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The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

the-tls.co.uk

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Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#71

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #61
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have been mulling cancelling my Facebook account for a while now Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; then 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; next 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then 4. Delete the Faceb…

>Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years The main issue, at least for me, is that everything social that is happening is arranged through Facebook. My kids school events, social events in the town i live in, hell even the good old paper adds from our local grocery store has been replaced with posts on Facebook. Everything is announced and coor…

> So going "cold turkey" is not really an option

Ending an abusive relationship is always an option.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#72

Post by Xelbair »

jwr wrote: post #66
fmajid wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the positive side, the Quantcast cookie popups now offer a choice between "Accept All" and "Reject All". Previously they offered "Accept All" or "Click here to enter our deliberately confusing rat's warren of options". I wonder if the French DPA's announcement that they will start cracking down on dark patterns like this was the impetus for the change.

Well, it's true that this popup was slightly less sleazy and misleading, but it wasn't that great, either. Just for reference (since it is obviously needed), if someone really DOES want to slam readers in the face with a popup as the first thing they see, here is some non-confusing wording: "Do you agree to be tracked using cookies by 134 advertising companies (link to full list)?" Two large buttons: "Yes" "No". Yes…

>Yes or No. Not "Configure", not "adjust my preferences", not "Leave" which doesn't actually leave, not "Settings" which takes you to a list of all the "partners" with individual switches, no dark patterns. Yes or no.

Even worse when the switches are made in such way that you have no idea whether you are opting-in or out.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#73

Post by ailideex »

anoncake wrote: post #68
ailideex wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was still struck by the brazenness of advertising something whose ethical dubiousness has been so thoroughly publicized. I actually don't entirely see the problem here. I mean taking money from Scientologists to fund services I use (I don't use facebook, but hypothetically if I did ...) is a good thing in my view. I guess you are worried that people will convert to Scientology, but really if the only thing that i…

Ads don't just inform people that Scientology exists, that's widely known. They try to manipulate them into joining. The "real" problem here is that people can be manipulated like that. But until we find a way to remove that vulnerability we must stop Scientology from exploiting it.

But is Scientology's view not that we are essentially manipulated into our current value and belief systems?

Why does your goal of trying to limit their "manipulation" have more validity than their goal of limiting yours?

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#74

Post by thebudgie »

Xelbair wrote: post #72
jwr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's true that this popup was slightly less sleazy and misleading, but it wasn't that great, either. Just for reference (since it is obviously needed), if someone really DOES want to slam readers in the face with a popup as the first thing they see, here is some non-confusing wording: "Do you agree to be tracked using cookies by 134 advertising companies (link to full list)?" Two large buttons: "Yes" "No". Yes…

>Yes or No. Not "Configure", not "adjust my preferences", not "Leave" which doesn't actually leave, not "Settings" which takes you to a list of all the "partners" with individual switches, no dark patterns. Yes or no. Even worse when the switches are made in such way that you have no idea whether you are opting-in or out.

Then you click it to test and you've opted in for just a second and it's already too late to go back...

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#75

Post by userbinator »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #16
mjevans wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do it like they did in the good old days when JS was new and couldn't be relied upon to exist. Don't rely upon it to exist. Serve up well marked content, CSS that might format it nicely, and JavaScript that allows some types of per-validation to happen client side but only as a means of making a page nicer. The server side should STILL perform all data validation, normalization, and verification (assume someone will…

No, Twitch specifically. It's an interactive chat and live video streaming application that happens to be built out of web tech. If you don't have AJAX, you could maybe-kinda-sorta kludge it together out of forms and video elements, but it'd degrade hard , and need to be built completely different from the normally-interactive version.

We had chat long before the era of SPAs -- no JS was required with things like long-polling, although that's one of the applications where I think a bit of JS will definitely be useful and welcome.

As for video streaming, that's not hard at all, especially now that there's a tag.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#76

Post by vermilingua »

amelius wrote: post #48
jgacook wrote: post #7

I have been mulling cancelling my Facebook account for a while now. Today as I was browsing I saw several Scientology ads. I know Facebook doesn't have an agenda per se - you have the money, they have the adspace - but I was still struck by the brazenness of advertising something whose ethical dubiousness has been so thoroughly publicized. Facebook will never change unless they are forced to. We have signed away perh…

Someone should write and maintain a library that can scrape Facebook accounts. This library could be used by software that can help people stay away from FB without the downside of missing out on things like events or groups.

This would be impossible to maintain. Facebook regularly changes the layout of pages, and mangles the DOM to defeat adblocking, and also likely take anti scraping measures.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#77

Post by amelius »

vermilingua wrote: post #76
amelius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should write and maintain a library that can scrape Facebook accounts. This library could be used by software that can help people stay away from FB without the downside of missing out on things like events or groups.

This would be impossible to maintain. Facebook regularly changes the layout of pages, and mangles the DOM to defeat adblocking, and also likely take anti scraping measures.

Yes, but are you familiar with the tool Youtube-DL, which is open-source, runs on Linux, and allows users to download content from youtube? This tool is very useful, and is constantly being updated after changes on YouTube that break the tool. If the tool doesn't work, you simply invoke it with the "-U" flag and it updates itself. So far, this tool has not failed me.

I think a similar approach could be taken by this scraping library, though I admit it would be a lot of work to maintain it.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#78

Post by 3733782263 »

jwr wrote: post #49

Oh, the irony of this article slamming me in the face with a sleazy "We need your consent" dialog with intentionally confusing options and sub-dialogs... My "consent" is being forced out of me so that roughly ~100 (at a first glance) "partners" can invade my privacy and learn about my browsing habits. By the way, if you are a programmer and you implement those sleazy dialogs, think about your life choices.

>By the way, if you are a programmer and you implement those sleazy dialogs, think about your life choices.

I'm sure this stern talking to really made them evaluate their life choices. We need more people on HN to take a stand like this, downvotes be damned. We all have to be the change we want to see.

Re: The opt-out illusion: how we have acquiesced to losing our privacy

#79

Post by vetinari »

markovbot wrote: post #33
lisper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a job for a burner phone.

Why would someone buy a whole new phone just to use a shitty advertising network they explicitly did not want to use?

Even if you take it literally as a physical phone instead of SIM, the SMS verification works equally well with 20 EUR Nokia dumbphone as with the latest iPhone.
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