Still using e-mail? Marketers say you're part of DARK SOCIAL E-mail and SMS hold-outs are a danger to the Internet because they foul up media giants' tracking, according to analysts with an interest in flogging social tracking services to media giants. If you're old enough, you'll remember that if you wanted to tell a friend – or a group of friends – about an interesting link, you'd e- …
Interesting. I am only showing four in Ghostery (with everything turned on for blocking,) on the forums:
Data Point Media, DoubleClick, Google Analytics (obligatory), and Taboola.
The story has 11: Data Point Media, DoubleClick, Facebook Connect, Google Analytics, Google+ Platform, LinkedIn Widgets, Outbrain, Reddit, StumbleUpon Widgets, Taboola, and Twitter Button.
I have ABP turned off for El Reg so I can help pay my way.
I wonder if your ISP is injecting additional trackers? Or maybe I have some being filtered up-stream. (I am posting from a hot-spot without a threat management device, so who knows.)
I try to be a "kind reader" and leave the ads un-blocked, but any day now the new habit of auto-play video ads at full volume is going to push me over the edge. Worse, they don't just auto-play right when I load so I can turn them off. No, they spurt little bits of random audio so I'm not sure what's happening or what to silence. Even, I think, when I've shifted to another tab. FFX 29.0.1 MacBook Air, OS 10.8.5, if a Reg IT-boffin cares to check it out.
"I try to be a "kind reader" and leave the ads un-blocked, but any day now the new habit of auto-play video ads at full volume is going to push me over the edge..."
I'm amazed that they're pulling that shit again, after all the hell-raising about fifteen years or so ago. About twenty years ago, when I first moved over the Web design from print work, one of the first things I learned is that auto-playing embedded media was a big, fat no-no.
Luckily, I see pretty much none of that crap as I'm running SeaMonkey with ABP, FlashBlock, and NoScript.
I've compromised: it's off for the forums where the ads don't suck too hard, but I can't bear the adds on the main page. Given El Reg's target demographic, I do wonder if anyone actually sees their ads, presumably the fact that so few do is why they have to be so obnoxious...
(Edit: I've always vaguely wondered why they don't have a donate button or a paid for ad free version or some such: I use the site that much I'd part with a token amount at least)
I've compromised: it's off for the forums where the ads don't suck too hard
Except for that Microsoft Cloud one. The big blue panel that takes up most of the vertical real-estate on my laptop's screen. Bah.
I use the site that much I'd part with a token amount at least
As would I.
Vic.
I've always vaguely wondered why they don't have a donate button or [....]
FWIW, maybe a year ago I e-mailed to ask where I could buy a subscription, as I do for LWN.net (the former Miss Linux Weekly News). I got a nice response saying, effectively, don't sweat it.
I guess they're doing a good business in whitepapers? In any case, I want my micropayments, so I can still pay something for the sites I don't want to pay $15/month to. (Beer, 'cause I'd definitely buy them one.)
Pfft. It's pigeon post for me.
Oh, I go the high-tech route: I prefer to share using entanglement - only with beer instead of qubits! Essentially, I use two (or more) pints of beer that became entangled in the keg to communicate with nearby mates by periodically sampling the quantum foam on the top. It's not faster than light of course, but it does prevent undetectable eavesdropping (and as a side-effect it does observably alter space-time if repeated sufficiently in a short amount of time)...
You run it through a gargoyle who functions as an equivalent of a wrapper before the message goes to the semaphores.
The NSA are trying to breed decrypting goshawks but those have so far produced nothing but indiscriminate poop, because of which project funding will be increased by 137% in the next Home Security budget.
This push-driven model of advertising is increasingly reminding me of the cancer-style business rules of America.
American companies are basically legally obliged to grow as cancerously as possible. If they can't grow fast enough, then they get acquired or go bankrupt. At root, this is driven by the business model of a few extremely rich people who bribe the politicians to write the rules of the business game that way. It even makes a sick kind of sense when you consider their overwhelming problem. They "need" more money, and their problem is that there is NEVER enough money to satisfy their need.
