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Block cookie banners on Firefox

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Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#51

Post by nonameiguess »

benrutter wrote: post #17

Given browser headers have existed for a long time, does anyone know why there isn't some protocol of your browser saying "give me all the cookies", "give me only essential cookies" or "give me all cookies except trackibgbones" etc? Instead if tedious and manual banners on every website? I get why companies might not want this (less cookie acceptance) but they didn't want cookies to require consent either and the EU…

Gonna arguably talk out of my ass here, but as far as I understand the law, it doesn't dictate implementation details. You have to get consent to keep any sort of persistent session state on your users that can be used to track their browsing behavior. It doesn't say you need to do this by offering a popup that itself stores a cookie saying you do or don't want other cookies, but you're largely guaranteed browsers will support displaying a popup banner. You're not guaranteed browsers will send a non-standard header. Doing this is in the scope of browser developers and the IETF, whereas GPDR is in the scope of lawmakers. One of those groups decided to act and the other did not.

Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#52

Post by atomicfiredoll »

PaulHoule wrote: post #24
relyks wrote: post #2

Funny, I use the "I still don't care about cookies" extension ( https://github.com/OhMyGuus/I-Still-Dont-Care-About-Cookies ) right now to automatically accept the cookie banners. They're literally one of the most annoying things that has happened in the web's history

I always get downvoted for saying this but I think the cookie banners broke taboos about intrusive and annoying pop-ups in web sites. There was a time the tech and design oriented people could fight against it for the users but once it was required or maybe “socially positive” it got much harder to fight against all the others so you find the blogs now that will interrupt you three times to give your email and such.…

There's been an overall progression toward intrusiveness for as long as commerce has been on the internet. We had "sign up for our newsletter" and other pop-ups way before GDPR.

I think popup blockers turned back the tide for a while, but businesses eventually learned how to leverage dialogs for some of the same purposes. And, over time, that's been rolled up into WordPress plugins and other easy to implement solutions for one-off site owners, which makes them even more common.

Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#53

Post by dang »

Submitted title was "Firefox private mode now automatically blocks cookie banners for German users".

Submitters: If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

This is in the site guidelines: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#54

Post by Deukhoofd »

echelon wrote: post #19
relyks wrote: post #2

Funny, I use the "I still don't care about cookies" extension ( https://github.com/OhMyGuus/I-Still-Dont-Care-About-Cookies ) right now to automatically accept the cookie banners. They're literally one of the most annoying things that has happened in the web's history

It's funny we (EU, CCPA?) regulate cookies and hit use cases of companies trying to better themselves via analytics or maintain user presence, but we haven't done much in the way of stopping MAGMA from owning the means of communication and commerce outright. The Apple/Google duopoly on smartphones is insane. - Companies face 30% tax, can't deploy, can't do native (Apple) or get scare walls (Google), can't form a cust…

Well, the Digital Markets Act basically regulates the things you're asking for. It's specifically designed to tackle "gatekeepers", such as the Google/Apply duopoly on smartphones, Metas hold on chat (especially in Europe, where WhatsApp is very popular), Amazons hold on the online marketplace, etc.

It's a very new regulation, so we've yet to really see the effects.

Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#55

Post by marginalia_nu »

martijnvds wrote: post #44
marginalia_nu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox periodically dials home and reconfigures itself based on the arbitrary whims of Mozilla. It's really kind of disgusting.

And the other browsers don't? I've had my share of weird issues in Chrome because they enabled an "experiment" of some kind.

Yes, they are all doing it, and it's all bad. Though Firefox is especially culpable since most of their marketing is about privacy. It's apparently only bad when other people are spying on their users.

Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#56

Post by kmeisthax »

echelon wrote: post #19
relyks wrote: post #2

Funny, I use the "I still don't care about cookies" extension ( https://github.com/OhMyGuus/I-Still-Dont-Care-About-Cookies ) right now to automatically accept the cookie banners. They're literally one of the most annoying things that has happened in the web's history

It's funny we (EU, CCPA?) regulate cookies and hit use cases of companies trying to better themselves via analytics or maintain user presence, but we haven't done much in the way of stopping MAGMA from owning the means of communication and commerce outright. The Apple/Google duopoly on smartphones is insane. - Companies face 30% tax, can't deploy, can't do native (Apple) or get scare walls (Google), can't form a cust…

The EU is either cracking down on or actively investigating how to crack down on all of the things you mentioned. Cookies were just their warm-up phase.

Actually, I'm sugarcoating things! The EU was cracking down on Android years before even the cookies. US techies genuinely thought EU antitrust was a shakedown to get money out of Google and have conveniently forgotten things since.

Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#57

Post by addicted »

PaulHoule wrote: post #24
relyks wrote: post #2

Funny, I use the "I still don't care about cookies" extension ( https://github.com/OhMyGuus/I-Still-Dont-Care-About-Cookies ) right now to automatically accept the cookie banners. They're literally one of the most annoying things that has happened in the web's history

I always get downvoted for saying this but I think the cookie banners broke taboos about intrusive and annoying pop-ups in web sites. There was a time the tech and design oriented people could fight against it for the users but once it was required or maybe “socially positive” it got much harder to fight against all the others so you find the blogs now that will interrupt you three times to give your email and such.…

We’ve had far more annoying pop ups and banners since the 90s. One of Opera’s primary selling points at one time was its popup blocking capabilities and that was in the 90s or latest in the 2001/2002 timeframe from what I can remember.

Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#58

Post by NekkoDroid »

Dalewyn wrote: post #26
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #10

> For example, they might make the Accept All Cookies button prominent, colorful and appealing, while burying the Customize Settings option in small text or a less noticeable location. This design choice can be misleading, effectively nudging users towards accepting all cookies without considering the consequences. Kind of burying the lede there that this isn't just annoying, it's illegal.

The general trend of Not-A-Button Buttons in GUIs can die in a fucking fire. We have screens capable of rendering 8K in literally billions of colors and the silicon to drive them and yet we can't spare a few pixels for some borders and shading?

It's not that they can't, it's that they don't want to specifically to be annoying.

Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#59

Post by mindslight »

Symbiote wrote: post #23
benrutter wrote: post #17

Given browser headers have existed for a long time, does anyone know why there isn't some protocol of your browser saying "give me all the cookies", "give me only essential cookies" or "give me all cookies except trackibgbones" etc? Instead if tedious and manual banners on every website? I get why companies might not want this (less cookie acceptance) but they didn't want cookies to require consent either and the EU…

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track , though this wasn't part of any regulations.

Furthermore, despite Do Not Track being an obvious and strong indication of user intent, website owners want to hassle you anyway on the off chance you fallaciously "consent" from fatigue/accident/coercion/etc. It's like those business bros that just keep pushing after you say no (respecting boundaries is for suckers, amirite), but since it's in the automated digital world think of it as yet another "dark pattern" if you must. Every cookie banner is essentially the site giving a giant middle finger to the user, but the surveillance industry has been adept at getting users to uncritically attribute them to the existence of privacy regulation rather than their own shitty behaviors. Part of which is this continued myopic focus on "cookies" when modern privacy regulation functions independent of the specific tracking mechanisms.

Re: Block cookie banners on Firefox

#60

Post by thrdbndndn »

I honestly don't like this idea.

I hate cookie banners just like anyone else, and use addons to remove them.

But I don't think it's browsers' job to modify web content based on their discretion, even with good intentions. I especially hate it when a manually crafted list is involved (as said in the article).

I think it should be done of 3rd-party addons/rules, not the browser vendor.

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