Comment by wackget | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wackget | Hacker News Reader

There's such a beautiful irony in reading about unfettered data mining on a website (theverge.com) which connects to *37* third-party domains when displaying the article:

1. ak.sail-horizon.com

2. amazon-adsystem.com

3. api.parsely.com

4. c.amazon-adsystem.com

5. cdn.concert.io

6. concert.io

7. coral.coralproject.net

8. coralproject.net

9. csp.withgoogle.com

10. d35xxde4fgg0cx.cloudfront.net

11. duet-cdn.vox-cdn.com

12. google.com

13. googleoptimize.com

14. googletagmanager.com

15. googletagservices.com

16. gstatic.com

17. ingest.sentry.io

18. js.memberful.com

19. memberful.com

20. micro.rubiconproject.com

21. moatads.com

22. narrativ.com

23. o4682.ingest.sentry.io

24. parsely.com

25. polyfill.io

26. rubiconproject.com

27. sail-horizon.com

28. sentry.io

29. static.narrativ.com

30. theverge.coral.coralproject.net

31. vox-cdn.com

32. www.google.com

33. www.googleoptimize.com

34. www.googletagmanager.com

35. www.googletagservices.com

36. www.gstatic.com

37. z.moatads.com

P.S. list courtesy of the uMatrix browser extension

I see 156 distinct 3rd parties on my side if I disable the content blocker so as to let the second-, third- and nth-waves of JavaScript execute:

https://imgur.com/a/lZbUqnQ

Wow that is truly shameful. P.S. thanks for uBlock Origin and uMatrix

I wonder how many of those companies are YC alum?

The amount of redundancy on that list is hurting the point you’re trying to make.

In terms of tracking double/quadruple etc counting the same company isn’t meaningful. So, once you start noticing it the list seems significantly shorter than it actually is (2. amazon-adsystem.com vs 4. c.amazon-adsystem.com). Worse, 5 of them are the same domain with www. in front (12. google.com and 32. www.google.com) which most people subconsciously see as the same thing.

Therefore, a slightly curated list comes off as more impactful:

1 amazon-adsystem.com 2 concert.io 3 coralproject.net 4 d35xxde4fgg0cx.cloudfront.net 5 google.com 6 memberful.com 7 moatads.com 8 narrativ.com 9 parsely.com 10 polyfill.io 11 rubiconproject.com 12 sail-horizon.com 13 sentry.io 14 vox-cdn.com 15 z.moatads.com

PS: I mean Google representing 10 domains on your list does say something, but it’s only tangential to tracking.

New outlets are constantly trashing “Silicon Valley” for apparently providing them with a non trivial portion of their revenue stream.

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