This site is pretty greedy... much to the userbase's detriment.

[hydranix]

This is a screenshot from my netbook of tomshardware a few seconds after arriving from a google search.


If you don't use Ghostery, you're probably wondering what that purple box is doing dominating the far right of my screen.

A brief explanation of what Ghostery is:

Spoiler

Ghostery is a browser tool available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, as well as a standalone app available for iOS. It scans the page for trackers - scripts, pixels, and other elements - and notifies you of the companies whose code is present on the webpage you are visiting. Usually, these trackers aren’t visible, and they are often hard to find in the page source code. Ghostery allows you to learn more about these companies and their practices, and block the page elements from loading if the user chooses.

I've actually never seen, in several years of using this addon, so many hits. That's 43 individual trackers built into that one web page. The page source made me want to vomit.


Is it really worth it to distribute the browsing habits and information of the user's who use this site to that many different companies who's sole purpose is to make money off us?



"Accuen Media" just one of the companies this site, along with thousands of others eagerly distributes intelligence on you.

Josh Jacobs CEO Accuen Media gives accurate assessment.




I logged in to avoid the trackers... but was still bombarded by tons of them.
Further I updated ghostery to add a few more trackers to it's block list.
I use my computer from behind a local proxy, which blocks ads, trackers, and other undesired web-garbage.

Just to make this post, here's what I got...

 

[jpishgar]

Hey there,

Happy to respond to this. Firstly, most of those aren't ad-related, but rather metrics on our side to tell us whether or not we're giving you what you want in terms of content. The beacons are also allowed to call out others depending on circumstance, so the 43 some odd you have showing there is a bit on the high end. As you mention, when you are logged in there are far, far fewer.

Our content and to a greater extent our community is geared towards what we know about our audience. I get a ton of information from you guys just talking to you on a daily basis, but there are metrics that simply can't be acquired any other way. Google Analytics, social media interactions - you name it, it's being eyeballed. The alternative is to have a site run by a network in the total dark about what the audience wants or is looking at. We don't totally tailor everything to metrics and statistics, but it does tell us what's desired, and there's adjustments based on that.

(Note on this subject, there's always debate between the "Click-bait" style headlines of '48 Things you NEVER would believe about Graphics Cards' and the more 'eat-your-vegetables' white paper dissertations on structural integrity aspects of form factors for NICs.)

There are also a few beacons there to help us understand where we stand in relation to other sites. ComScore and Nielsen tell us how we are doing in contrast to other sites like ours. None of these beacons, or the others, load *before* the full page has loaded, so load times are not impacted. User experience is first and foremost to us.

I hope this has helped explain a few of the reasonings behind these - and if you feel you need to disable them to effectively use the site, by all means. I've sent your feedback along to the team, as well, and we may be streamlining/condensing some of the analytics in the near future, too.

-JP