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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

#221

Post by foepys »

makomk wrote: post #206
mirimir wrote: post #13

I 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…

There's been no GDPR enforcement so far and it seems to have basically failed. All it's done has kill off a bunch of smaller websites, games, etc that aren't making enough money to justify the risk of being found noncompliant, whilst the big companies whose business models rely on tracking people have carried on regardless.

> There's been no GDPR enforcement so far and it seems to have basically failed.

Bold statement considering that it's been only 4.5 months since it came into effect. All government investigations take longer than quick business decisions.

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

#222

Post by geezerjay »

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…

> Think about it: ads are nearly always unwanted. You can tell because advertisers have to pay to put their content in front of users.

This isn't true. Advertisers pay to access a target audience, because publishers control that access and their business model depends on their ability to monetize it. In general adverts are not unwanted. In fact, some consumers even request companies to send them adverts intentionally, and even subscribe to marketing publications.

Heck, some consumers even pay to subscribe to catalogues.

In general, web adverts are disliked because they are very intrusive and degrade the performance of a website, and in some cases expose content that is socially frowned upon.

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

#224

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #165
bscphil wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 ...

> all is paid for by advertisers, it has always been.

No. There have always been websites by people who just want to share with the world, and paid services, and useful government programs, and nonprofits (go on, find an ad on https://www.gnu.org/). Your belief is mistaken.

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

#225

Post by alkonaut »

fgheorghe wrote: post #205

And how exactly are these organisations to make money, if not through ads?

They can show me 200 ads per article if they want. But I don't want them to show me "more relevant ads" by tracking me. Simple as that. If they want to make their content subscriber-only that's fine. If they want to have an ad-funded tier without tracking ads that's fine. If privacy-intruding tracking ads is the only way to give advertisers enough "value" for the impressions to make the economics work - then that business model is a failure and they should just pick another.

The usual questions here are

"Shouldn't the option to give up (sell) some privacy in exchange for something of value (such as viewing an article) be a decision that is up to each visitor"?

And the answer is:

Absolutely not, no. Why? because I don't think the transaction is, or can be made clear to consumers wrt what is being exchanged.

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

#226

Post by deagle50 »

marmaduke wrote: post #176
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.

> how much faster the web is without it, and how much smoother, and how much less cluttered I know HN has some JS, but I realized that I usually click on comments link for HN stuff since I know it's going to load super fast and not have a ton of useless crap on the page. If the comments are interesting I might read it, but most of the time there's more information in comments than the article itself. Or people quote…

+1. This is my fav news site for that reason.

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

#227

Post by StevePerkins »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #214
StevePerkins wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that Brave draws a bit of controversy on HN, but the fact that you just named a DOZEN plugins is the reason why I switched. That's just too much to keep up with, I need more sane defaults and built-in behavior.

There's nothing to keep up with, really. You could very servicably get by with only uBlock Origin's default blocklists and the advanced mode with 3rd party scripts/frames on default-deny. The rest are there because I'm slightly paranoid.

I'm concerned about fingerprinting.

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

#228

Post by qubax »

paulgb wrote: post #40

What 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.

> What infuriates me about WaPo is that even though I pay for it, their site is pretty much unusable without an ad blocker.

Counterintuitively, being a paid subscriber probably makes your data even more valuable to wapo and their advertisers so there is probably even more incentive to track you.

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

#229

Post by orf »

makomk wrote: post #206
mirimir wrote: post #13

I 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…

There's been no GDPR enforcement so far and it seems to have basically failed. All it's done has kill off a bunch of smaller websites, games, etc that aren't making enough money to justify the risk of being found noncompliant, whilst the big companies whose business models rely on tracking people have carried on regardless.

Not really, I've sent a large number of GDPR erasure requests and they have all been acted on promptly. That's cool.

The point of the legislation is not to slam the book down and start fining everyone left right and center practically the moment it came into effect. It's a complex regulation and the regulators are sensible, so don't expect any action to be taken for at least a couple of years. If you're working towards compliance that's OK for now.

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

#230

Post by Reason077 »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #199
Reason077 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

Privacy protection laws are a good thing.

But “cookie consent” pop-ups are stupid and pointless. Pop-ups do not improve privacy, and they make the web worse.

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