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

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

#311

Post by petyrbaelish » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 10:14 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #291

petyrbaelish wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you pay with your money,i.e. subscribe : you enable them to get more information out of you. Tracking becomes almost perfect : no matter how many browsers you change, operating systems, keep deleting cookies, give random data to finger printing : they can track you with your subscriber ID. So paying is a double whammy.

This assumes all tracking is equal. I don't care if they track what I read and engage with on their site, that's how they learn to make it better. That's sort of like complaining that a store owner pays attention to what items you look at in the store. Of course they do that. What we don't want is them following us around when we're out of the store to see what else we like at other places. The simplest way for WaPo…

No, this doesn't assume anything of the sort. By identifying yourself conclusively on one website, you add to the information these trackers have on you. By associating this information with other tracking they are doing to you, they still track you worse than if you were not subscribing.

Container tabs help protect from cross site tracking : whether or not you subscribe. So that is irrelevant here.

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

#312

Post by kbenson » Mon, Oct 15, 2018, 10:34 PM UTC

petyrbaelish wrote: post #311

kbenson wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes all tracking is equal. I don't care if they track what I read and engage with on their site, that's how they learn to make it better. That's sort of like complaining that a store owner pays attention to what items you look at in the store. Of course they do that. What we don't want is them following us around when we're out of the store to see what else we like at other places. The simplest way for WaPo…

No, this doesn't assume anything of the sort. By identifying yourself conclusively on one website, you add to the information these trackers have on you. By associating this information with other tracking they are doing to you, they still track you worse than if you were not subscribing. Container tabs help protect from cross site tracking : whether or not you subscribe. So that is irrelevant here.

I see what you're saying now. But my point is also mostly unchanged. Perfect tracking can be benign, or it can be harmful. Any site which requires signing in (whether a subscription or now) gets at a minimum the same information, but generally more and better information, than one in which you aren't signed into.

What matters though is what they track, and what they do with it. The problem with most tracking is that there are services that aggregate it between sites such that your viewing habits in one are available for use in another. There is tracking in an effort to make your service better, including for who you're tracking, and there's tracking as a source of revenue. The first is not a problem, and not anything fundamentally different than what you could experience while using a corner store in 1900. The problem is it's very hard to confirm which is being done much of the time.

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

#313

Post by petyrbaelish » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #312

petyrbaelish wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this doesn't assume anything of the sort. By identifying yourself conclusively on one website, you add to the information these trackers have on you. By associating this information with other tracking they are doing to you, they still track you worse than if you were not subscribing. Container tabs help protect from cross site tracking : whether or not you subscribe. So that is irrelevant here.

I see what you're saying now. But my point is also mostly unchanged. Perfect tracking can be benign, or it can be harmful. Any site which requires signing in (whether a subscription or now) gets at a minimum the same information, but generally more and better information, than one in which you aren't signed into. What matters though is what they track, and what they do with it. The problem with most tracking is that…

Yes, so until we can be sure about what is being done with the tracking : paying with money and paying with information are not either - or trade offs, but tracking is in addition to the money paid. I am talking about the worst case because :

1. Information can never be un-leaked reliably. 2. Even if current owner of the tracking company behaves , you never know what the next owner in case of bankruptcy / strategic sale does with the data. 3. If some unscrupulous employee of the tracking company leaks your information, there may not be any proof about it. 4. You never know if the information becomes dangerous when combined with some other information which may be leaked / required to be given in some other context.

So credible guarantee is the only thing that can make paying with money, and paying with information a true dichotomy.

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

#314

Post by witten » Fri, Oct 19, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

witten wrote: post #58

mandevil wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are a paying customer, they don't (source: am a subscriber, never seen this). If you don't pay for a subscription, they need to monetize you in some other way- like by showing you more valuable ads. You can get a very cheap online-only subscription if you have Amazon Prime, strong recommend.

New York Times solicits paying subscribers to disable their ad blocker (on mobile).

Aaand.. Not just on mobile now.