There are multiple ways to track people with similar precision as common JS trackers without using JS.
When it comes to simple statistics there are even far more ways.
I would go a step further and say that JS tracking is mostly limited to a certain very small subset of people which making it likely less then 0.01%, potentially even much less then that.
Most of the web is inaccessible without JS including many of the most widely used websites and most users don't even understand why not using JS could do anything good. Or understand what JS is. Expecting any not completely irrelevant non-JS browser share is just not realistic.
This is all beyond the point which was that stats about no-JS users are almost nonexistent. You can keep saying "but there can't be many people using web without js" but they literally fly under your radar.
> There are multiple ways to track people with similar precision as common JS trackers without using JS.
And almost no one uses them.
> I would go a step further and say that JS tracking is mostly limited to a certain very small subset of people which making it likely less then 0.01%, potentially even much less then that.
I barely see a project that does anything except Google Analytics at default settings with a script tag.
> Most of the web is inaccessible without JS including many of the most widely used websites
"Most of the web" actually works. Some of the popular ones don't but Wikipedia/Google/Amazon/Facebook (to a degree) are OK. All latest front-end frameworks are built to deliver working HTML with minimal JS instead of SPAs.
> most users don't even understand why not using JS could do anything good. Or understand what JS is.
There was a time most users didn't even understand why not using IE could do anything good or understand what a browser is. Times change.
Yeah yeah, "I don't think there are many no-JS users", etc, you keep repeating this in different ways without refuting the point.
> Today in my experience
Today in my experience 99% of trackers only measure users with JS.
> Exactly, they changed from no-js having some relevance to it basically having no relevance at all and most no-js support is legacy from the past.
People learned basic technical ideas and changed from buggy insecure ways of browsing the internet (IE, activeX) and forced web engineers to change their ways (test in other browsers than IE) before. It's not even a question of "will it happen again?" because it's already happening
> EDIT: Also a non small part of the web today is video content, which won't work without js.
Maybe you are just not qualified to argue this. Videos work just as images, text or audio. Try disabling JS and opening https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video for example, it works just fine. If a video doesn't load without JS it's a problem with website or browser implementation.
> Maybe you are just not qualified to argue this. Videos work just as images, text or audio.
no you just have no idea how most normal internet user use the internet
sure video works technically, but that's not only not enough, it's irrelevant. What matters is that it needs to work without too much friction and convenience and no-js is the opposite of that. It's a constant running into stumbling blocks again and again. Stumbling blocks most internet user can not solve by themself in just a few seconds. And in turn they will not use no-js, no matter how much anyone tells them it is more secure because it simply doesn't work for them no matter how much it's technically possible.
I guess I thought I was more clear in my previous comment when I said these are not theoretical.
Non-JS tracking methods are not just common and not just fallbacks. They are the standard for marketing and anti-abuse mitigations.
I'll list a couple more details that make it more familiar.
Search engines have been distributing shortened URLs and parameterized links pretty much since the beginning. Both are tokenization schemes that don't require JS and if used correctly are impossible for the user to "block".
There are multiple ways to track people with similar precision as common JS trackers without using JS.
When it comes to simple statistics there are even far more ways.
I would go a step further and say that JS tracking is mostly limited to a certain very small subset of people which making it likely less then 0.01%, potentially even much less then that.
Most of the web is inaccessible without JS including many of the most widely used websites and most users don't even understand why not using JS could do anything good. Or understand what JS is. Expecting any not completely irrelevant non-JS browser share is just not realistic.