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Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

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Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#101

Post by 9712263 »

Animats wrote: post #81

Amusingly, with Mozilla's tracking protection on, Ghostery set to block everything it knows about, Privacy Badger running, private browsing mode, and third party cookies disabled, the Washington Post site not only works, it no longer nags about subscribing.

I try it in my firefox and I don't experience this prompt. Possibly because I don't read long enough to trigger the prompt, or ublock origin advanced mode + Privacy Badger + Tracking Protection combo suppressed too aggressively that it never appears. I tried disabling the plugins but cannot reproduce.

Btw, for this kind of prompt, one ublock origin features I found very useful is cosmetic filter. I could specify which CSS element permanently to disable by right click menu. I find it useful when I want to watch a specific Facebook video but that annoying Facebook login prompt keeps bugging and it could be triggered by left clicking anything in the page, including expanding comment sections. Though, it's a cat-and-mouse game, and you never know when the countermeasures doesn't work.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#102

Post by xab9 »

Bud wrote: post #47
bscphil wrote: post #30

Why are different organizations taking such an affront to Firefox's tracking protection? I don't have this problem at WaPo with uBlock + uMatrix. As far as I understand it only takes effect by default in private browsing mode. I think it's more crucial than ever that everyone use adblockers and refuse to support sites that retaliate with anti-social behavior. Yes, news orgs need funding, but there's no requirement th…

I tend to agree with you. But do you have an alternative model ready? And if not, how much of the news media are you willing to let die off completely before you would relent?

All of it. Let it burn.

It's time for a culling anyway, the videos, the stupid clickbaits, the malware infested ad servers, the hysteria around adblockers, the secretly sponsored articles, the popup layers, the sluggish megabyte spas, the cpu eater animations, the parallax scroller full hd uncompressed images... let them whither away.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#103

Post by jarcane »

bscphil wrote: post #30

Why are different organizations taking such an affront to Firefox's tracking protection? I don't have this problem at WaPo with uBlock + uMatrix. As far as I understand it only takes effect by default in private browsing mode. I think it's more crucial than ever that everyone use adblockers and refuse to support sites that retaliate with anti-social behavior. Yes, news orgs need funding, but there's no requirement th…

> Why are different organizations taking such an affront to Firefox's tracking protection?

The same reason some orgs started blocking the entire EU rather than obey GDPR.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#104

Post by cratib »

gwbas1c wrote: post #34
larkeith wrote: post #8

Any time a site asks me to disable tracking protection, it has the curious effect of reinforcing my desire to leave it enabled - that site has made it clear that they are intentionally and unapologetically violating my privacy for a quick buck.

The problem is the payment model is broken. I'm not going to subscribe to a site that I only want to read a single article. We need a way to pay a few cents to read an article, ad and tracker free.

> We need a way to pay a few cents to read an article, ad and tracker free.

Blendle[1] is exactly that. They are in semi-private beta, but if you follow a link from their twitter[2] you can sign up right away.

Their model is put a few dollars in your account and pay $0.10-$1.00 per article. You can also get an instant refund after you've read, which is supposed to solve clickbait type articles.

They have a lot of major publishers including WaPo, NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc.

Not affiliated, just a satisfied user.

[1] https://blendle.com/ [2] https://twitter.com/blendle

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#105

Post by johnchristopher »

SCAQTony wrote: post #71
bscphil wrote: post #30

Why are different organizations taking such an affront to Firefox's tracking protection? I don't have this problem at WaPo with uBlock + uMatrix. As far as I understand it only takes effect by default in private browsing mode. I think it's more crucial than ever that everyone use adblockers and refuse to support sites that retaliate with anti-social behavior. Yes, news orgs need funding, but there's no requirement th…

Are we really blocking ads or are we really blocking malware? Calling our privacy tools adblockers is a misnomer don't you think for any site can simple put ad in a div and not get it blocked.

That's not how things happened.

First they came with the blink tag. Then they added animated GIFs everywhere. They came with the pop-up. Then they put the pop-up under the main window.

