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Outbound Clicks - Rollout Complete (self.changelog)

umbrae[A] が 投稿

Just a small heads up on our previous outbound click events work: that should now all be rolled out and running, as we've finished our rampup. More details on outbound clicks and why they're useful are available in the original changelog post.

As before, you can opt out: go into your preferences under "privacy options" and uncheck "allow reddit to log my outbound clicks for personalization". Screenshot: https://i.redd.it/6p12uqvw6v4x.png

One particular thing that would be helpful for us is if you notice that a URL you click does not go where you'd expect (specifically, if you click on an outbound link and it takes you to the comments page), we'd like to know about that, as it may be an issue with this work. If you see anything weird, that'd be helpful to know.

Thanks much for your help and feedback as usual.

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トップ新着論争中古い順Q&A

[–]SquireCD 91ポイント92ポイント  (18子コメント)

I remember being told that copied links wouldn't be tracked.

I'm on a tablet and all copied links are being tracked.

What gives?

[–]DoodleFungus 34ポイント35ポイント  (8子コメント)

I'm a tablet

[–]shoganaiyo 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

Stop illegal downloads!

[–]Fortehlulz33 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

i don't know much about computers except my mom got one she put a couple of games on it

[–]LG9ePtxAZZSQNV8K 8ポイント9ポイント  (4子コメント)

He is tablet.

[–]SquireCD 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

Haha damn it. Accidentally a word.

[–]workroom 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

What gives?

Let's table it.

[–]ISaidGoodDey 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

I love tablet

[–]grantness 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Do you really love the tablet? Or, are you just saying that?

[–]KableKiB 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

On the Internet, no one knows you're a tablet.

[–]Pokechu22 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

That's not happening for me - what browser are you using?

[–]umbrae[S] 6ポイント7ポイント  (6子コメント)

A bit of this work is technically challenging (detecting right clicks vs clicks vs taps vs long taps on different browsers). I'll check and see if we can handle this better, thanks for the heads up.

[–]pippilongshanks 36ポイント37ポイント  (3子コメント)

Then, don't collect the data. Why do you even need to know about it?

[–]CreamNPeaches 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

My guess is advertising, but maybe I don't know anything about how Reddit works from the ass end.

[–]dimmidice 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

vote brigading i assume, that and alt accounts? advertising too probably.

[–]GAMEchief 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

You know, there's been a "recently viewed links" table for years. Functionality dependent on what you click is nothing new.

[–]jeblis 13ポイント14ポイント  (1子コメント)

Well you could have fixed it before rolling out the change.

[–]GAMEchief 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

"Why didn't you fix all the bugs before rolling it out?" - someone who has never developed software

[–]evman182 87ポイント88ポイント  (51子コメント)

If I uncheck the preference, do you delete the data that you've collected up to that point? If you don't, why not? Can we have the ability to clear that data then?

[–]TarMil 10ポイント11ポイント  (8子コメント)

The option says "for personalization". What kind of personalization? Based on the linked posts, it seems to be only for statistics.

[–]umbrae[S] 10ポイント11ポイント  (7子コメント)

Yeah, it's for both but statistics is the easier thing to reason about backward-looking. We can't do a lot of personalization without first having a sense of how the data looks, but I can give you some idea.

One simple example would be a recommendation to unsubscribe: let's say you subscribe to /r/art but we notice that you never click the links or vote on anything from there. We might recommend to you that you unsubscribe since you seem to not be getting much value out of that subreddit. Conversely, if you seem to really often click on rocket league links from /r/gaming, we might recommend to you that you subscribe to /r/rocketleague.

Voting also gets some of the way there but many many folks don't vote much, so this is really helpful for making suggestions like the above.

[–]TarMil 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

Right, so nothing implemented yet but it opens possibilities. Thanks for the info!

[–]chx_ 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

you never click the links or vote on anything from there. We might recommend to you that you unsubscribe since you seem to not be getting much value out of that subreddit

Uh oh... that's a very bold statement. I think I rarely if ever upvote anything in Ask Historians and links are very rare in the first place. Does this mean I should unsub from Ask Historians? Absolutely not! And I push back early because as years pass ideas become code and suggestions become automated actions... we've seen that before.

