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The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

kevinboone.me

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Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#161

Post by vorticalbox »

kachapopopow wrote: post #90
drnick1 wrote: post #52

Firefox w/ the Arkenfox user.js is probably as good as it gets in terms of privacy. By default, this config burns cookies on exit, standardizes the time zone to UTC, spoofs the canvas fingerprint, and does other helpful things. Basically, it makes Firefox expose the same information as the Tor browser. In addition, I block most known advertizing/tracking domains at the DNS level (I run my own server, and use Hagezi's…

All javascript based anti-fingerprinting is detectable and is also a major source of uniqueness!

Sure but if you are always unique for every website then you can’t be tracked overtime.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#162

Post by FireBeyond »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #146
FireBeyond wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> writing a blog post every once in a while will not provide meaningful income Nor, generally, should it. Sitting down one or two Saturday afternoons a month to write a blog post shouldn't be generating the income of a FTE.

Allow me a second to play Devil’s Advocate. What if it could? Or should (be able to produce FTE or close income)? In that world, the amount of pointless shite - questing to “go viral” - would be reduced to near zero. That is, if the incentive were more quality, and less quantity, we’d be better off, yes?

So there's an element of truth to that. And there are those who can contribute enough value, have enough audience, etc., that they can "coast" on those 2 blog posts a month and make significant income...

... but that's also not, nor should it be the median. I'm not sure how the economy functions if, say 8h/mo effort generates a median living wage.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#163

Post by Analemma_ »

imiric wrote: post #70
prymitive wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not going to pay $5/month for every blog that I occasionally read Would you pay per view? Most people (me included) would probably hesitate to say yes, because we’re used to not paying for that. But what if it meant that ad based model is gone and everything you buy is cheaper because the price does not include the cost of running ads?

Brave Inc. gets a lot of flack, some warranted, but their Basic Attention Token allows for exactly this. Users can add credit to their wallet by either consuming privacy-friendly ads or topping it up manually, which then gets distributed to the sites they visit in the proportion they choose, transparently in the background while they browse. It is a shame that this feature gets lumped together with claims of crypto s…

Brave strips out the ads that the creators put on their site, puts their own ads there, then gives the creators some of that money if and only if the creator realizes they have to sign up for Brave's cryptoshit. It's straightforwardly the kind of racket that would get your knees broken if you tried to do it to somebody in real life, but "it's ok because it's on computers". All the flak is deserved.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#164

Post by Nextgrid »

fragmede wrote: post #108
levocardia wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the fact that NO major content websites (NYT, substack, WSJ, ...) have settled on a PPV model is simply because they haven't thought of it? Or is it more likely that the numbers absolutely do not work?

Have any of them actually tried it though? If they have and I missed it, then I apologize, but I can't recall the NYT letting me read an article for $1 with zero friction via Apple or Google Pay or Stripe link or something. It they tried it and the numbers didn't work, that's one thing, but I don't recall that happening.

Doing it via conventional card networks won't work, the fees would eat most/all of the payment.

A critical mass of publishers would need to team up and form a cooperative/etc where a user could register once, deposit some money, and then that money would be spent every time they view an article. But that requires cooperation between competitors, which is already hard enough, and the cancer that is the advertising industry wouldn't like this potential existential threat and would be more than happy to pour fuel onto the fire to ensure it never succeeds.

What's surprising is why the card networks themselves don't get in on it. They could do so in a completely backwards-compatible manner, introducing a new card number range that only works with transactions under a certain amount and have different fraud protection/chargeback rules.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#165

Post by AndrewStephens »

notatoad wrote: post #44
prymitive wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not going to pay $5/month for every blog that I occasionally read Would you pay per view? Most people (me included) would probably hesitate to say yes, because we’re used to not paying for that. But what if it meant that ad based model is gone and everything you buy is cheaper because the price does not include the cost of running ads?

The PPV model has been tried a bunch of times, and it always turns out that the rate people are willing to pay per view is not a rate that is high enough to be a viable revenue source for the content owners. it takes a lot of $0.10-$0.25 views to make up for the loss of a $5/month recurring revenue stream that might last for years.

I wrote about this exact problem last year. To anyone who disagrees, would you pay me 5 cents to click on the following link?

https://sheep.horse/2024/11/on_micropayments.html

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#166

Post by Analemma_ »

stackghost wrote: post #153
prymitive wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not going to pay $5/month for every blog that I occasionally read Would you pay per view? Most people (me included) would probably hesitate to say yes, because we’re used to not paying for that. But what if it meant that ad based model is gone and everything you buy is cheaper because the price does not include the cost of running ads?

You're presupposing that these blogs are producing content worth paying for. The unfortunate truth is that the overwhelming majority of blogs (99.9%+) are not.

Then why is everyone so nostalgic for the old days of the blogosphere to return? If blogs are all worthless, then we shouldn't care that they're disappearing and/or being put behind paywalls; we haven't lost anything.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#167

Post by Nextgrid »

Analemma_ wrote: post #163
imiric wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave Inc. gets a lot of flack, some warranted, but their Basic Attention Token allows for exactly this. Users can add credit to their wallet by either consuming privacy-friendly ads or topping it up manually, which then gets distributed to the sites they visit in the proportion they choose, transparently in the background while they browse. It is a shame that this feature gets lumped together with claims of crypto s…

Brave strips out the ads that the creators put on their site, puts their own ads there, then gives the creators some of that money if and only if the creator realizes they have to sign up for Brave's cryptoshit. It's straightforwardly the kind of racket that would get your knees broken if you tried to do it to somebody in real life, but "it's ok because it's on computers". All the flak is deserved.

But then again, online ads are the physical equivalent of a crowd of paparazzi following you 24/7 including inside your home, which would also prompt physical violence in the real world.

From my perspective I couldn't care less if one bad guy is stealing from another bad guy.

Re: The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

#168

Post by ashman5 »

alcide wrote: post #63
drnick1 wrote: post #52

Firefox w/ the Arkenfox user.js is probably as good as it gets in terms of privacy. By default, this config burns cookies on exit, standardizes the time zone to UTC, spoofs the canvas fingerprint, and does other helpful things. Basically, it makes Firefox expose the same information as the Tor browser. In addition, I block most known advertizing/tracking domains at the DNS level (I run my own server, and use Hagezi's…

Orion Browser (Kagi Product) prevents fingerprinters from running by default. https://help.kagi.com/orion/privacy-and-security/preventing-...

Orion browser is also capable of running uBlock Origin (not Lite) on iOS.
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