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I know I'm all about the privacy, but… Stack Exchange has already been letting arbitrary third-parties track us like this. As I understand, this is just documenting their existing practices, under the guise of a change of policy. (This assumption might not be correct: I've asked about it here.)

However, the digital advertising industry is increasingly moving towards a programmatic guaranteed model, in which the customer dynamically manages the campaign that then gets served on the Network following our advertising guidelines. In this model, we have made the careful decision to allow certain trusted advertisers to implement retargeting pixels.

That makes it sound like a recent thing, but they've been "moving towards" that for as long as I've been using the web! You can be honest with us: you want to use the Google Ad network for… reasons, the advertisers won't pay you enough money unless you let them track us, and they're doing it anyway. As I understand, all this change is (hopefully) doing is:

• actually making the "decline" option work; and
• adding proper documentation to the Cookie Policy.

You don't have to pretend that this is a new thing. That'll just make people less happy with it, for no benefit.

Only users that are opted-in to targeting cookies will see the programmatic ads from vetted customers using retargeting pixels.

I will be testing this. If you're just adding additional tracking, without resolving the existing issues I (and others) have raised over and over again… I can't say what will happen.

If you somehow weren't aware of the existing tracking being done by your advertising clients, and are proposing to add additional tracking on top, we need to have a serious talk yesterday.

I was one of the few who saw the summarised pre-announcement in the mod team. On 2023-12-05, I left the comment:

This particular grump [me] is satisfied by the announcement you've described.

I didn't notice that this change wasn't advertised to moderators according to the usual procedures, for which I am sorry. My providing feedback without pointing this out was irresponsible, and – by leaving the CMs with feedback plural – helped obscure the communication failure. If I missed it, I see how they could have missed it. (Maybe this failure wasn't really a mistake, but I still don't believe that the individual people involved in decisions like these – many of whom I could name – are acting maliciously. Stack Exchange might be bad, but it's not Google.)

Honestly, I'm not even sure myself what the correct procedure for these announcements is. I just know SE didn't follow it, because nobody outside the company got to review the contents of this announcement before it became Policy.

I know I'm all about the privacy, but… Stack Exchange has already been letting arbitrary third-parties track us like this. As I understand, this is just documenting their existing practices, under the guise of a change of policy. (This assumption might not be is not correct: I've asked about it here.)

However, the digital advertising industry is increasingly moving towards a programmatic guaranteed model, in which the customer dynamically manages the campaign that then gets served on the Network following our advertising guidelines. In this model, we have made the careful decision to allow certain trusted advertisers to implement retargeting pixels.

That makes it sound like a recent thing, but they've been "moving towards" that for as long as I've been using the web! You can be honest with us: you want to use the Google Ad network for… reasons, the advertisers won't pay you enough money unless you let them track us, and they're doing it anyway. As I understand, all this change is (hopefully) doing is:

• actually making the "decline" option work; and
• adding proper documentation to the Cookie Policy.

You don't have to pretend that this is a new thing. That'll just make people less happy with it, for no benefit.

Only users that are opted-in to targeting cookies will see the programmatic ads from vetted customers using retargeting pixels.

I will be testing this. If you're just adding additional tracking, without resolving the existing issues I (and others) have raised over and over again… I can't say what will happen.

If you somehow weren't aware of the existing tracking being done by your advertising clients, and are proposing to add additional tracking on top, we need to have a serious talk yesterday.

Edit 2023-12-22: The existing tracking should not have been happening – and I'm not sure how it could've been, given SE's internal processes. (Perhaps it was an oversight with “3rd party tags”? I wish I'd kept more details.) This update is allowing additional tracking.

I was one of the few who saw the summarised pre-announcement in the mod team. On 2023-12-05, I left the comment:

This particular grump [me] is satisfied by the announcement you've described.

I didn't notice that this change wasn't advertised to moderators according to the usual procedures, for which I am sorry. My providing feedback without pointing this out was irresponsible, and – by leaving the CMs with feedback plural – helped obscure the communication failure. If I missed it, I see how they could have missed it. (Maybe this failure wasn't really a mistake, but I still don't believe that the individual people involved in decisions like these – many of whom I could name – are acting maliciously. Stack Exchange might be bad, but it's not Google.)