As it applies in the push-driven advertising world, the "need" is for more of our time and attention, and they can NEVER get enough, no matter how many intrusions and privacy invasions they devise.
There are solutions, and some of them are obvious, but I think we need to start by rethinking economics. Money is not the only significant entity in the universe. Amazingly enough, time has a kind of fundamental equality for all of us. My 24-hour day is the same quantity as the day of Bill Gates or the Koch brothers or even a house plant. Disclaimer, I'm not equating those three (or five) entities. It's the TIME flow that is the same.
No. US companies are absolutely NOT legally required to do shit but follow their own rules, make their regulatory filings and not (get caught) breaking any laws. The bit about fiduciary responsibility is a generic catch all that sounds good but is completely meaningless. Don't buy into that crap. The reality is probably what you suspected though, they're just a bunch of greedy dicks. That's a personal decision though. The variable length arm of the law is not a factor.
Well they would, wouldn't they?
Having repeatedly claimed that their ad campaign, social wave, or latest clumsy grab for attention on behalf on clients was worth the fees charged, but with 'social' measurements showing a mere fraction of the positive effect desired, they've found an 'explanation' that makes everything better (for them).
That campaign wasn't a borborygmal bomb, it actually generated 400% more positive comments that we couldn't measure! And as an industry expert publication, The Register, outlined, further modes of unmeasurable communication most likely enlarged the audience for your message!
Why, we ought to have charged you more for our services. But now that we have the existing working relationship that would be unseemly, yes? Anyway, for your next campaign we were thinking "flying monkeys, but the cute kind".
Good. I don't want to be. I prefer having friends whom aren't Attention Whoring Drama Queens whom feel the need to regurgitate their every bodily function & misfired mental synapse to the world. I like going to TheBigBlueRoom, frolicking in TheEvilSunlight, and breathing unfiltered oxygen that doesn't taste of Server Refrigerants.
So I send things via email & SMS, and that means you can't DataMine it for marketing & monetization? Oh boo-fucking-hoo. Good. I don't want your ads anyway. I use a Hosts file to block your site, deny cookies by default, and make sure to scrub those headers so the only thing you know about me is that I arrived on a Windows machine with IE. Beyond that, you don't need to know where I've been, what link I used to get there, load a billion beacons & webbugs, nor any of the other exabytes of other slimy crap you try to gather information about me without my explicit permission to do so.
If I'm ordering something from you, then you get the data *I* feel like sharing, but even that will be given in such a way as to make identifying where it came from obscenely easy should it find it's way into your third party affiliates' hands. Or did you think my name was really "AmazonDotCom ThatBigCommerceSiteThatStartsWithA"?
I'll stick to using Copy+Paste, dropping it into Notepad, scrubbing it for any tracking crap, then C+P'ing the results to an email. It gives me the chance to share it with my friends, and make it so they can (if they like) visit your site for more info, but NOT give you any idea of how they got there or why. And that's the way we like it.
*Shakes a palsied fist* Now get off my Internet Lawn! =-)p
I'm with you in spirit - you can't beat text/plain for general communication. Encrypt or use another channel when required. The trackers and beacons are a cancer on the internet and their use somewhat shortsighted. I used to be far more tolerant of them than I am now: as a result virtually all are blocked by default.
But when it comes to statistics - I'm not interested per se in where you've been and what browser you personally have - but there is value in the aggregate data.
No. It's anti-social behaviour and you should be locked up for it. After all, you could be a terrorist. Better not take chances. You're just too different.
There there is voice communication, which will be termed illegal and direct human contact is reason for execution. Welcome to your future - brought you by avarice.
Hmmm avarice? After Royal Mail briefly became consignia, we all knew that silly names were in. We have an Aviva, amongst other ridiculous company names.
I'm rather taken by Avaris. I shall be registering the company today. Now to work out our business model? A hedge fund perhaps? Marketing? Perhaps a technology company that hoovers up everybody else's expensively generated online content, then attaches adverts to it. Nah, that'd never work...
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