[JohnTHaller]

Many sites rely on Google Analytics to be able to do their own promotions and sponsorships, which is the only way they make money other than ads. By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor. So, you use the site resources, don't see ads and don't add to their user/page view numbers. Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc and blocking GA may break your ability to actually use the site at all (many travel sites, for instance).

[click170]

It's not like GA is the only way to gather statistics, there are other vendors and even the access logs for your server itself.

I'm not willing to let Google follow me everywhere on the internet and if that is detrimental to the sites I visit then they are welcome to block me if they detect that I'm blocking GA.

[sbierwagen]

  By blocking GA, the site doesn't see you as a visitor.

Well too bad. Maybe they should take the radical step of actually looking at their server logs.

[jedberg]

When you run a website, you have two choices: spend a bunch of time implementing log analysis and paying for all the storage necessary, or using GA, which already exists and is free. If log analytics isn't my core business, why should I spend time implementing it?

[marrs]

And if you choose GA, you accept that some people will block it, the same way they might block your javascript, your cookies, your css, your images, or anything else they don't want to download.

[gpvos]

No, you should buy something that does log analytics for you without shafting your viewers. The existence of deceptive-but-gratis services like GA means there is almost no market for proper analysis software, which is a scandal.

[TylerE]

Not to mention that GA much more elegantly handles the case of N > 1 webservers behind a front end.

[baddox]

If those are your only two choices, then you'll presumably choose the better of the two, right? So what exactly is the problem?

[jedberg]

Depends on what variable you're optimizing for. If you're optimizing for cost, then you're right, the choice is clear.

[junto]

There is a very good reason why GA is free to use. It involves building profiles of your users for Google's benefit. Don't be surprised or upset if some of your users don't want to participate in that privacy shit storm.

[DatBear]

>blocking GA may break your ability to actually use the site at all (many travel sites, for instance).

What? How does that even work? If GA goes down, their site just stops working until it's back up?

[ryan-c]

I used one site which would throw an javascript exception and break because it called part of google analytics from some other function that was needed to make the site work. I ended up opening it up in a private browsing session, and I've got my script blocker disabled there.

Yes, the site would be unusable if GA went down.

[gpvos]

Actually, because of this, I tend to temporarily disable blocking at the moment of payment, because there are too many redirects and reloads happening at that time to reliably use a blocker. It partially defeats blocking, but at least they aren't tracking me during regular browsing.

[bhouston]

The travel sites I saw blocked didn't fail because of GA blocking I believe, but they were depending on various other scripts. I believe they just had messy code that relied on callbacks from third party scripts -- some of which were blocked by uBlock.

[chris_wot]

Might be worthwhile finding a different online travel company, if they can't get this right I can't imagine what else they'll stuff up when you make a booking!

[gpvos]

Too bad for them. They should use same-domain analytics instead. Otherwise they have no chance with me.

[bhouston]

They also block the popular on-domain analystics including piwik, or at least they did.

[gpvos]

That's not so good. I actually don't use general block lists, but build my own from scratch, starting from a block-all situation.

[tshaddox]

It's pretty good. I'd rather not have a JS snippet tracking me at all, regardless of which domain it's on.

[Too]

Many sites? I've been blocking GA through ghostery for years and haven't had any problem ever. Only problem with Ghostery i've noticed is blocking Adobe Typekit and some other UI-framework i can't remember the name of, and that is extreeemly rare. Besides, as many others have said, if a site is stupid enough to rely on a third party server for analytics that is their problem, not mine, there are plenty of good analytics alternatives that can be hosted by yourself easily, and there are plenty of good websites out there that i can visit instead if one is not working without GA.

[bcg1]

Sounds like those sites need a better architecture if those things are so strategic to their business.

[pikzen]

>which is the only way they make money other than ads.

Yeah.

> So, you use the site resources

Yeah.

>don't see ads

Yeah.

> don't add to their user/page view numbers.

Yeah.