Honestly, I'm not even sure myself what the correct procedure for these announcements is. I just know SE didn't follow it, because nobody outside the company got to review the contents of this announcement before it became Policy.

I know I'm all about the privacy, but… Stack Exchange has already been letting arbitrary third-parties track us like this. As I understand, this is just documenting their existing practices, under the guise of a change of policy.

However, the digital advertising industry is increasingly moving towards a programmatic guaranteed model, in which the customer dynamically manages the campaign that then gets served on the Network following our advertising guidelines. In this model, we have made the careful decision to allow certain trusted advertisers to implement retargeting pixels.

That makes it sound like a recent thing, but they've been "moving towards" that for as long as I've been using the web! You can be honest with us: you want to use the Google Ad network for… reasons, the advertisers won't pay you enough money unless you let them track us, and they're doing it anyway. As I understand, all this change is (hopefully) doing is:

• actually making the "decline" option work; and
• adding proper documentation to the Cookie Policy.

You don't have to pretend that this is a new thing. That'll just make people less happy with it, for no benefit.

Only users that are opted-in to targeting cookies will see the programmatic ads from vetted customers using retargeting pixels.

I will be testing this. If you're just adding additional tracking, without resolving the existing issues I (and others) have raised over and over again… I can't say what will happen.

If you somehow weren't aware of the existing tracking being done by your advertising clients, and are proposing to add additional tracking on top, we need to have a serious talk yesterday.

I was one of the few who saw the summarised pre-announcement in the mod team. On 2023-12-05, I left the comment:

This particular grump [me] is satisfied by the announcement you've described.

I didn't notice that this change wasn't advertised to moderators according to the usual procedures, for which I am sorry. My providing feedback without pointing this out was irresponsible, and – by leaving the CMs with feedback plural – helped obscure the communication failure. If I missed it, I see how they could have missed it. (Maybe this failure wasn't really a mistake, but I still don't believe that the individual people involved in decisions like these – many of whom I could name – are acting maliciously. Stack Exchange might be bad, but it's not Google.)

Honestly, I'm not even sure myself what the correct procedure for these announcements is. I just know SE didn't follow it, because nobody outside the company got to review the contents of this announcement before it became Policy.

I know I'm all about the privacy, but… Stack Exchange has already been letting arbitrary third-parties track us like this. As I understand, this is just documenting their existing practices, under the guise of a change of policy. (This assumption might not be correct: I've asked about it here.)

However, the digital advertising industry is increasingly moving towards a programmatic guaranteed model, in which the customer dynamically manages the campaign that then gets served on the Network following our advertising guidelines. In this model, we have made the careful decision to allow certain trusted advertisers to implement retargeting pixels.

That makes it sound like a recent thing, but they've been "moving towards" that for as long as I've been using the web! You can be honest with us: you want to use the Google Ad network for… reasons, the advertisers won't pay you enough money unless you let them track us, and they're doing it anyway. As I understand, all this change is (hopefully) doing is:

• actually making the "decline" option work; and
• adding proper documentation to the Cookie Policy.

You don't have to pretend that this is a new thing. That'll just make people less happy with it, for no benefit.

Only users that are opted-in to targeting cookies will see the programmatic ads from vetted customers using retargeting pixels.

I will be testing this. If you're just adding additional tracking, without resolving the existing issues I (and others) have raised over and over again… I can't say what will happen.

If you somehow weren't aware of the existing tracking being done by your advertising clients, and are proposing to add additional tracking on top, we need to have a serious talk yesterday.

I was one of the few who saw the summarised pre-announcement in the mod team. On 2023-12-05, I left the comment:

This particular grump [me] is satisfied by the announcement you've described.

I didn't notice that this change wasn't advertised to moderators according to the usual procedures, for which I am sorry. My providing feedback without pointing this out was irresponsible, and – by leaving the CMs with feedback plural – helped obscure the communication failure. If I missed it, I see how they could have missed it. (Maybe this failure wasn't really a mistake, but I still don't believe that the individual people involved in decisions like these – many of whom I could name – are acting maliciously. Stack Exchange might be bad, but it's not Google.)

