On User Tracking and Industry Standards on Privacy

Inspired by Eva PenzeyMoog's new book, Jeremy highlights the widespread user tracking problem in the industry:

There is a sentence in the book that impressed me:

“It is thought that any unethical behavior in current industry practices is acceptable, and this idea is very common and very dangerous in the tech world.”

This sentence caught my attention because I have been thinking about certain practices: they are universal and widely accepted, but they make me feel very problematic. These practices involve tracking users.

At the end of the article, it pointed out directly:

We should stop tracking users because this is wrong.

I noticed this because I was involved in user tracking to some extent. For example, I have Google Analytics installed on my website. And related to the topic: I have been using it for over a decade. I mentioned this not to prove that it is acceptable, but to question it more because it is a long-standing, universal industry standard that few people question.

Since I have Google Analytics¹ installed on my website, I can observe the long-term traffic of the website from a macro perspective. Here is a 10-year data:

Or I can see that mobile traffic on the website has dropped by nearly 6% per year.

I did not send any personal information to Google Analytics. I don't know who did what - I can only see anonymous summary data. This not only violates Google's policies:

All Analytics customers are required to comply with the Analytics Terms of Service prohibit sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Analytics (such as name, social security number, email address, or any similar data) or data that permanently identify a particular device.

…But I have clearer moral boundaries about this – I’m uncomfortable. Even if the user tracking I implemented does link a specific user to a specific action, it is still so anonymous that I can't tell who did what by using the tool.

However, I understand that even such "anonymous" tracking is being questioned. For example, just because the information I send is anonymous doesn't mean that people with this data can't try to figure out who is doing what exactly.

Turning the focus to email, I do use MailChimp to send email newsletters for this website, and I don't do any special actions on the settings to increase or decrease the amount of tracking that occurs when sending the newsletter. So I can view the data like how many people I send to, how many people open it, and how many clicks there:

As I was writing this post, I was browsing the report section to see what else I could see. Oh , guess what? I can see directly who opened the email (through the person’s email address) and which links they clicked. I didn't even realize this before, but wow, that's very, very private, recognizable analytical information. I'll look at how to turn it off because it really violates my moral bottom line.

Email tracking also saw a whole new little war (not the first time, I remember when Gmail started proxying images through their own servers, thus "destroying" the hustle and bustle of precision tracker pixel images). This time, it was Apple that took more aggressive stops, and companies like MailChimp had to tell customers that this would affect their analysis:

Not only am I interested in ethical issues and long-standing satisfaction with industry norms, but I am also interested in being a real person selling advertising. I can tell you that these things are true:

• I have attended meetings about pricing and decisions are based on historical performance of the items sold, which means impressions and clicks.
• The first question I was asked about performance metrics during most of the first conversations between advertisers who held large amounts of money and publishers like me.

I think this is generally acceptable to me. When I went to the store to buy walnuts, I wondered how many walnuts I could buy for one dollar. I want the store to price walnuts based on normal economic factors such as cost and supply and demand for walnuts. Advertising buyers are walnut buyers – they want to know how the performance of ads can make the money worth it.

If I say: I don't know ? I don't know how many people have seen these ads. I don't know how many people clicked on these ads. I don't know where they come from. I don't know anything. Moreover, you don't allow it to know either. You can give me a URL for me to send to them, but it can't contain tracking parameters and we won't track its clicks.

Will I lose money? I have to tell the reader: Yes. At least in the short term. It's hard enough to attract advertisers. Being cold and unwilling to tell them how many walnuts they can buy for one dollar will make them roll their eyes and leave. In the long run, I believe this can be done. Let advertisers (and the world) be frank and very clear about your position on user tracking and that means you won't provide the numbers you get through tracking. Rely on supply and demand. Prices start at $X. If others are interested in this location, raise the price until the sale is stopped and lower the price if it is stopped. I believe this can be done.

To be honest, I'm not ready to knock over my Apple car. I have a mortgage. I have employees who have to pay their wages. I absolutely have no emergency funds to deal with the severe income shortage. If I lose most of my advertising revenue, I... fail. It's a good time to close the door. Forced to make other major life changes to deal with it. I just don't want to do this. It doesn't feel like rolling dice, because it means I might win a jackpot. But if I were to take a tough stance against advertisers and tell them I wouldn't provide any data, "winning the jackpot" for me is just a return to baseline level.

I wrote it all just to help myself think. I don't want it to sound like self-defense. If I showed up this way, I would blame myself for the inertia that has long followed what is called industry standards and it is perfectly OK to be instilled with these practices. I feel like I’m not crossing the main moral boundaries now, but I’d rather be someone who questions myself and acts in due time than blindfolded.

1. I've tried other analytics services that are more privacy-oriented, such as Plausible.

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