An explanation

Methodology.


Webtone is a directory of websites and the third-party code they load. We visit each site twice — once with nothing blocked, once with a standard tracker-blocking list applied — and publish what we find: counts, categories, shapes, and a sound. The aim is not to shame a site for loading ads. It is to let you feel the weight of what normally happens silently.

What counts as a tracker.

A request is counted as a tracker when its destination appears on the Disconnect strict list. This is a conservative definition: a CDN that serves both content and analytics is counted, a subdomain of the site itself is not, and first-party scripts are never counted no matter what they do.

The numbers here describe network behaviour, not intent. A high count does not mean a site is malicious. A low count does not mean a site is safe.


Two passes, per site.

Each site is loaded twice in a headless browser. The first pass runs without any blocking and observes every request. The second pass runs with a standard recommended blocklist applied — the kind most tracker-blocking extensions ship by default. The difference between the two reveals how much of the site's noise is already caught by off-the-shelf protection, and how much leaks through.

The detail page shows both numbers. The gap section lists domains the strict list catches but the recommended list misses. These are the trackers most users don't know they are still seeing.

The quietest trackers are the ones you should worry about the most.

Seven categories.

The radar shape has seven axes — one per category of tracker. A taller point means more trackers in that category on this site, scaled against every other site in the index so relative differences stay readable as the directory grows.

Advertising
Ads, ad-tech, and related infrastructure.
Analytics
Audience measurement, behaviour logging, A/B testing.
Consent
Cookie banners and privacy-policy enforcement layers.
Content
Recommendation engines, embedded media, CDN-delivered content.
Email
Email list identity matching and lightweight outreach.
Email+
Aggressive lead-capture and identity enrichment.
Fingerprint
Device and browser fingerprinting for silent identification.
Tracking is invisible and silent. This site asks what it would feel like if it weren't.

About the sound.

Each site plays a crowd of voices — one for every tracker, capped so the browser doesn't catch fire. The voices speak in ten languages about privacy and data ownership, mixed through a shared reverb so they feel like people in the same room rather than isolated recordings.

The sound is a metaphor, not a literal signal. A site with three trackers is audibly a conversation. A site with three hundred is audibly a crowd you cannot follow. That gap is the point.

Everything is generated client-side in the browser. No audio is uploaded or streamed; the voices are eleven short MP3s that get layered locally with randomized offsets, pitch, and stereo placement each time.

If you prefer the site quiet, toggle Sound: Off in the header. The setting persists.


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