Who Should Have The Power - Users or Publishers?
Google recently announced that they will offer a browser extension for users that will allow them to opt out of Google Analytics on any website they visit. This will have interesting consequences for publishes as their user counts may be under-reported.
I’ve been thinking about this lately, and then came across this tweet:
This is the ONLY social network where complaining doesn’t exist. On Tumblr they mad about Streampad. Don’t like it? UNFOLLOW MY ASS! Damn.
Some people choose to set their Streampad to autoplay. I have never been a fan of this, but built it in because I felt like it should be an option for publishers if they want it. It definitely annoys a lot of users when they open a page and it immediately starts playing music. One of the things I wanted to build, but never got around to, was a user option to set any Streampad they come across to not autoplay.
But the tweet above, coupled with Google’s announcement got me thinking. It is the publisher’s website. If the user has a problem with it, they just don’t have to visit. But it’s not that easy. After all, it is a user’s computer and it is their browser. There are good arguments for both sides that they should control the experience. My bet is that this will continue to seesaw back and forth. I could see a publisher putting up a message saying the user must disable the Analytics blocker or they will not be allowed in. It’s certainly interesting stuff and for me personally, now being in the user’s corner with ExtensionFM, I may see things a little differently than I did in the past.
