This week, after almost 20 months of resisting demands from management on three continents, third-party tracking has been added to a number of the websites that I am responsible for maintaining at the day job. Every time that people had asked that Google Analytics, HotJar, or any of the other monitoring systems, I would explain why this was "a bad idea" and ask them a question: What data about our visitors do you actually need? It's a simple question but, after almost two years, I've yet to receive a single answer. People – Marketing people – insist on using the tools provided by tracking companies saying they're "industry standards" and "absolute requirements for KPI tracking".
Neither of these responses answer the question about what data is actually required, though. However, now that middle management has gone to the executive team saying they cannot do their jobs, my ability to reject implementing the trackers has pretty much evaporated. The president of the company and I have had many discussions about why I reject these things. He claims to be sympathetic. However, he also signs my paycheque. If he says something must be done, then there isn't much room for disagreement.
Two things have happened as a result of this:
- The third-party tracking is now in place, providing companies like Google, Facebook, Tosho Trading, Bing, Yimg, afi-b, and others to receive data about students and potential customers who are visiting the sites I maintain
- I have dusted off the resume
The general argument for web trackers that colleagues have used is that "it's industry standard" to use Google and other vendors to understand how people use websites. Just because something is "industry standard", though, does not make it right.
Paint used to contain lead to speed up drying, increase durability, maintain a fresh appearance, and resist corrosion caused by moisture. That was industry standard for three hundred years … until enough people suffered from high blood pressure, headaches, dizziness, diminished motor skills, fatigue, and memory loss to warrant its elimination.
Cigarette companies discovered a long time ago that adding acetaldehyde and certain types of sugars to their products made them more addictive. This was done even after these same companies knew that cigarettes were a leading cause of lung cancer. Regardless, it was industry standard to make these health-degrading products more addictive.
Web tracking is just as insidious as lead paint and cigarettes. Companies will claim that their tools are only for good, allowing people to see how visitors use their websites so that better decisions can be made about what to change, how much to spend on advertising, and where those advertisements should be seen. However, what these companies don't tell anyone is how they can fingerprint and watch a person as they use the web. A person who has certain political inclinations, or religious beliefs, or ideological leanings will very quickly provide all this information to Google, Facebook, and a myriad of companies they've never heard of. These trackers don't just see what sites you visit and for how long, but look at where the mouse is hovering, what words you are typing into comment boxes, which comments you interact with, and more. By providing tracking companies with this information, it becomes much easier to identify people who may not agree with a "narrative" that is being sold by a government or large entity. It becomes much easier for activist organisations to purchase access to this data in order to discover where they can stage events which will bring out the most resistance, thereby allowing them to appear victims. It becomes much easier for people with bad – or misguided – intentions to incite.
I find it insulting and completely unethical.
The reason I have asked people what sort of data they needed about the people visiting the websites I manage is because the vast majority of legitimate questions can be answered using basic tools. How many visitors does a page get? Where are people referred from? What browsers are being used? How long are people staying on the site? What items are they interacting with? All of these questions can be answered with simple queries that have been part of web servers for over a decade. Rather than farm out the task of analytics to companies like Google, this can be done completely in-house. Heck, done correctly, a company with lots of sites can have a self-hosted analytics package that collects this information and keeps it all private, respecting the privacy of the people who visit their pages.
This is what I have argued for well over two years, and particularly over the past 20 months, as middle-managers have sought to implement "industry standard" tools on sites that never needed the trackers to begin with.
However, I've been forced to acquiesce and it grinds at me. The decision goes against what I believe to be right for the people visiting the site. Sure, people can install ad blockers in order to mitigate the amount of tracking they're subject to, but people shouldn't have to.
So it's really time for me to go. Now that I am semi-single again, there will be much less resistance to my plans to change employment. As long as I can continue to pay bills on time, there won't be many complaints. The only question now, is where would I like to work?
There's no denying that now many not be the best time to look for employment, given the number of layoffs that have taken place in the tech industry this year, but I would rather have a job sweeping streets than disrespecting people's right to privacy.