<story><title>Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M</title><url>https://www.axios.com/scoop-facebook-to-buy-giphy-for-400-million-4a75a359-833b-484d-b15b-87e94d3de017.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cosmie</author><text>Read the privacy policy[1].&lt;p&gt;Think of Giphy images as a giant, organically shared version of web tracking software. Which complements the coverage of the FB Pixel[2] well, as it worms its way into privacy-conscious areas they might not have FB Pixel coverage such as private communications and security&amp;#x2F;privacy-minded apps. And without implementing something like a proxy server to pre-cache&amp;#x2F;sanitize images and strip tracking identifiers in both directions, it&amp;#x27;s a tracking vector that&amp;#x27;s hard to keep out of your app without introducing user friction.&lt;p&gt;Given that cynical viewpoint, the valuation makes a ton of sense.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.giphy.com&amp;#x2F;hc&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;360032872931-GIPHY-Privacy-Policy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.giphy.com&amp;#x2F;hc&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;360032872931-GIP...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.facebook.com&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;742478679120153?id=1205376682832142&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.facebook.com&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;742478679120153?id=12...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>dumbfounder</author><text>Congrats to Giphy, but honestly it baffles me they are worth this much money. Do they actually bring in decent revenue, or was this all about eyeballs? Is this content even decently monetizable?&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am the jaded creator of Twicsy, a Twitter picture engine with many millions of visitors over its lifetime, and I apparently missed the boat on this trends and had to shut it down.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Thorentis</author><text>Woah, that&amp;#x27;s a great point. Imagine sharing a gif in Signal and still being tracked by Facebook because every person that loads it needs to first download it from FB servers.&lt;p&gt;It really is getting to the point that if you want privacy, don&amp;#x27;t touch anything owned by the top 5 tech companies. Better yet, only use Open Source. I never used to be a OSS only person, but the past few months I&amp;#x27;ve started to go that way.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook to Buy Giphy for $400M</title><url>https://www.axios.com/scoop-facebook-to-buy-giphy-for-400-million-4a75a359-833b-484d-b15b-87e94d3de017.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cosmie</author><text>Read the privacy policy[1].&lt;p&gt;Think of Giphy images as a giant, organically shared version of web tracking software. Which complements the coverage of the FB Pixel[2] well, as it worms its way into privacy-conscious areas they might not have FB Pixel coverage such as private communications and security&amp;#x2F;privacy-minded apps. And without implementing something like a proxy server to pre-cache&amp;#x2F;sanitize images and strip tracking identifiers in both directions, it&amp;#x27;s a tracking vector that&amp;#x27;s hard to keep out of your app without introducing user friction.&lt;p&gt;Given that cynical viewpoint, the valuation makes a ton of sense.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.giphy.com&amp;#x2F;hc&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;360032872931-GIPHY-Privacy-Policy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.giphy.com&amp;#x2F;hc&amp;#x2F;en-us&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;360032872931-GIP...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.facebook.com&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;742478679120153?id=1205376682832142&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.facebook.com&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;help&amp;#x2F;742478679120153?id=12...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>dumbfounder</author><text>Congrats to Giphy, but honestly it baffles me they are worth this much money. Do they actually bring in decent revenue, or was this all about eyeballs? Is this content even decently monetizable?&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I am the jaded creator of Twicsy, a Twitter picture engine with many millions of visitors over its lifetime, and I apparently missed the boat on this trends and had to shut it down.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cced</author><text>Does the fact that it is integrated into iOS keyboard have any implications? WlWhat kind of data does this have access to when I send gifs from iOS keyboard?</text></comment>