>Plus, there's the fact that lots of sites use GA to handle inter-page click tracking so they can see what paths users take to analyze UI/price sensitivity/promos/etc

Yeah.

Well you know what ? I wouldn't be doing this if ads provider didn't abuse my trust and displayed popup ads. I wouldn't be doing this if ads were actually targeted (lol jk). Early ads providers fucked it up for everyone. Not only do I hate the very principle of ads, I go out of my way to avoid them.

And most of all, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't Google Analytics. Use piwik, use whatever you want as long as it's selfhosted and doesn't report to <gigantic database of users> and I will allow it. After all, I have no way of knowing if you're selling my data back anyways. It's my computer, I pick what I want to display and which code I want to execute. You want stats ? Use your own server.

[Doctor_Fegg]

I agree absolutely. That's why I use piwik on my sites.

Unfortunately, uBlock blocks piwik all the same.

[VieElm]

> uBlock blocks piwik all the same

Good. I don't want to contribute to your analytics. I don't want ads. I just want to browse the web without being tracked. I don't care if that means you can't pay for your site, other sites will spring up that can without annoying users with ads and without tracking them.

[Doctor_Fegg]

The "other site" in the area I'm operating in is Google. So the situation is more like "other sites will continue to dominate by cross-subsidising from their core business, namely annoying users with ads and tracking them".

Is that really what you want?

[danso]

No, he wants free content without any convenience to him. He doesn't care about the so-called bigger picture, just the instant gratification he's been entitled to.

[VieElm]

This isn't true, I'm perfectly willing to pay for content. I just don't want ads and I don't want to be tracked. Thanks to browser extensions I don't have to no matter how much that hurts your feelings. You say I'm entitled but it's actually you who isn't entitled to control how the software works on my computer.

I'm perfectly willing to support business models that aren't terrible. Perhaps you might also consider users not wanting to install rootkits, spyware and adware to support content entitled? It's the same, it's a shitty experience people don't want.

[manigandham]

I'm very surprised you havent been downvoted yet.

The sad truth is that adblockers are not a good thing. The value exchange with online content is free access for ads. Adblockers are just incredibly simple to install and use which allows people to skirt this agreement without issue, however just because something is easy doesn't make it "right".

It's always interesting when people argue about privacy without really knowing what ad networks store (which is just a random ID number and some interest categories) vs what they willing give up to social networks. Not to mention that payments are not more private, in fact payments = credit cards = everything including address, birthday, purchase history etc all tied to a real identity. Browsing via ads is far more private than browsing via paid access.

[DanBC]

But you're only blocking ads and analytics? You're not making any effort to avoid the sites that track?

[baddox]

Why avoid the sites that track if it's trivial to visit those sites without getting tracked?

[DanBC]

Some of the ad-block using crowd say that this is not about getting the content and avoiding the ads - it's just about avoiding the ads. I've started asking people who use an ad-blocker if there are any sites they no longer visit.

[sbierwagen]

What? How?

If Piwik just analyzes server logs, there should be no way for uBlock to touch it.

But if by "uBlock blocks piwik" you mean "uBlock blocks the piwik javascript file" then that sounds like mission fuckin accomplished to me.

[lucideer]

piwik is essentially a self-hosted GA. So it uses JS (like GA) but tracks to a DB on your own server so the data on your visit remains private between you and the site-owner (rather than also being provided to a third-party like Google)

[seanp2k2]

Since I can't reply to the reply on this, piwik (the paid version) works just like GA and is offered as a SaaS where they store and analyze the data.

Edit: link: https://piwik.pro

[sbierwagen]

So, it's bad in exactly the same way that GA is bad: it leaks user information to a third party.

[Doctor_Fegg]

Except we're discussing the self-hosted version here ("use whatever you want as long as it's selfhosted").

[gpvos]

Yes, that's Piwik Pro. Apparently "Pro" nowadays means a downgrade, or "for simpletons".

[untog]

It's my computer, I pick what I want to display and which code I want to execute.

If you really wanted to take a principled stand you just wouldn't use those web sites. Ad blockers are just lazy activism.

