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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

#131

Post by clairity »

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 saw several Scientology ads. I know Facebook doesn't have an agenda per se [...] but I was still struck by the brazenness of advertising something whose ethical dubiousness has been so thoroughly publicized."

scientology is certainly ethically dubious. it's a tax shelter and MLM to financially benefit it's leaders disguised as a religion, which attacks its detractors publicly. that some people find meaning and belonging there is incidental to it's purpose. so no love for scientology.

but why would you expect facebook to ban advertising from them? and why would that be the last straw that made you quit facebook?

facebook (particularly zuckerberg) itself has poor ethics, and that's as good a reason to quit facebook as one should need.

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

#132

Post by grawprog »

yakireev wrote: post #117
smichel17 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I deleted my account, I went through one additional step: 6. Delete your account. Create a new account under a pseudonym. Add a single friend, who can add you to group chats. At this point, you should have a near-empty news feed; Facebook is only for staying in touch with the group (eg, not missing out on social events) until people have gotten used to texting you to invite you to things. You won't be able to co…

Nope, that won't work. Facebook will ask you for a phone number and for a selfie. It will then match both against their databases, and ask you for an ID if there is none. You can get a "burner" phone number and even a physical phone (that's what I do for whatsapp), but you can't have a burner face to make selfies. ...so now I don't have a FB account at all, and it is very inconvenient.

>Nope, that won't work. Facebook will ask you for a phone number and for a selfie. It will then match both against their databases, and ask you for an ID if there is none.

Damn, I never would have made a Facebook account if that was what the sign up process was when I signed up. That's just fucking insane. How the hell did it get to that point?

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

#133

Post by johndough »

rndomsrmn wrote: post #103
lightswitch05 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pi-Hole does support regex and wildcard based blocking

regex is _extremely_ resource inefficient and should not be used with large sets of rules. Dnsmasqs domain redirecting feature (address=/adhost.com/#) is not supported by pihole. Is there any other way to wildcard block full domains in Pi-Hole? Look for example in your list: d41.co, admaster.com.cn, mixmarket.biz chances are extremely slim that all (current) hostnames of those type of domains are currently being bloc…

If the regex rules do not require backreferences, it should be possible to implement them in such a way that they run in constant time with respect to the number of rules.

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

#134

Post by boublepop »

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…

To be fair, the “ethical dubiousness” of Scientology isn’t much different from the chatholic church, Islam or other organized religions.

They’ve just been the target of specific bad press, which they’re naturally trying to rectify.

And I mean sure we can argue without end if preventing medical care to mentally disabled people is worse or less severe than harboring and protecting child molesters, or if it’s more unrealistic that we all have Alien soul fragments from a Vulcano explosion or that a superhuman beings once defied the laws of biology, chemistry and physics all in ways that are less impressive than what David Copperfield can pull off without assistance. But at the end of the day the all fit in the catagory of “Tax avoiding institutions based on a belief in obvious falsehoods harboring and protecting criminal behavior in their organizations”

At time it honestly seems that the Mobs biggest mistake was not openly proclaiming a belief in man-bear-pig to justify their operations.

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

#136

Post by gadabout »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #88
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?

I am not defending HN/YC here, but the user's noted irony is referring to TFN, located at the-tls.co.uk, not talking about HN/YC.

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

#137

Post by anoncake »

stronglikedan wrote: post #120
nemo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Why does your goal of trying to limit their "manipulation" have more validity than their goal of limiting yours?" Because Scientology's views aren't held in good faith and claims about society should be assumed to be pretexts used to justify the quoted excuse for predatory behavior. Scientology has a history of fraud, kidnapping, extortion, and other extreme exploitation and don't deserve any benefit of the doubt. T…

I personally think they are kooks, and their views are less valid to me, but I also realize that it's just my subjective opinion. They also have the subjective opinion that their views are valid to them, and our views have less validity. No way to say who's "right", so they should be allowed to advertise until we agree on laws (still subjective) to possibly invalidate their views.

Of course Scientology should be allowed to advertise until there is a law that forbids that. That's how laws work.

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

#138

Post by mjevans »

Kaze404 wrote: post #83
mjevans wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Twitch does have an IRC gateway, so it's possible to use your own application for chat.

As another poster commented, the video aspect can be fulfilled with a number of different methods, and I don't see any technical reason a standard couldn't be followed to allow for arbitrary clients to handle that interaction as well.

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

#139

Post by SkyBelow »

hutzlibu wrote: post #126
SkyBelow wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>By the way, if you are a programmer and you implement those sleazy dialogs, think about your life choices. I think the logic underlying this sentiment is never consistently applied. Do we call out the people working on Tor or encryption because of how it is used by some to cause harm? Do we call out the other negative results of a person's job (tax money going to a war machine is pretty common for those in the US)?…

" Do we call out the people working on Tor or encryption because of how it is used by some to cause harm? " I am pretty sure, they thought alotabout the pros and cons of their work and decided a long time ago that the positive outweight the negative a lot. But what is the social positive in intentional programming dark pattern UI? I don't see any.

A few possibilities:

Disagreeing it is a dark pattern to begin with. For example, see how many people love opt out consent for organ donation and overlook the consent implications it has in that case. Another example is requiring email address at signup, is that actually needed and is it a dark pattern to not allow a person to sign up until they provide one, even though a more industrial user could give you a fake/temporary email address?

Seeing the data as not actually worth protecting and not having an issue with opt out or the like.

Thinking those who do care will already be using adblockers and the like.

Thinking it would be done regardless if they do it, so why burn what social/political capital they have achieving no difference when they can save it for something that might have an actual impact.

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

#140

Post by yakireev »

heartbeats wrote: post #122
yakireev wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, that won't work. Facebook will ask you for a phone number and for a selfie. It will then match both against their databases, and ask you for an ID if there is none. You can get a "burner" phone number and even a physical phone (that's what I do for whatsapp), but you can't have a burner face to make selfies. ...so now I don't have a FB account at all, and it is very inconvenient.

Since when? I've never been asked for a selfie. If you must, it doesn't seem like a big problem still. Go to thispersondoesnotexist.com, hit F5 a few times to find a nice portrait, then Google "driver license template" and apply basic Photoshop skills.

It probably means you're using your real name and/or your real phone number. Or have an established account with photos of you.

I did not check if images from thispersondoesnotexist.com would work to pass the selfie check, but my guess is that they wouldn't. A professional portrait of someone from a Western country who has never been seen on any photos Facebook owns, not even in the background? That's a red flag. Also, my guess is that Facebook knows about that page and takes precautions.

Anyway, if Facebook tries that hard to make sure I'm not there, why should I join?

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