Honestly, I'm not even sure myself what the correct procedure for these announcements is. I just know SE didn't follow it, because nobody outside the company got to review the contents of this announcement before it became Policy.

I know I'm all about the privacy, but… Stack Exchange has already been letting arbitrary third-parties track us like this. As I understand, this is just documenting their existing practices, under the guise of a change of policy.

However, the digital advertising industry is increasingly moving towards a programmatic guaranteed model, in which the customer dynamically manages the campaign that then gets served on the Network following our advertising guidelines. In this model, we have made the careful decision to allow certain trusted advertisers to implement retargeting pixels.

That makes it sound like a recent thing, but they've been "moving towards" that for as long as I've been using the web! You can be honest with us: you want to use the Google Ad network for… reasons, the advertisers won't pay you enough money unless you let them track us, and they're doing it anyway. As I understand, all this change is (hopefully) doing is:

• actually making the "decline" option work; and
• adding proper documentation to the Cookie Policy.

You don't have to pretend that this is a new thing. That'll just make people less happy with it, for no benefit.

I will be testing this. If you're just adding additional tracking, without resolving the existing issues I (and others) have raised over and over again… Well.

And if you somehow weren't aware of the existing tracking being done by your advertising clients, and are proposing to add additional tracking on top, we need to have a serious talk yesterday.

I was one of the few who saw the summarised pre-announcement in the mod team. On 2023-12-05, I left the comment:

This particular grump is satisfied by the announcement you've described.

I'm sorry I didn't notice that this change wasn't advertised to moderators according to the usual procedures. My providing feedback without pointing this out was irresponsible, and – by leaving you with feedback plural – helped obscure the communication failure. If I missed it, I see how you could have missed it. (Maybe this failure wasn't really a mistake, but I still don't believe that the individual people involved in decisions like these – many of whom I could name – are acting maliciously. Stack Exchange might be bad, but it's not Google.)

Honestly, I'm not even sure myself what the correct procedure for these announcements is. I just know you didn't follow it, because nobody outside the company got to pre-review the contents of this announcement before it became Policy.

I know I'm all about the privacy, but… Stack Exchange has already been letting arbitrary third-parties track us like this. As I understand, this is just documenting their existing practices, under the guise of a change of policy.

However, the digital advertising industry is increasingly moving towards a programmatic guaranteed model, in which the customer dynamically manages the campaign that then gets served on the Network following our advertising guidelines. In this model, we have made the careful decision to allow certain trusted advertisers to implement retargeting pixels.

That makes it sound like a recent thing, but they've been "moving towards" that for as long as I've been using the web! You can be honest with us: you want to use the Google Ad network for… reasons, the advertisers won't pay you enough money unless you let them track us, and they're doing it anyway. As I understand, all this change is (hopefully) doing is:

• actually making the "decline" option work; and
• adding proper documentation to the Cookie Policy.

You don't have to pretend that this is a new thing. That'll just make people less happy with it, for no benefit.

Only users that are opted-in to targeting cookies will see the programmatic ads from vetted customers using retargeting pixels.

I will be testing this. If you're just adding additional tracking, without resolving the existing issues I (and others) have raised over and over again… I can't say what will happen.

If you somehow weren't aware of the existing tracking being done by your advertising clients, and are proposing to add additional tracking on top, we need to have a serious talk yesterday.

I was one of the few who saw the summarised pre-announcement in the mod team. On 2023-12-05, I left the comment:

This particular grump [me] is satisfied by the announcement you've described.

I didn't notice that this change wasn't advertised to moderators according to the usual procedures, for which I am sorry. My providing feedback without pointing this out was irresponsible, and – by leaving the CMs with feedback plural – helped obscure the communication failure. If I missed it, I see how they could have missed it. (Maybe this failure wasn't really a mistake, but I still don't believe that the individual people involved in decisions like these – many of whom I could name – are acting maliciously. Stack Exchange might be bad, but it's not Google.)

Honestly, I'm not even sure myself what the correct procedure for these announcements is. I just know SE didn't follow it, because nobody outside the company got to review the contents of this announcement before it became Policy.