Makes me wonder how quickly someone will either create an addin or Mozilla will make it superobvious how they are doing their tracking.
Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
31–40 of 314 posts
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#32Why do they care?
If you are a paying customer, they don't (source: am a subscriber, never seen this). If you don't pay for a subscription, they need to monetize you in some other way- like by showing you more valuable ads. You can get a very cheap online-only subscription if you have Amazon Prime, strong recommend.
You'll go from being slightly tracked to tracked within an inch of your life if you use Amazon Prime.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#33Can you explain how it is prompting users? Working fine for me (using 62.0.3 on OSX)
Are you or proxygeek by chance subscribers to WaPo? If not, I'm not sure why. Also, opening articles in private windows also has it pop up on my laptop. BTW, if the take away is subscription is the answer for their sustainability over having to serve ads that utilize tracking, that's an argument to be had. Of course, inherent in that argument is that non-tracking ads are simply not profitable enough for them, which s…
I worked in ad tech for a number of years, so maybe I can address this one.
Ads that are annotated with tracking/targeting capabilities are in fact substantially more valuable. There's the obvious aspect (targeted ads in general) but there's also the ability to measure whether your ads are actually working. Analytics requires tracking too.
This is an oversimplification, but let's say you're buying ads at 10 cents per thousand impressions. But you have no ability to tell who saw which adds and clicked where. Would you be willing to pay... say, 12 cents per thousand impressions to get actionable analytics? Would you be willing to pay, say, 20 cents per thousand to specifically target people who looked at your product on Amazon? Maybe not at those exact numbers, but you'd probably be willing to pay some substantial amount more, because that strategy (retargeting) works measurably better for converting an ad view into a purchase.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#34Any time a site asks me to disable tracking protection, it has the curious effect of reinforcing my desire to leave it enabled - that site has made it clear that they are intentionally and unapologetically violating my privacy for a quick buck.
The problem is the payment model is broken. I'm not going to subscribe to a site that I only want to read a single article.
We need a way to pay a few cents to read an article, ad and tracker free.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#35Any time a site asks me to disable tracking protection, it has the curious effect of reinforcing my desire to leave it enabled - that site has made it clear that they are intentionally and unapologetically violating my privacy for a quick buck.
the problem with this line of thinking is that newspaper people need to actually make a buck. Or else there are no newspapers.
I agree that news outlets serve an important function. That's exactly why it is especially disheartening to see them turn into organs of surveillance capitalism.
Regardless, if you attempt to extort me with a choice between privacy or an uninformed populace, I'll happily share my view on where exactly you can stick that and spin. There are decent media outlets doing good work out there who can report and respect their readers at the same time [1].
I frankly don't care if the papers who can't figure out how to function without selling out their customers fail. Let their corpses be a cautionary tale.
[1] One outlet I subscribe to, Talkingpointsmemo.com, is in the process of offering ad-free options. I blocked them previously, and they've made no effort to break the site in the presence of blockers.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#36Any time a site asks me to disable tracking protection, it has the curious effect of reinforcing my desire to leave it enabled - that site has made it clear that they are intentionally and unapologetically violating my privacy for a quick buck.
The problem is the payment model is broken. I'm not going to subscribe to a site that I only want to read a single article. We need a way to pay a few cents to read an article, ad and tracker free.
Ads and tracking are honestly just fine and a perfectly good compromise. Fears over them are greatly exaggerated.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#37I see the same behavior (v52.8.0). Damn. Also, from a German IPv4: > The new European data protection law requires us to inform you of the following before you use our website: > We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests. By clicking “I agree” below, you c…
Does GDPR compliance require a site to work if a user is not agreeing to be tracked? Functionally the user never clicking the agree button and not be able to access the site is equivalent to what the latimes is doing:
http://www.tribpub.com/gdpr/latimes.com/
> "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries."
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#38Any time a site asks me to disable tracking protection, it has the curious effect of reinforcing my desire to leave it enabled - that site has made it clear that they are intentionally and unapologetically violating my privacy for a quick buck.
The problem is the payment model is broken. I'm not going to subscribe to a site that I only want to read a single article. We need a way to pay a few cents to read an article, ad and tracker free.
Agree. I hope someone comes up with a “Netflix for online content”. I’m not going to subscribe to a dozen news sites individually and I also don’t want to make a purchase decision, even if tiny, every time I visit a site. For me a bundle of the top 10-15 high-quality news sites, perhaps letting me choose from different packages at different price points, and allocate the revenue to sites based on which content I read. Also let me share my account with a few members of my household on a “family plan”. They would make a lot more off me than they do from ads, and I’d be a lot happier.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#39Any time a site asks me to disable tracking protection, it has the curious effect of reinforcing my desire to leave it enabled - that site has made it clear that they are intentionally and unapologetically violating my privacy for a quick buck.
It's like a grocery store employee sidling up while you wait in line at the checkout, and politely asking you to put away your phone so you can examine the impulse-buy items on the racks around the checkout.
They remind you that having a good grocery store in your neighborhood is important, and don't you want to support that?
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#40What infuriates me about WaPo is that even though I pay for it, their site is pretty much unusable without an ad blocker. The text jumps around as I scroll to make room for dynamically loaded ads. And then there are the bottom-feeding Outbrain (or whatever vendor they use) ads at the bottom of the article. It's a mess.