The issue only surfaced after a developer had trouble using multipoint Bluetooth headphones while an AliExpress tab was open: the headphones wouldn't switch properly from the computer...
  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    21 days ago

    I did some js reverse engineering work on chinese websites few years ago and it’s legit industry leading tracking tech. Very few websites in the west are even remotely as sophisticated in that regard.

    Unsurprisingly China has the best tracking ecosystem but it’s not for the reasons you might think. It’s just so competitive in China that tracking and automation blocking is super important for chinese businesses.

    Have you noticed that there’s no such thing like internet archive in China? It’s because nobody wants it. It’s too dangerous to have recorded history of any sort.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        20 days ago

        Business dangers from scraping / automation are basically of two types:

        • archival record for proof mostly for legal prosecution and contract negotiation. There’s a lot of really bad shit going on on Chinese web despite the great firewall of China and you can hide it in plain sight if it’s ephemeral. So if I sell illegal goods but it’s not archived ever no one can really prosecute me. Gray/black markets players in China just rebrand every month and get away with everything.
        • real time data for price/trend competition. Prices and trends move incredibly fast in China, people in the west don’t even understand how far ahead chinese e-commerce is, Amazon is like 10 years behind. So all that scraped info is incredibly valuable for chasing capitalism.