Ad-blockers' first usage was to make the Web readable. Then years later privacy concerns took over.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#106

Post by fyfy18 »

mikekchar wrote: post #48
ralfd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does GDPR compliance require a site to work if a user is not agreeing to be tracked? Functionally the user never clicking the agree button and not be able to access the site is equivalent to what the latimes is doing: http://latimes.com http://www.tribpub.com/gdpr/latimes.com/ > "Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries."

They can't offer to give you access in exchange for consent to use your data. By not granting access at all, they are complying with the GDPR. However, as always, it's important to point out that you don't ever have to ask for consent with the GDRP. If the data you are gathering necessary in order to complete the service, then people can't even object to it. If the data you are gathering is a legitimate interest (for…

> If the data you are gathering is a legitimate interest (for marketing, or whatever)

Calling marketing a legitimate interest is a bit of a grey area. The ICO says that by relying on legitimate interests (i.e. not gaining consent) they need to be weighed against the impact they have on the user's privacy and own interests.[0]

So if you are showing first party ads and you aren't collecting more data than is necessary (e.g. anonymised IP address, browser, a list of articles/products the user has viewed) you are probably fine. But if you start linking this with any personal data (e.g. full IP address, email address, date of birth) or intend on sharing it with a third-party you need consent.

[0] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#107

Post by speedplane »

robocat wrote: post #97
speedplane wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYTimes is $16/mo Washington Post is $10-15/mo WSJ is $15/mo Seems like the price range is $10-25/mo for many periodicals, so a bundled plan of $20/month might be a bit low. But I can imagine a $50/mo plan for including two national newspapers, a local newspaper, and a news weekly (e.g., economist) being pretty popular.

Should foreigners (or anyone really) be able to access the single article that interests them? I really don't want to read a anything about American politics. I am not interested in the vast majority of "news" in newspapers. I am willing to outbid advertisers to read an article - if there was a convenient way to do micro-payments.

Should newspapers cater to people who want to read a single article for pennies and walk away forever? I think not.

There is a much stronger interest to build a lasting relationship over time with their readership, so the reader becomes familiar with the paper's voice, credibility, and focus. This leads to more revenue: readers will pay more for content they respect). It also leads to better news: a stable revenue source allows papers to plan and better invest in their reporting.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#108

Post by Kalium »

Bud wrote: post #47
bscphil wrote: post #30

Why are different organizations taking such an affront to Firefox's tracking protection? I don't have this problem at WaPo with uBlock + uMatrix. As far as I understand it only takes effect by default in private browsing mode. I think it's more crucial than ever that everyone use adblockers and refuse to support sites that retaliate with anti-social behavior. Yes, news orgs need funding, but there's no requirement th…

I tend to agree with you. But do you have an alternative model ready? And if not, how much of the news media are you willing to let die off completely before you would relent?

I already pay for my news in annual subscriptions.

And I'm willing to let the vast majority of it burn down. I refuse to accept that something so critical to a democratic society as the press can only exist by removing from us any semblance of privacy.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#109

Post by adrianN »

SCAQTony wrote: post #71
bscphil wrote: post #30

Why are different organizations taking such an affront to Firefox's tracking protection? I don't have this problem at WaPo with uBlock + uMatrix. As far as I understand it only takes effect by default in private browsing mode. I think it's more crucial than ever that everyone use adblockers and refuse to support sites that retaliate with anti-social behavior. Yes, news orgs need funding, but there's no requirement th…

Are we really blocking ads or are we really blocking malware? Calling our privacy tools adblockers is a misnomer don't you think for any site can simple put ad in a div and not get it blocked.

I'm not blocking ads, I'm blocking crap that sucks my battery dry and hinders me in reading the content that I came to read.

Re: Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

#110

Post by rusk »

blub wrote: post #88
kbenson wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if WaPo makes a distinction between subscribers and non-subscribers for this behavior (I'm not sure if they do or don't), they they are very clearly giving you a choice for how to pay for your content, with your money or with whatever information that can get out of you, and to that end they don't want you to block that because they actually want to get something of value out of the transaction. > I think it's…

I don't know how WaPo does this, but all newspapers I've tried including NYT and The Guardian and The Economist have a lot of tracking in their apps even for subscribers. So it's a crap deal.

I would say especially for subscribers. For an advertiser it’s those who can pay that are the most interesting.
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