[–]TarMil 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Gotta say I hope this never turns into a replica of Facebook's "Top Stories" bs.

[–]Vitztlampaehecatl 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

you seem to not be getting much value out of that subreddit

Low value doesn't mean bad, it could be a very good temp sub.

[–]jsprogrammer 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Will the information be used for any advertising purposes?

[–]JakeLifts 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Would it be able to track our activity if we don't actually click on images, but instead view the pictures with an extension like Imagus?

[–]mlmcmillion 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Why do you need to track outbound links to know if I'm visiting a subreddit often?

[–]TAKEitTOrCIRCLEJERK 21ポイント22ポイント  (17子コメント)

If I create a new account, am I default opt-in or default opt-out?

[–]umbrae[S] 11ポイント12ポイント  (15子コメント)

It's checked by default for all users, including your current user, so you'll have to explicitly opt out with a new user. If you want to opt out you should make sure to opt out with your current user too though.

[–]13steinj 34ポイント35ポイント  (14子コメント)

Will there be any mention of this on sign up?

Not trying to start anything, but making data collection an opt out, especially in a place that many new users don't think to check for a while, is kind of iffy to me.

[–]umbrae[S] 14ポイント15ポイント  (13子コメント)

I totally hear you. This is already explicitly mentioned in our privacy policy, which is linked on sign up:

We may log information when you access and use the Services. This may include your IP address, user-agent string, browser type, operating system, referral URLs, device information (e.g., device IDs), pages visited, links clicked, user interactions (e.g., voting data), the requested URL, hardware settings, and search terms. Except for the IP address used to create your account, Reddit will delete any IP addresses collected after 100 days.

(emphasis mine)

I know many folks don't read privacy policies, but hopefully privacy conscious folks do, and we put a ton of work into making our privacy policy easy to read.

[–]jsprogrammer 25ポイント26ポイント  (5子コメント)

This is already explicitly mentioned in our privacy policy, which is linked on sign up:

Looks like that clause only went in to effect on Jan 1 of this year and was added to the policy in November 2015. Since my account was created before then, I would not have seen this in the privacy policy.

Where is my consent to this new policy?

[–]RRettig 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

There is probably some bs clause that says you agree to all future policy changes by accepting the policy the first time.

[–]umbrae[S] -5ポイント-4ポイント  (3子コメント)

We posted about privacy policy updates here before they went live: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3tlcil/we_are_updating_our_privacy_policy_effective_jan/

And also had a sidebar notification up for 7 days (I think more, but I can't recall) on the homepage.

[–]jsprogrammer 17ポイント18ポイント  (1子コメント)

I don't subscribe to this subreddit and I certainly do not check its side bar twice a week.

The prior policy stated:

If we do, we will let you know by revising the date at the top of the policy. If we make a change to this policy that, in our sole discretion, is material, we will provide you with additional notice (such as adding a statement to r/announcements, the front page of the Services or sending you a notification).

Does reddit not believe this was a change OR does reddit believe that it was not a material change? The announcement that you kindly linked to does not mention that reddit will track out-bound link clicks.

What is going on?

[–]OsirisPalko 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

OK but like I created my account rather recently and still did not have an option to opt out.

[–]Ru5tybike5 35ポイント36ポイント  (4子コメント)

Is there any way you could put a small amount of work into providing an option to opt in or out when a new account is being created? Most companies make this sort of thing very transparent during account creation. Usually right next to the mailing list sign-up check box there is an option to opt in or out of promotional programs. Announcing it on /r/changelog and hiding the opt out under two layers of preferences isn't exactly forthcoming.

[–]vcarl 6ポイント7ポイント  (1子コメント)

Promotional programs are different from this, though. Facebook, Twitter, Google (and pretty much everyone else) change links to point to a redirection service they own so they can track clicks, with no way to opt out. The fact that reddit is providing an opt out is going above and beyond industry standards for this type of data collection.

[–]hopeLB 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Not as bad as the other guys, awesome.

[–]ser_marko 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

Second this.

[–]13steinj 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

Oh, okay I'm fine with it then. Didn't know it was already in the added in.

