I get why companies feel they need to do this (although I personally find the tracking to never be OK). I'd suggest a modified approach to these "please turn off" notices:
Show a form asking for alternatives and also having users enter how much money they would pay for the site to remove all ads and/or tracking. A step further could even be to allow people to enter what they'd pay for 1yr along with payment info. If the site decides that is a fair price at some point in the future, they charge the card.
Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
251–260 of 314 posts
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#252Earlier 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.
It is, and unfortunately it's also incredible how much of it simply doesn't work, or fails in obscure ways, without JavaScript. I use NoScript on my personal laptop, and I often have to add sites to the temporary-allow list several times a day.
(Please don't say "just don't use those sites, then." I'll use something else if there's an alternative, but there often isn't, and I'm not willing to cut myself off from a big chunk of the web on principle alone.)
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#253Earlier 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…
Here's a relevant (IMO) documentary:
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#254Earlier 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.
> People narrowly voted to bankrupt their economy, that's for sure.
Source Required.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#255Earlier 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…
Has there ever been a major professional news service, in any medium, that wasn't at least partially ad-supported? Maintaining a stable of good reporters is expensive, consumers aren't willing to pay much (if anything) for news, and the only alternative is some kind of patronage. At least with ads it's theoretically possible to maintain editorial independence.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that the management at traditional media outlets have been conned into believing that they need tracking in order to serve their advertisers. Advertising worked fine before internet tracking was a thing. Everything from Coca-Cola and the New York Times down to Fred's Corner Dry Cleaner and The Podunk Tribune survived and thrived on the old, low-tracking model. It's companies like Google and the other i…
> by falsely convincing them that an ad view on a screen is worth 1,000 times less than an ad view on printed paper What makes you believe that this hypothetical comparison is false? The problem with traditional advertising is that everyone sees it, regardless of their interest in the subject matter or lack thereof. As an advertiser you have to pay to show your ad to a lot of people who aren't likely to be interested…
If targeting works then why do I keep seeing ads for products that I've already purchased and have no intention of buying again any time soon?
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#257Earlier 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.
And poorly constructed single page applications that 9/10 could have been basic HTML / CSS pages with Bootstrap and maybe minimal jquery.
> with Bootstrap
Why is this even necessary in most cases? We developed sites for years without any of these frameworks and the the latest CSS standards will hopefully make it possible again while staying sane.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#258Earlier 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.
It is, and unfortunately it's also incredible how much of it simply doesn't work, or fails in obscure ways, without JavaScript. I use NoScript on my personal laptop, and I often have to add sites to the temporary-allow list several times a day. (Please don't say "just don't use those sites, then." I'll use something else if there's an alternative, but there often isn't, and I'm not willing to cut myself off from a bi…
Which is okay because most sites only require javascript served from 10-30% of the domains listed to actually function. The other 70-90% of domains serving the JS running on your browser are for tracking and monetization.
I don't mind JS, but when you go to a Kinja website, 20+ domains are serving up JS that runs in your browser. That's insane; but also very typical.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Apple News.
Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is also this https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/ ? where the Post offers a free sub, a basic sub (requiring consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us), and a Premium EU ad-free sub (No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking).
No, choosing "free" prompts the agreement to track prompt. And you must agree in order to proceed.
They are referring to the "Premium EU Ad-Free Subscription" option where they explicitly call out "No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking"