I’m glad to see browsers getting serious about removing trackers from the web but I fear this is starting a cat and mouse game with trackers. uMatrix works so well because trackers are on obvious domains like google-analytics. I think if browsers start blocking these 3rd party trackers than websites will move everything 1st party and use webpack to bundle one mega js file that includes the essential stuff and the trackers. They can also proxy all requests and cookies through their own server and then send it off to trackers. None of that is hard but it’s not done because it isn’t needed yet.
Trackers also have the upper hand in that they can rapidly change without fear of breaking other websites.
Another reason it isn’t done, from what I understand, is that advertisers don’t trust content providers. They want a third-party to verify that the impressions (or the tracking data) they’re getting are reasonably genuine. I don’t think you’re wrong, but I do think there’s a little more standing in the way of that particular “nuclear option” than laziness.
In that case there might be a rise of ad networks that bundle their trackers with jquery or some other JS library that is impossible to block without breaking the websites. There is just an insane amount of money in tracking that I don’t think it will be easily shut down.
I also worry about the arms race. My hope is this plays out similarly to how the spam wars went over a decade ago— The Good Guys band together and use technology to reduce the baddies to a buzzing noise rather than drowning out a decent mode of communication.
If you’re on a slow connection and disable tracking mostly because it makes your browsing faster, then this doesn’t sound terrible. Ghostery just found 24 trackers on cnn.com (some of which presumably loads other trackers, because if I pause blocking it finds 34). Bundling these into one “mega js” include should actually improve things for people who don’t use any blockers.
Regarding proxying requests, I think that would make site owners stop and think a bit more about whether they really need 30+ trackers on their site. I think a lot of these are included because the barrier to entry is so low, so raising it can only be good.
this explicitly seem to NOT target Google and Facebook as they will make sure they load “fast” according to whatever metric. So the biggest parties involved in systematically violating user privacy won’t be affected by this. I guess it at least improves the situation somewhat for some users on some sites.
As long as Firefox (Mozilla) won’t or can’t bite the hand that feeds it, things won’t improve substantially.
This raises some concerns for me, since umatrix does essentially the same thing (blocking third-party web requests), and it can break some sites until I fiddle with the access controls for that site.
The opening paragraph implies they’re going to block trackers, but they’re careful to only mention “unchecked tracking” and “unchecked data collection,” not tracking and data collection in general. Are Google and Facebook doing checked or unchecked data collection? Who decides that?
And blocking content to improve performance is somewhat orthogonal to blocking trackers to improve privacy. Blocking all trackers would give both better privacy and performance, so why only block slow ones? And who decides how slow is too slow?
It’s better than nothing, but there’s not much benefit if if I have to install uBlock and other extensions anyway.
I’m glad to see browsers getting serious about removing trackers from the web but I fear this is starting a cat and mouse game with trackers. uMatrix works so well because trackers are on obvious domains like google-analytics. I think if browsers start blocking these 3rd party trackers than websites will move everything 1st party and use webpack to bundle one mega js file that includes the essential stuff and the trackers. They can also proxy all requests and cookies through their own server and then send it off to trackers. None of that is hard but it’s not done because it isn’t needed yet.
Trackers also have the upper hand in that they can rapidly change without fear of breaking other websites.
Another reason it isn’t done, from what I understand, is that advertisers don’t trust content providers. They want a third-party to verify that the impressions (or the tracking data) they’re getting are reasonably genuine. I don’t think you’re wrong, but I do think there’s a little more standing in the way of that particular “nuclear option” than laziness.
In that case there might be a rise of ad networks that bundle their trackers with jquery or some other JS library that is impossible to block without breaking the websites. There is just an insane amount of money in tracking that I don’t think it will be easily shut down.
At some point, we’ll have to move away from simple block listing based on domains, yup. It’s an arms race, though. I agree. :-/
I also worry about the arms race. My hope is this plays out similarly to how the spam wars went over a decade ago— The Good Guys band together and use technology to reduce the baddies to a buzzing noise rather than drowning out a decent mode of communication.
The spam wars did have collateral damage though: it’s a lot harder to host a mail server than it used to be.
We “won” the mail spam war by dodging it. Email recentralized dramatically.
IMHO it’s also a loss.
If you’re on a slow connection and disable tracking mostly because it makes your browsing faster, then this doesn’t sound terrible. Ghostery just found 24 trackers on cnn.com (some of which presumably loads other trackers, because if I pause blocking it finds 34). Bundling these into one “mega js” include should actually improve things for people who don’t use any blockers.
Regarding proxying requests, I think that would make site owners stop and think a bit more about whether they really need 30+ trackers on their site. I think a lot of these are included because the barrier to entry is so low, so raising it can only be good.
Great news, tried firefox today, considering switch from Chrome. Containers seems to be a powerful feature.
It’s an amazing feature. I use containers in development to use my website as different kinds of users.
this explicitly seem to NOT target Google and Facebook as they will make sure they load “fast” according to whatever metric. So the biggest parties involved in systematically violating user privacy won’t be affected by this. I guess it at least improves the situation somewhat for some users on some sites.
As long as Firefox (Mozilla) won’t or can’t bite the hand that feeds it, things won’t improve substantially.
This raises some concerns for me, since umatrix does essentially the same thing (blocking third-party web requests), and it can break some sites until I fiddle with the access controls for that site.
I’m sure there’ll be a way to unblock temporarily, just as the existing tracking protection allows you to do. - or am I misreading your concern?
Some of those things you can already test in Nightly and I’m happy to forward your bug reports.
The opening paragraph implies they’re going to block trackers, but they’re careful to only mention “unchecked tracking” and “unchecked data collection,” not tracking and data collection in general. Are Google and Facebook doing checked or unchecked data collection? Who decides that?
And blocking content to improve performance is somewhat orthogonal to blocking trackers to improve privacy. Blocking all trackers would give both better privacy and performance, so why only block slow ones? And who decides how slow is too slow?
It’s better than nothing, but there’s not much benefit if if I have to install uBlock and other extensions anyway.