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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

#81

Post by Kaze404 »

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…

What an interesting timing. Just yesterday I got fed up with Facebook after I realized I was somehow angry about politics at 2am on the comments of a post that was 100% filled with bots. I can honestly take everything they (Facebook, Twitter, etc) do to a certain point to claw interactions out of me, but making me angry and my day worse is the breaking point.

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

#82

Post by johannes1234321 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11
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…

> 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…

I was amazed how well it worked to get off Facebook by removing the button from the phone's home screen. First few days it was weird - when between things I grabbed my phone, unlocked, moved my finger to the palace where I expected Facebook and then was confused "what was it I wanted to do? - oh nothing, damn" and after a week or two I got used to it being away and was mostly off Facebook. Now I use it only when specifically searching for information which (unfortunately) is exclusive there (for some businesses it's simpler to do a FB post than their own thing ...) and when I scroll over my feed quickly think "oh what a waste of time" and am happy for getting past my "addiction".

Won't say it works for everybody, but certainly worth to try. My life got better.

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

#83

Post by Kaze404 »

mjevans wrote: post #21
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was thinking of Twitter for some reason. Twitch could be done with a native app... the phone versions SHOULD be done with such if they aren't.

How is installing a native application a viable alternative to javascript? Presumably, if you're blocking the latter is because you don't want to run untrusted code on your device.

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

#84

Post by Fnoord »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #25
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…

I still have a facebook account for the sole purpose of messaging those people I only contact once a year. Honestly never really used facebook for anything more than a IM platform. I never felt comfortable posting anything since all family members would be seeing it. And I never liked consuming content on it because I found it all to be low quality shitposts and blog spam.

Before I deleted Facebook (and severely cut down on my Google usage) I imported the birthday list to my own calendars (on Nextcloud). I added all the contacts in my calendar as well (on Nextcloud). This gets synced with DAVx5 when I'm home on WLAN.

Now I keep contact with these people via WhatsApp (due to network effect it has in The Netherlands) and plain old telephone/e-mail as these are included in their contact info.

Don't quit Facebook right away. First, request your data and import this. Manually backup the data I mentioned above (and consider to remove people). Gradually delete all your posts (there's an addon for it, not sure which one I used). Then make a post you're going to leave Facebook. No drama, no reason required. You're just informing people about it. And then you do it: you go through the process of removing your account, and you never log in again. Ie. remove the password from your password manager.

I've also installed containers for GAFAM, and use a myriad of browser addons to protect my privacy.

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

#85

Post by rezeroed »

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.

Isn't that what the back button is for? We read too much shit anyway. My preferred method for handling theses popups now is the back button.

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

#87

Post by Maascamp »

Just wish these articles would address the amount of content and utility we get in exchange for our data (instead of our money) and speak to the trade-off. Until we find a better way to financially support all of the things we consume on the web, I'm not sure I see anything changing.

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

#88

Post by blaser-waffle »

mc3 wrote: post #23

Ironically this page sent a payload to a domain call permuative.com, without my permission. This payload contains user events e.g. how long I read the article, a user identity guid (presumably a fingerprint of my browser), my isp name

HN is ycombinator, which are the people who helped make reddit happen. Is it really that big of a surprise they're doing stuff like this?

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

#89

Post by lima »

fmajid wrote: post #60
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.

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.

What about "accept cookies or pay" like some newspapers do? Is that okay?

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

#90

Post by aguyfromnb »

3733782263 wrote: post #78
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.

>We need more people on HN to take a stand like this, downvotes be damned.

As the funding dries up the community will close ranks even more so. We are already getting to the point on this forum where anything not outwardly positive (not even "negative") said about certain subjects is instantly donwvoted. Being as how downvoting is something that requires 500 karma, these are not bots or spam accounts; they are veteran members, preventing balanced discourse from occurring ("slow down").

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