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Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Mate, you’ve taken the pains to configure your user agent to block tracking of views and then you’re complaining that views aren’t tracked. It’s got a nice well-defined API with a sane default and you’ve decided to override it with something else. That’s fine too, but now you’re complaining that you overrode it?

As the old joke goes:

“Doctor, it hurts when I do this”

“Then don’t do it”

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You know full well that almost nobody expects their adblocker to block an *invisible view count incrementer".

EasyList also blocks tracking. I agree that no one expects their ad blocker to block view counts. But EasyList is advertised as a tracking blocker as well. And true to form, they eventually merged a change to block more tracking. So this guy is upset that his tracking blocker blocked tracking and wants YouTube to find a way to circumvent the tracking blocker? The whole thing sounds bizarre.

How is it youtube's fault that you have an extension breaking the app without your knowledge? This is just more evidence to the case that extensions shouldn't be allowed to tamper with applications.

Why not? They block all the ad attribution companies that are doing this. Is it being first that makes the google one special? Or is youtube somehow more trustworthy than the rest of google?

"Why not?" Because invisibly tallying a view count is completely different than displaying a visible advertisement.

Right, it's the same as asking why you don't expect an adblocker to block you from ordering pizza online - i.e. a stupid question. You expect adblockers to block ads and not block things that aren't ads. A lot of them block pointless analytics stuff but when this is actually an important part of site behaviour, it shouldn't be blocked.

How do you know what Google is doing with the data?

If it's using the same profiling to determine if you're unique, and sending it to the same datacenter that builds the ad profiles, how is the adblocker to know that the endpoint is really only invisibly tallying a view count?

To view the video I have to make an HTTP request for it. That request could easily contain my login name. The backend could be built to count views without a javascript callback running in my browser.

You're acting as if the way Google does it would be the _only_ way to do it. Obviously untrue.

The tracking blocker you have installed on your user agent actively attempts to block their view attribution and your solution is that you want them to bypass your tracking blocker's active and affirmative attempt to block their view attribution. You could just not actually block their view attribution if you want your views to be attributed.

I suppose Man was never meant to know Hacker News User's mind.

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