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Don't touch my clipboard

alexanderell.is

1–10 of 322 posts

Re: Don't touch my clipboard

#4
This hijacking “feature” that’s been a part of news and other proprietary content sites for more than a decade now:

https://moz.com/ugc/copymagicpaste-a-script-and-easytousegui...

Anecdotally speaking, I’ve seen it a lot less these days; mostly, I see it when copy-pasting from my Kindle app. I’ve rarely ever seen it for a site this general-purpose (and trivial) though

Re: Don't touch my clipboard

#5
There used to be a time when we could hope that browsers would put users first and disable dark patterns like these.

Now, there are so many advertisers that use Tynt and related services to muck with copy/paste that it wouldn't surprise me if the major browsers are incentivized to leave this alone and let users suffer.

Re: Don't touch my clipboard

#6
I chuckled when I saw the copyright. What exactly are they copyrighting? Lorem ipsum? The bloody emdash itself?

Even I exercised more caution when I was 12 and learning HTML, arbitrarily applying copyright to things I didn't own.

Re: Don't touch my clipboard

#7
post #4

This hijacking “feature” that’s been a part of news and other proprietary content sites for more than a decade now: https://moz.com/ugc/copymagicpaste-a-script-and-easytousegui... Anecdotally speaking, I’ve seen it a lot less these days; mostly, I see it when copy-pasting from my Kindle app. I’ve rarely ever seen it for a site this general-purpose (and trivial) though

> You can set up a minimum length, so not every word copied will be modified by the following, preventing a negative user experience when using your site.

You know what would prevent a negative user experience? Not adding things to my clipboard that I don't want. (Thankfully, that site didn't seem to.)

Re: Don't touch my clipboard

#8
post #5

There used to be a time when we could hope that browsers would put users first and disable dark patterns like these. Now, there are so many advertisers that use Tynt and related services to muck with copy/paste that it wouldn't surprise me if the major browsers are incentivized to leave this alone and let users suffer.

And when was that? The 2000-2010 era where everything you clicked added a layer to your Internet Explorer addons list? Or the 2010-2014 era where everything required Java and Flash enabled by default, ridden with zero day exploits? Or the 2014-2016 era with cryptominers, trackers and trivial fingerprinting techniques allowed to exist easily? Or the 2016-current era with heavy Javascript applications which train the user to expect some interactivity with every action (and therefore encourage devs to do stuff like in this post)?

Re: Don't touch my clipboard

#9
post #4

This hijacking “feature” that’s been a part of news and other proprietary content sites for more than a decade now: https://moz.com/ugc/copymagicpaste-a-script-and-easytousegui... Anecdotally speaking, I’ve seen it a lot less these days; mostly, I see it when copy-pasting from my Kindle app. I’ve rarely ever seen it for a site this general-purpose (and trivial) though

It’s been around for so long a clipboard-jacking-as-a-service company, Tynt (https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tynt), launched, lived and exited.

If telling people not to do this was going to be enough to solve the problem, we wouldn’t still be talking about it. The browser vendors really need to shut it off once and for all.

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