[DanWaterworth]

> Ad blockers are just lazy activism.

Activism for the lazy; sounds like a good deal.

[marrs]

What has choosing what you download got to do with making a principled stand? It's like some people think that blocking ads is bad manners. I don't get it.

[kbenson]

It is bad manners.

It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people. Every person that gets the paper without the advertisements affects the newspaper bottom line. It affects it in a small way, but all together they add up. The newspaper functions because advertisers pay them, and if there's no reason for advertisers to expect their ads are seen, then there's no reason to continue paying.

[BFay]

If web ads were more like newspaper ads, I think I would find them more agreeable.

Newspaper ads don't animate and distract me from what I'm reading. When I flip to a different page in the paper I don't have to "wait ten seconds" to start reading. I've never had an ad spontaneously appear in front of the newspaper article I'm reading.

Newspaper ads don't track me, and no matter how sketchy the ad is, it doesn't put me a couple of clicks away from installing malware on my computer.

[kbenson]

I agree that ads are annoying and unpalatable, but I don't think that absolves consumers from behavior that I see as a clear responsibility of consumers to uphold their side of the bargain. We have content providers, that choose a business model that allows them to provide content without requiring payment as long as there is advertising. We then have consumers taking this content and automatically removing said advertisements. When the terms of a deal are seen as disadvantageous, it's the right of either party to not enter into that transaction. It is not their right to renege on their side of the transaction while receiving the benefit from the other party.

I understand many people do not see this as a contract between the consumer and the content provider. I just haven't heard a justification for why it's not that I can agree with. To me, it clearly is.

[click170]

> It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people.

What you've just described is me, taking the content from your site, stripping out the ads, and re-posting it on the Internet for others to consume sans advertisements. This is very clearly different from a single person using ad blockers on their own computers, and you know it.

However, this is equivalent to everyone who reads you newspaper cutting out the ads from their own newspaper before reading it. Which, perhaps, should tell you something about the ads in your paper.

[darkmighty]

No, the difference is we're distributing devices that, at no effort whatsoever, strip out all the ads. An ad blocker is literally a few clicks away on google chrome to never see ads again. His analogy is pretty solid compared to that. It's so easy to use an ad blocker that there's no reason not to, no matter how low impact the ads are. And no single user can make a measurable impact on a website's revenue through advertisements, so his actions don't have a direct content degradation impact either.

Of course, the collective actions do degrade quality. It's classical 'Tragedy of the commons' [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

[effie]

> It is bad manners.

True, it is bad for the advertiser and the ad hosting site. But it is good for the person annoyed by the ads. There is no objective value in blocking ads, it depends on the party. Since there is no objective valuation, it is not bad manners; it is merely an ability of consumers that is undesirable to advertisers and the ad hosting companies.

> It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people.

Nice try at an analogy, but removing the ads from free newspapers and giving the results to people could be seen as conspiracy harming the newspaper, because there would be party doing the removing and taking over the distribution. With online ads, nothing of this sort happens, because the consumer requests the newspaper company - not some other ad-removing party - for the newspaper article, the newspaper company sends it to him with hope he will pay attention to ads and the consumer displays only that part of the sent document which he deems worthy of his attention. He does this with help of his computer in which he is entitled to process and filter information in any way he deems useful. No organized action destroying the business is happening, the consumer himself removes the part he does not want on his computer, he does not remove ads for other people. This is virtually the same as when the person buys a newspaper in store and skips reading the ads, which everybody who would read the newspaper is entitled to do. All people are entitled to filter the information other people, companies and government try to feed them, irrespective of the channel, be it paper, audiovisual channels or the Internet. Otherwise our brains would get really dumb from all the fatuous ads.

[marrs]

You're talking about the newspaper like it somehow has a right to exist. It doesn't. It is a business and whether it succeeds or fails depends on the value it adds to its customers. In this case its customers aren't the consumers, they are the advertisers, and from what you're saying, it sounds like the consumers are prepared to go to great lengths to rid themselves of the adverts, which suggests that the customers aren't getting much value from the newspaper.

