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Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

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Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#161

Post by petyrbaelish »

kbenson wrote: post #86
bscphil wrote: post #30

Why are different organizations taking such an affront to Firefox's tracking protection? I don't have this problem at WaPo with uBlock + uMatrix. As far as I understand it only takes effect by default in private browsing mode. I think it's more crucial than ever that everyone use adblockers and refuse to support sites that retaliate with anti-social behavior. Yes, news orgs need funding, but there's no requirement th…

Well, if WaPo makes a distinction between subscribers and non-subscribers for this behavior (I'm not sure if they do or don't), they they are very clearly giving you a choice for how to pay for your content, with your money or with whatever information that can get out of you, and to that end they don't want you to block that because they actually want to get something of value out of the transaction. > I think it's…

When you pay with your money,i.e. subscribe : you enable them to get more information out of you. Tracking becomes almost perfect : no matter how many browsers you change, operating systems, keep deleting cookies, give random data to finger printing : they can track you with your subscriber ID.

So paying is a double whammy.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#162

Post by mike22223333 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #87
Bud wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree with you. But do you have an alternative model ready? And if not, how much of the news media are you willing to let die off completely before you would relent?

Personally, all of it. Honestly, it's not our job to find a business model that works. It's literally the job of a company trying to make money. Find a way that works. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for cooperating and working together to solve things. But the ad industry is so out of control that there's no cooperating with that. If they find a way to serve ads that are not privacy-invading, do not expose users to malw…

Person with insider info here. It was Google that started the data race. Rest of the industry was forced because Advertisers would not advertise otherwise because they were getting better return on investment buying ads that were targeted using personal data aka Google.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#163

Post by Vinnl »

noobermin wrote: post #5

Perhaps a link will help. You'll see this if you click on articles and don't have a subscription, a modal of a kind will pop up asking you to "unblock ads." Clicking on the link[0] to unblock ads brings you to a page giving steps for "disabling Firefox’s native ad blocker," showing a gif for turning off tracking protection. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/steps-for-disabling-firefoxs-...

I just now realise how great it is that Firefox is calling it "tracking protection". Many people (myself included) are fine with some ads; back in the paper newspaper era, they were a reasonable trade-off for cheaper newspapers.

When they're also tracking you, however, that's no longer as reasonable. While asking me to turn off my adblocker sounds reasonable to some extent, asking me to turn of tracking protection feels malicious (because it is). They can try not to mention the term here, but to actually disable it, you'll still have to go into preferences and explicitly turn off Tracking Protection, not ad blocking.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#164

Post by adrianN »

andai wrote: post #160
johnchristopher wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how things happened. First they came with the blink tag. Then they added animated GIFs everywhere. They came with the pop-up. Then they put the pop-up under the main window. Ad-blockers' first usage was to make the Web readable. Then years later privacy concerns took over.

At this point, ads are just one of many problems. Newsletter popups, cookie consent (10x worse since GDPR), auto-playing video, in-browser crypto mining..? At this point, basic self-respect demands I simply disable JavaScript. It's incredible how much faster the web is without it, and how much smoother, and how much less cluttered.

Browsers became the new operating systems at some point. It only makes sense that the user controls the software that runs on them.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#165

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

bscphil wrote: post #149
yubiox wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any ads that aren't just scams anyway?

"Scams" is too strong, but I don't think "undesirable" would be. Think about it: ads are nearly always unwanted. You can tell because advertisers have to pay to put their content in front of users. If consumers wanted to see ads, media would put in ads paid or not to better compete for viewers. Instead, "premium" sources are often ad-free (see Spotify, HBO, better movie theaters, etc). I think the reason for this is…

> seems amiss

Try this: all is paid for by advertisers, it has always been. Deduce which of your "exist to" beliefs is mistaken - perhaps due to advertising about it ...

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#166

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

SCAQTony wrote: post #71
bscphil wrote: post #30

Why are different organizations taking such an affront to Firefox's tracking protection? I don't have this problem at WaPo with uBlock + uMatrix. As far as I understand it only takes effect by default in private browsing mode. I think it's more crucial than ever that everyone use adblockers and refuse to support sites that retaliate with anti-social behavior. Yes, news orgs need funding, but there's no requirement th…

Are we really blocking ads or are we really blocking malware? Calling our privacy tools adblockers is a misnomer don't you think for any site can simple put ad in a div and not get it blocked.

Indeed. I don't mind seeing ads. I do mind being tracked all over the internet by multiple unknown entities.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#168

Post by mackrevinack »

sticazzi wrote: post #167

I have AdBlock, AdBlock Plus and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. Anything else to recommend for Firefox?

maybe get rid of adblock and use ublock instead. its open source and anytime I hear adblock being mentioned its usually something bad

check out https://www.privacytools.io as well or the subreddit for more discussions on that type of thing

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#170

Post by dorfuss »

I would like the publishers to understand that I use the blocking software because their JavaScript is so poorly written that it consumes 90% of my CPU power, which is not acceptable on a laptop. There must be a better way, and I'm happy to pay for the subscription.
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