[–]JDGumby -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

I know many folks don't read privacy policies

MOST people don't - and they're the ones who most need to be protected from people like YOU.

[–]evman182 52ポイント53ポイント  (10子コメント)

I don't know how the response to the original post didn't make this clear. If you're really trying to be transparent about this, it ought to be posted to /r/blog or /r/announcements

[–]l3d00m 5ポイント6ポイント  (2子コメント)

Wasn't it announced on /r/announcements before?

[–]en_fuego_420 4ポイント5ポイント  (3子コメント)

I'm getting DNS errors or something, it doesn't redirect me to the link, it just goes dead trying to load out.reddit.com.

Doesn't even work now.

[–]umbrae[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

Thanks for the heads up, that's concerning. If you're comfortable sharing, where in the world are you?

[–]en_fuego_420 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

It could have been due to peerblock, I'm in Australia.

[–]luckduck89 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Carmon San Diego...

[–]DrHemroid 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Clicking links on reddit sometimes send me to "page not found" reddit pages.

Example:

(Game of Thrones spoilers)

https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/4rdpj3/everything_what_went_through_emilia_clarkes_head/

Goes to

https://www.reddit.com/t3_4rdpj3?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGxfkUfQwdO8&token=AQAAav99V9siUQ2vLctPOe2UEa6NmbpT1xNvWoHjMSNYp2uY1RNf

When it should go to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxfkUfQwdO8

[–]cartel 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

Couple of things: 1. don't use a mixture of 'allow' and 'don't allow' options in the privacy settings (these should be all one or the other) 2. don't make such a privacy impacting change without posting it to /r/announcements. this was posted to changelog which only has 9188 subscribers (9189 now), it was only because it got traction via r/technology that anyone noticed. 3. users that have Do Not Track set should skip this outbound tracking analytic altogether (kind of the point of do not track don't you think?

[–]8Milesofshade 12ポイント13ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thanks for letting us know, by sending us PMs, or posting this on a default sub like r/Announcements!

[–]pcjonathan 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

Out of curiosity, does this include media embedded by reddit and RES?

[–]TheEnigmaBlade 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

From what I can tell, links are embedded media are unaffected for both Reddit- and RES-made expandos. Title links contain the outbound data, while the links in expandos do not.

[–]BlankVerse 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Is this why I'm getting out.reddit.com/..... for all links on my iPad?

[–]Mackinz 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Will we ever be able to opt out of Reddit's mobile view with an actual setting as well? The recent major changes to Reddit annoy me, but constantly being redirected to the mobile site I have repeatedly opted out of is ridiculously annoying. At least I don't have to do so with external linking...

[–]SheeEttin 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

So how are you going to visually distinguish a link that's been rewritten?

[–]13steinj 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

They won't.

All outbound links (from what I understand, of link submissions) will be rewritten assuming you don't opt out.

Personally, I've opted out, but then again I'm paranoid. I don't actually care that reddit would be tracking what messed up shit I'm into, but my mind jumps straight to "tracking...leaks...justincase"

[–]JDGumby 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

They won't.

All outbound links (from what I understand, of link submissions) will be rewritten assuming you don't opt out.

Because they want to hide what they're doing from most users (face it: any hubbub will die down in a couple of weeks and future users will never have the slightest clue that this is happening) under the guise of being nice to them and not confusing them with mangled URLs when they hover over links or look at their address bar.

[–]jsprogrammer 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Why wasn't the new clause mentioned in the annoucement of the new, "simpler", "functionally very similar" privacy policy?

[–]rawling 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

If you're not tracking outbound links, how are you populating "recently viewed links"?

[–]dezmd 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Why isn't this on a site wide announcement?

[–]jmxd 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Because they want as little people as possible to know about it and hope it will fly under the radar while still being able to say they told us about it

[–]ThatFuh_Qr 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

Didn't see this answered anywhere: if I opt out on my pc will it opt out on all of my devices as well?

[–]TotesMessenger 7ポイント8ポイント  (2子コメント)

I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:

If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)

[–]chemix42 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

The subreddits this is being cross posted to says a lot.

