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A comment on Reddit now tracks all outbound link clicks by default, existing users opted in. Parent comment

Re:Reddit now tracks all outbound link clicks by default, ex... by bruce_one on Friday July 08, 2016 @01:33AM (#12053709)
From a tracking perspective, I'm not (particularly) fussed by it (although it's not my favourite if it's not anonymised); but when I can actively see the bounce address before it starts loading the destination page I find it very frustrating (because it's clear to me that the tracking is slowing down my browsing experience).

(Bounces seem like they should be quick, but often seem not to be -- and if I'm sitting there with a bounce page open rather than the article I want to read when I've just run out of reception, it's super lame (in my mind: infinitely lame).)

From a statistics perspective, I often find an article elsewhere and then come here to vote for it (or submit it) -- so it's inaccurate from that perspective.

Ultimately: indifferent.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit now tracks all outbound link clicks by default, ex... by jupenur on Friday July 08, 2016 @02:10AM (#12053833)
Is there a reason to do something like this using a bounce address? I mean, that's what at least all the big players seem to be doing, but couldn't you just as well use something like A PING [1] or some sort of Ajax pingback? There's browser compatibility of course, but supporting old IEs shouldn't be critical for something like this.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a#...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit now tracks all outbound link clicks by default, ex... by bruce_one on Friday July 08, 2016 @02:50AM (#12053947)
Hmm...

I know a few sites that do it (including Google and DDG); so I guess some people feel it's the best way to do it?

Edit: Ping doesn't look to be in the HTML5 spec anymore, maybe that's got something to do with it?

https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/single-page.ht...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit now tracks all outbound link clicks by default, ex... by jupenur on Friday July 08, 2016 @03:47AM (#12054101)
> Ping doesn't look to be in the HTML5 spec anymore

Interesting, I didn't know that. And now that I look at it, ping is only supported in Chrome and Opera, which explains it even better. I would still expect there to be some other alternatives to bounce addresses, though.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Reddit now tracks all outbound link clicks by default, ex... by foota on Friday July 08, 2016 @02:28AM (#12053882)
Holy shit that's a thing
[ Parent | on HN ]