If you're telling me that disabling ads is bad manners then I put it to you that attempting to deceive the advertisers about the value of their ads is also bad manners. In fact I'm starting to wonder if it isn't my moral obligation to block adverts in order to help advertisers save money they would have otherwise wasted.

[kbenson]

I'm making no argument that they have to survive on their current business model, or that the current business model deserves to survive. I am simply stating that if you choose a content resource that does not require upfront payment but mingles their content with advertisements, there's an implicit social contract, and in some cases an explicit use policy, that defines how that transaction should proceed.

I don't see this as any different than if you were at a conference, and someone offered you a free book which you were interested in if you talked to them for thirty seconds about their product. Taking the book without hearing the pitch is not what I would consider acceptable behavior.

In all cases, it should be obvious that if you desire something (in this case, content), but are unwilling to pay the cost (in this case, viewing advertising), then the correct response is to not take the content.

Some people have made arguments about how intrusive some the the advertisement tracking is as a justification for blocking it. This is a perfectly acceptable justification for blocking that tracking, but it does nothing to address the further consumption of the content. The correct response to the abusive shopkeeper that berates you in line is not to steal his goods, but to leave the goods and refuse to give him your business.

> If you're telling me that disabling ads is bad manners then I put it to you that attempting to deceive the advertisers about the value of their ads is also bad manners.

How are you helping this issue by making it harder to tell which users are viewing advertising and which are not? In any case, the market decides this. You are just making information in the market harder to come by, making the market less efficient.

> In fact I'm starting to wonder if it isn't my moral obligation to block adverts in order to help advertisers save money that would otherwise be wasted.

Forgive me if that sounds a bit like a rationalization of your current behavior after the fact.

[nfoz]

I would pay the premium for newspapers without ads. In fact, I do -- I support news organizations that aren't driven by advertisement.

If you can't find a business model that doesn't antagonize me, then you haven't found a business model that I care to support. If capitalism is failing to provide us with even basic methods of producing quality works, then that's a problem we should tackle at a larger scale.

[kbenson]

But this isn't about you choosing to pay for a source without ads, this is about people choosing the source with ads, and then removing them. Those are entirely different things.

[baddox]

> It's the same as taking the free newspapers in your area, cutting out all the advertisements, and giving those out to people.

No, it's more like asking the newspaper publisher if you can have a version of their newspaper (for your own use) without ads, and them obliging. Blocking ads has nothing to do with redistributing someone else's content.

[kbenson]

> Blocking ads has nothing to do with redistributing someone else's content.

You're right, it's like subscribing to a service that does it for you.

> No, it's more like asking the newspaper publisher if you can have a version of their newspaper (for your own use) without ads, and them obliging.

No, if they had an easy way to enforce your viewing of ads that scaled, I think it's fairly obvious they would (as many of the blocked ads are indeed an attempt at this, such as the timed overlay). It's more like the distributor responding with both marketing material and content with the understanding you are to view the marketing material along with the content, and you routing the marketing material to the trash from the post office (or somehow tricking the system into not sending you the marketing material). The expectation you are to view the marketing material is still there, even if you've somehow removed your ability to receive it.

[gpvos]

The sites are being lazy and/or cheap by using GA. They can use piwik instead. As long as they are lazy, I have an equal right to be lazy.

[untog]

Not really, GA offers a lot more features than Piwik.

But either way, that doesn't stop ad blockers being lazy activism.

[gpvos]

Well, then the sites should buy a service that gives them more features. If the existence of GA means there is no market for such products, then GA should go away.

I have no problem with lazy activism.

[bhouston]

uBlock also blocked piwik last time I checked.

[gpvos]

That's a pity. This gives me an extra reason not to use blocklists maintained by anyone but myself. (I currently don't use uBlock, but RequestPolicy + NoScript, but am considering switching.)

[blumkvist]

More like hypocricy and self-entitlement.