevant info on who are the trackers and where to find out more about them, and finally, provide control in the form of blocking.

[quesera]

I appreciate you taking the time to reply in these threads.

I won't needle you with follow-up questions, but for the record, I think there's more than a little cognitive dissonance here regarding customers and conflicting goals.

This is why people who spend time thinking seriously about the issue are concerned about Ghostery, but I accept that "trust" doesn't pay the bills.

[fixanoid]

Thanks for asking relevant questions and I agree about the dissonance. Our teams job is to make sure they are minimized and we're working on fixing those things. Something to keep in mind tho is that our team is very small (4 people), so it takes time to get stuff done.