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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

#191

Post by fnordsensei »

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.

Maybe the consent workflow should be abstracted and standardized, and put into web browsers. Rather than everyone rolling their own workflow (most which are horrible), the browsers could offer a unified way to do this, and a central place to revoke consent.

Though it would probably take legislation to make orgs use it. The current workflows have a lot of dark patterns, despite GDPR.

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

#192

Post by zoggenhoff »

rebuilder wrote: post #55
newsbinator wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

More like the clerk asking you to please take your hat and sunglasses off so their CCTV facial recognition system can identify you and keep track of your movements in the store.

Creepy. But then again if you make analogies for most web sites/services they get creepy real fast. This is how far things have moved since the previous "analog" days.

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

#193

Post by Reason077 »

damon_c wrote: post #185
andai wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> cookie consent (10x worse since GDPR) Traveling to different countries makes cookie consent an amazingly broken thing. Every website needs an "ok" button clicked every time you arrive in a new place. How did we get here? Did people vote for this?

> "How did we get here? Did people vote for this?"

Here in the UK we had a referendum on it in 2016. People (narrowly) voted NO to stupid EU laws.

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

#195

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#196

Post by DCoder »

Bud wrote: post #47
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…

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?

> There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute not common law. Neither individuals not corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.

R. A. Heinlein, Life-Line (1939)

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

#197

Post by KozmoNau7 »

Bud wrote: post #47
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…

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?

Let it burn.

I have zealously blocked all ads since the first adblockers became available (even before blocklists), I've used Privoxy and PiHole and various other tools to block as much advertising as I possibly can. I go out of my way to avoid prominent logos on clothing, although I do make an exception for band shirts for bands I personally like. I show up ~10 minutes "late" for movies, in order to avoid most of the pointless ads.

In general, I try to avoid advertising as much as I possibly can, because it's poisoning our decision making processes and influencing our behavior more than we realize.

So let the ad-supported leeches die. We did just fine before they invaded our internet.

Even if hypothetically a new "ethical" ad-serving standard arose, I would still block all of it.

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

#198

Post by hiliev »

Bud wrote: post #47
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…

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?

Most of the ad-supported media is trashy anyway, churning at the highest rate possible low quality content with click-bait titles. Because SEO and clicks. Even the well-respected media outlets have started jumping on the click-bait wagon.

The alternative is something like Medium - you pay a monthly fee and the money gets distributed between the authors based on your likes. Medium has a growing partnership with big media outlets that republish articles there. I tend to read there most of the time. Not only is the reading experience better and uniform but I directly vote with my wallet.

Is it that hard to have a privacy-respecting service whose only purpose is to collect a monthly fee and to allow me to distribute it to participating media sites via some kind of "Support" or "Like" button? The problem is that most Internet users do not value their privacy and hence do not care that a shady 3rd party is tracking them and filling their screen with obnoxious ads, just as long as they keep getting "content" for free. It will take a tremendous amount of effort for the privacy revolution to happen.

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

#199

Post by AsyncAwait »

Reason077 wrote: post #193
damon_c wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cookie consent (10x worse since GDPR) Traveling to different countries makes cookie consent an amazingly broken thing. Every website needs an "ok" button clicked every time you arrive in a new place. How did we get here? Did people vote for this?

> "How did we get here? Did people vote for this?" Here in the UK we had a referendum on it in 2016. People (narrowly) voted NO to stupid EU laws.

There are stupid laws, but privacy protection is not one of them. People narrowly voted to bankrupt their economy, that's for sure.

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

#200

Post by AsyncAwait »

Freak_NL wrote: post #178
bscphil wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this is what really makes me mad. You can't argue that alternatives to tracking don't exist when no one is actually trying the alternatives. You can't choose between paying and getting tracked; it's get tracked regardless and hear them nag you to pay them for the privilege.

> You can't choose between paying and getting tracked […] Well, you can of course pay and use an ad-blocker. I have a subscription to a Dutch newspaper (on actual paper even), and use their site as well, but not without protection. The ads in the paper newspaper are usually fine. Rarely do they affront or annoy; and they are tailored to the general profile of the newspaper's readership. But whenever I use a clean bro…

> Well, you can of course pay and use an ad-blocker.

But why pay if they're still being tracked? The value proposition here is off. Might as well not pay and use an ad blocker.

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