WTF?

[opcoded]

Thanks to kuangning for posting this.

Livejournal announces stat gathering changes

I'm curious as to other people's opinions on this. On the surface, at least to me, it looks somewhat harmless. However, there's not much known about the service they're using to gather these statistics, so I'm a bit apprehensive.

There is an opt-out option, thankfully. Just go to the Admin Console and type "set opt_exclude_stats 1"

I'm just wondering other people's thoughts on this. I realize a lot of people will likely opt out of the data gathering, but I'm curious as to what the overall concensus is (to kind of foster some sort of discussion, at least. I need brain fuel!).

Comments

[prince.livejournal.com]

i opted out :)

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

As did I :)

[ladycelest.livejournal.com]

I opted out.

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

Yep, me too.

[ryan-speck.livejournal.com]

It's straightforward. It's the same as most of the stats collected by every website.

My stat program on MediaGauntlet collects all the same information from every person that views the site. It's pretty standard.

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I was figuring, but I've already seen (as per usual) some minor panic from people going 'OMG PRIVACY INVASION' when they haven't necessarily done any looking into what data is being gathered.

Not specifically anyone I know, but some people on that thread don't see it as quite as innocuous.

[ryan-speck.livejournal.com]

I would say that they are the tinfoil hats.

People are just looking for a reason to panic now that LJ is the corporate bad guy.

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's a lot of the thing I'm seeing. They're looking at it from completely the wrong direction.

I can understand some of the changes making sense from SixApart's POV. I'm not sure what the end-user effect of those changes are, but I know a lot of people are very unhappy. The signal to noise ratio is completely off the charts.

[ryan-speck.livejournal.com]

Yeah. In this case, it's just an announcement of collecting usage data on browser usage, what type of pages people look at the most, etc., to feed to advertisers to help better shape ad traffic. They're not collecting data on people; they're just getting demographics to help put ads in better places and which browsers and page sizes to point them at.

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Happens all the time.

[shippo.livejournal.com]

A lot of the comments with privacy concerns are pretty out there. LJ's already been able to collect this kind of usage data since, like, forever via their HTTP access logs. They're probably contracting their analytics through a third party since it's more feasible to buy something off-the-shelf than it is to build their own system to crunch access data.

6A will probably end up using clickstream data for one (or both) of two things:
1.) To see how well changes in the site perform, and how changes affect the way that people use the site.
2.) To deliver better targeted advertising to users. If they're able to have an idea where a user's interests lie, they're capable of delivering ads that a user may actually be interested in. I'm not really sure whether 6A is intending for LJ to have more of an advertising-supported model, but analytics would play a useful role in that.

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's where the discussion on this issue has been heading. I'm not worried about it. The fact they give you an opt-out option is a nice deal, but if it's just anonymous data, opting out would sort of skew the results a bit, right?

[shippo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, opting out would skew the data a bit, but it's probably not enough to be statistically relevant.

[kuangning]

My problem with it is not that they're looking at what I do on their site; it's the part where they're gathering data on where I go when I leave it. Given the kind of links my friends sometimes throw at me, and LJ's willingness to ban accounts for OMGthinkoftheCHILDREN ... I'd rather just sidestep the entire possibility.

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

If you look over the comments previously posted by others, you'll see that they're not doing anything that's out of the ordinary. Personally, I'm glad they're giving you the option to opt-out of this if you so choose. Most sites wouldn't give you that option.

Also, they're not doing it over the entire site - only about 5% of the userbase. I'm assuming this is to keep the database size relatively small so it doesn't affect other portions of the site.

I can see your concern, but you're putting a conclusion on this issue based on past things 6A has changed. This one, for the most part, is pretty harmless, and it's not uncommon for outgoing links to be tracked either.

[kuangning]

I'm well aware it's not out of the ordinary, and most of it, I don't mind. I object to them following me offsite, and I know that what they've done before, there is good reason to think they might do again.

It wasn't very long ago that they stated that users were responsible for the content of outside sites linked to in their journals, and it's not inconceivable that someone might decide to look at the links gathered through this and ban journals that posted "inappropriate" links or those that followed them. Sure, if they did that, there would be an outcry (again) and they might back down (again) -- but why take the chance of putting oneself through all that fuss? The company's actions in the past have made me not willing to trust them with that particular type of information now. They've no-one to blame for that state of affairs but themselves, and not all the protests of "everyone else does it" and "it's harmless" is going to change that.

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

Hmm... definitely something to think about. I see your point.

[witchchild]

I'm going to mention this later myself, didn't know it was happening. I opted out.

[deusinnomen.livejournal.com]

I think it's much ado about nothing.

[archmage.livejournal.com]

Big freakin' deal. Most large websites track usage of pages, what you click from where, etc. This is not some weird practice, it's pretty basic, and they don't usually bother telling you. Why? Because it's not a big deal, they're tracking traffic. No worse than than watching cars on the road, and what turns they make.

Still, this is LJ, Land of Drama, and there will always be people that want to use the site, want it to improve in myriad ways, but don't want ANYONE to know ANYTHING that they are doing. Looking over the comments, there, I think I could name a bunch of them.

If nothing else, this isn't even new. As they said, they've already been doing it, just not on custom theme pages (due to code issues, I bet). now, they've fixed the code to do it everywhere...but as they mentioned profile pages, it freaked everyone out. "Not my personal info!" they scream (which is not what this is reading, anyway). Of course, they could always opt NOT TO PUT THEIR PERSONAL INFO ON A PUBBLICCALLY ACCESSIBLE PAGE in the first place, but I guess it's just another symptom of the lack of Personal Responsibility in humanity these days.

Cripes, the tinfoil hats come out in droves.

[bohemu.livejournal.com]

I was okay until I started reading the comments. WTH.

[etherpunk.livejournal.com]

what part about it bugs you?

[bohemu.livejournal.com]

The conspiracy theorists wondering what's really going on that they're not telling us. I don't really care either way, but it still concerns me for the future.