<story><title>Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links</title><url>http://thisinterestsme.com/facebook-fbclid-parameter/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>onlyrealcuzzo</author><text>Engineer here: I used to be completely anti-tracking.&lt;p&gt;Then, I started needing analytics for my own business. Without analytics, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to sell with efficiency, and therefore, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have a business. Granted, the anti-consumerist in me thinks maybe as a society we shouldn&amp;#x27;t be so concerned with our efficiency to sell. But, we live in a capitalist world, and I don&amp;#x27;t see that changing any time soon.&lt;p&gt;The way I see it now, I&amp;#x27;m less concerned about tracking than I am about how big some businesses are -- especially in this space.&lt;p&gt;At every start up I know, they use analytics, and no one is doing anything spooky. But, I&amp;#x27;m sure there&amp;#x27;s plenty of spooky stuff going on at the FAANGAMUs.</text></item><item><author>pipermerriam</author><text>There are a number of comments here who seem genuinely happy about this.  This is a perspective that is hard for me to understand, largely because I&amp;#x27;m strongly in the pro-privacy, anti-tracking ideology.&lt;p&gt;So if you are part of the group who sees this as a good thing, I&amp;#x27;m genuinely interested to understand why you see this as a good thing and whether you view the mass surveillance of the general public by advertising companies as bad?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BLKNSLVR</author><text>&amp;quot;Sell with efficiency&amp;quot; sounds a bit vampiric to me; a bit growth-at-all-costs or refusing to accept the normal costs of doing business (although I can sympathise with that mindset).&lt;p&gt;Where do you draw the line?  This is parallel to the discussion around government surveillance.  Just be cause they &amp;#x2F; you can, doesn&amp;#x27;t mean they &amp;#x2F; you should.&lt;p&gt;If Internet tracking had no potential use to governments then they&amp;#x27;d be regulating the shit out of it.  The problem is that governments want their own noses in the same trough, and so all these privacy-invasive technologies continue to be developed.  The fact that it&amp;#x27;s not illegal means that anyone with the ability to implement it can, as long as they can sleep at night.&lt;p&gt;As to solutions that could help with &amp;quot;selling efficiency&amp;quot;, maybe some kind of agreed tiers of analytics  from benign to spooky that users can opt-in &amp;#x2F; opt-out of when visiting a website or using an app.  Which GDPR is a bit of a kludgy solution for.  The problem is that it only takes one bad advertiser to break agreed rules and the trust is gone again for all advertisers.&lt;p&gt;One bad apple.&lt;p&gt;Analytics are unquestionably useful.  Collecting the data without user consent is what potentially should be regulated.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook adding “fbclid” parameter to outbound links</title><url>http://thisinterestsme.com/facebook-fbclid-parameter/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>onlyrealcuzzo</author><text>Engineer here: I used to be completely anti-tracking.&lt;p&gt;Then, I started needing analytics for my own business. Without analytics, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t be able to sell with efficiency, and therefore, I wouldn&amp;#x27;t have a business. Granted, the anti-consumerist in me thinks maybe as a society we shouldn&amp;#x27;t be so concerned with our efficiency to sell. But, we live in a capitalist world, and I don&amp;#x27;t see that changing any time soon.&lt;p&gt;The way I see it now, I&amp;#x27;m less concerned about tracking than I am about how big some businesses are -- especially in this space.&lt;p&gt;At every start up I know, they use analytics, and no one is doing anything spooky. But, I&amp;#x27;m sure there&amp;#x27;s plenty of spooky stuff going on at the FAANGAMUs.</text></item><item><author>pipermerriam</author><text>There are a number of comments here who seem genuinely happy about this.  This is a perspective that is hard for me to understand, largely because I&amp;#x27;m strongly in the pro-privacy, anti-tracking ideology.&lt;p&gt;So if you are part of the group who sees this as a good thing, I&amp;#x27;m genuinely interested to understand why you see this as a good thing and whether you view the mass surveillance of the general public by advertising companies as bad?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>8ytecoder</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d be completely ok with intent based advertising - I search for $X you show ads that are related to $X. And I&amp;#x27;m ok with measuring what percentage of those who click the ad that converts as well. However, that&amp;#x27;s not where we are today. The appetite for marketing and advertisement has grown to such a level that companies like Facebook want to know every aspect of your life so they can satisfy that appetite. Clearly a) there&amp;#x27;s a demand from companies big and small and b) it&amp;#x27;s working. Companies can still be ethical about it - like why should Facebook track every URL I visit (via the Like button)? Or, why not provide an option to opt-out of targeted ads - I don&amp;#x27;t like them and I do have friends who like them. I get it but provide an option to opt out.&lt;p&gt;The general retort I hear is what do you have to hide? Like the only thing that people want to hide are the bad and evil stuff.</text></comment>