> This kind of unethical behavior is going to bite the industry in the long run.

How so? It seems like this could quite easily improve reddit's content. If you're so ornery to complain about tracking outbound link clicks you probably have already blocked said tracking so it is a moot point. The rest of users (and indeed also the ornery ones!) will benefit from better content.

> How so?

When I explain modern tracking practices to normal, non-technical people that have never heard of it before, on e of the most common responses is, "Why aren't they in jail?"

A lot of people feel unauthorized tracking should be a criminal offense. They currently feel powerless to do anything about it. In the long term, breeding resentment will eventually result in people finding a way to strike back. This is how bad regulation happens.

> improve reddit's content

Reddit can ask first. Getting informed consent is not hard (opt-in). Are basic manners and politeness that hard of a concept?

> already blocked said tracking

That requires specific technical knowledge. Privacy should not be limited to a technical priesthood.

> ornery

Maybe you should stop labeling people that would like to preserve privacy as "ornery".

> "Why aren't they in jail?"

In my honest opinion, if you are using a website that I built, you've given implied consent that I can record your actions while on my site. As long as I can't trace it back to an individual, and can only view it in aggregate, I don't see the problem.

You might want to go down the super honest route (ask for permission), but there's no precedent for it, cookie disclaimer doesn't count, and it would just hurt you. Unless your target audience is a subset of HN audience or other ultra-pro-privacy users.

You didn't answer the question though, how will tracking outbound links "bite the industry in the long run"? I assume the better content will be a net positive.

Because you can't keep people dumb forever. Eventually they will learn of this tracking that's going on everywhere and then people will try to block any form of data-collection, whether it's anonymized or not.

That is really interesting and something I've never heard of. But, do you really think any (>1%) of users will ever care? I understand adblocking (and block all ads myself), but I fully support a site's decision to track with ga and gtm.

I do think that we will see a growing number of users caring. The thing is that user tracking is something completely opaque to average users. And as with anything that's opaque, users will generally listen to what smarter people say.

Now ask in any privacy-focused community whether you should block Google Analytics and you'll almost certainly be laughed out for even considering that you should not.

Add to that that there is already an industry emerging around privacy. Many anti-virus programs already today ship with anti-tracking features. This industry is very much interested in telling their users about user tracking. And they won't give the fluff-explanation of "Yes, you are being tracked, but it's for your own good." like Google and friends are trying to establish.

> users will ever care?

Then make them care.

> track with ga and gtm

That is a far bigger problem than advertising. I'm fine with sites that track the pages they serve, because that is local only. The problem is when these per-site events are aggregated into a single database.

If someone has the event log of every website you visit, not only do they have your entire reading list, they also have a very accurate picture of your pattern-of-life. Google can probably estimate e.g. when you sleep or the length of your commute simply from the timestamps of the GA events they can correlate to your account.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern-of-life_analysis

Worst case scenario, Google, FB, and the US Gov have access to that kind of data. Google/FB both say they don't record that, or destroy/change it before giving advertisers access to it.

I see your point, but realistically I don't think any organization could/would ever do this. Outside of NSA vs. Snowden type cases, but I guess that is where it really counts.