The Classes

submitted by fschmidt from mikraite.org

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[–]wizzwizz4 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

His alternative is basically like a cookie, just a lot more work.

And, importantly, can't be used to track individual users except in the case of a very inactive site.

Yeah, it's more work extracting the information from the data when you can't track individual users, but that's the point; Plausible operates under the model that Plausible Analytics is not to be trusted. If more systems acted like that, the web would be a better place.

but I would expect it to use cookies to track users over long time periods. I run an e-commerce website and I need to know what my users are doing over time.

Why would you possibly need to know that?

[–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

And, importantly, can't be used to track individual users except in the case of a very inactive site.

The site uses:

hash(daily_salt + website_domain + ip_address + user_agent)

But hash(website_domain + ip_address + user_agent) is like a cookie, and adding daily_salt is like a cookie that expires after a day. So there really is no difference.

but I would expect it to use cookies to track users over long time periods. I run an e-commerce website and I need to know what my users are doing over time.

Why would you possibly need to know that?

For example I want to know how long after a user visits the site do they buy.

[–]wizzwizz4 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

So there really is no difference.

Multiple profiles on one computer, private mode… all that information is just straight-up not available to Plausible. Yeah, Plausible's using the information it has got, but it's not gathering any more information than that.

For example I want to know how long after a user visits the site do they buy.

Hmm… Why?

[–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Multiple profiles on one computer - doesn't really happen anymore.

private mode - Here cookies are actually better since they respect private mode while the hash doesn't.

Knowing how long it takes users to buy gives me an idea of when to check whether some random marketing change made any difference for sales.

But let me speak more generally. Modern western culture is completely insane and everything that concerns members of modern western culture is bullshit. Covid is bullshit. Black Lives Matter is bullshit. Cookies are bullshit. HTTPS is bullshit. Etc. The real threat to security is Chrome and apps that steal your data from inside your device. Of course if you are marketing to members of modern western culture, then you have to address their insanity. So making cookies optional for analytics tracking would make sense.

[–]wizzwizz4 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Multiple profiles on one computer - doesn't really happen anymore.

I do it…

private mode - Here cookies are actually better since they respect private mode while the hash doesn't.

You're assuming that Plausible will pay attention only to the cookies, but they have all that information in the first place. Cookies would just provide an additional datapoint; and while they're not evil, how long will they stay that way? (I'm betting a while… but it's the principle of the thing.)

Modern western culture is completely insane and everything that concerns members of modern western culture is bullshit.

https://xkcd.com/2368/