[–]DaedalusMinion 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. all do this without offering you the option to opt out, reddit is good in my books.

[–]deeiks 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

This feature seems to break setting links to visited, at least on mac w. Safari.

[–]mrjhandel 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

yep. I actually only found this thread because I was trying to work out why none of my links were turning purple anymore.

[–]serex 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

I don't really mind being tracked, but I'm going to opt out because the redirect is noticeably slow. It varies between 100ms to 1.5s, average of 500ms

[–]umbrae[S] 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

It would be surprising to me if this was very noticeable, as we both prefetch DNS and SSL and also put a lot of work in making the server side very fast. It should match what is essentially your connection to the wider internet.

Here's a graph showing the mean, 90th percentile, and 99th percentile in ms (yes, less than 1ms). I'm really proud of how fast this is. https://i.redd.it/gaiz13xd8v7x.png

[–]PK4278 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Judging by these comments, a lot of people want to opt-out. So I guess Reddit will be targeting those unaware of the changes with this feature, sounds ethical. Also, I turned off the feature before rollout and today it was re-activated. What gives?

[–]RoboBama 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just wanted to say thanks for giving us an opt out for this. I was wondering whether the adnins forgot about this or what. Well done, and keep up the good work!!

[–]JDGumby 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Disgusting.

More details on outbound clicks and why they're useful are available in the original changelog post.

...which I see still doesn't mention the only actual use of this: more information to sell to your ad partners, thus getting more money from them.

As before, you can opt out: go into your preferences under "privacy options" and uncheck "allow reddit to log my outbound clicks for personalization".

Of course, the vast majority of users will have absolutely no idea this is happening. Which is, of course, why you have it default to on, counting on any hubbub about your behaviour to die down after a couple of weeks so that future users will have no warning about what's happening.

Hell, even Facebook splashes big fat notifications on their pages whenever there's a privacy settings change, not relying on posts in sections that relatively few people will ever even know exist.

[–]Edrondol 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's done wonders for your server stability.

[–]ndzZ 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Reddit does so many things but it fails to recognize my disgust for cat and pokemon posts. I would love an algorithm that would actually work for the user.

[–]rybl 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Is this why reddit has been super unresponsive for me over the past several weeks? I don't actually mind link tracking, but it shouldn't come at the expense of performance.

[–]beerface 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

There are plugins for your browser that fix that. I downloaded "RedirectCleaner" ages ago, I guess it has been replaced by "RedirectRemover". Works great!

[–]NotherLevel 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

One of the reasons I love Reddit. You guys make it all so transparent.

[–]blandsrules 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hey, thanks for the heads up! Unchecked.

[–]jadensteel 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

So that explains why Google translate no longer works to surf Reddit at work... Now you expect me to do what exactly?

[–]StormShadow13 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I don't appreciate that I opted out back during testing because it was enabled for me and now you enabled it for me by default. So you've been tracking me for who knows how long now and don't provide me a way to delete.

[–]onmyouza 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

I remember I've unchecked this before, but when I go to preferences, it's checked again. I guess I have to stay vigilant from now on.

[–]hoofdpersoon 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I had the same experience. I unchecked it before the roll-out and found out most links were not working since yesterday. Glad those didn't work!!! because otherwise I would not have known it was re-enabled again. Shady stuff! Not happy!

[–]umbrae[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

That's surprising. We did have a data issue we had to fix really early on in the preference existing, but we explicitly tried to not affect anyone who had actually interacted with the setting. Do you recall when you updated your preference?

[–]onmyouza 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Don't really remember, probably 2 weeks ago.

[–]jackasstacular 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Change your prefs here.

Scroll down and uncheck 'privacy options->allow reddit to log my outbound clicks for personalization', and don't forget to 'save options'.

edit - fixed link

[–]fjarlq 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

I tried using this link, but I couldn't save my preference. I expect that's because you linked directly to the "np" (No Participation) version of the /prefs link.

The correct link is: https://www.reddit.com/prefs

[–]jackasstacular 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thanks. Odd that it didn't work, I did test it before posting. Live and learn.

[–][削除されました]  (1子コメント)

[deleted]

    [–]evman182 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

    That's a separate change from this one.