Something missed in the continual tracking/privacy discussion is the primary motivations for doing so, with the assumption that it's about advertisers trying to sell you more stuff. I'm 100% in the need for personal privacy camp, but mention this only because without addressing the underlying issues, it's hard to come up with larger solutions. And the big issues really come down to fraud and cyber attacks: - Years ag…
I have little sympathy for the ad business failing to properly track ad fraud. I don't think the world is fundamentally better off for advertising.
On the bot traffic, do we not have better ways to do this that don't involve violating privacy of free human beings?
Proof-of-work captchas provide minor friction to an end-user but massively restrict the types of high-volume + low-compute attacks that would be doing this. That's just one example, I'm sure there are other ways too.
I don't think separate browsers is a very effective mitigation. If both browsers are running on the same machine, from the same ip address, using the same email address for logins, the same phone number for 2FA, it will be pretty clear that both browsers represent the same person. Even cross-device identity tracking is a real thing.
In general you shouldn't be logging in to any of the "fun" sites. If you do, you should create a burner email address and separate logins (and obviously separate passwords) for each site. A lot of the "fun" Internet doesn't require 2FA, but for sites that do (which is an increasing number of social media providers), I'd highly recommend getting a Google Voice number and using that. That shifts the trust boundary to G…
If the definition of "fun" sites doesn't even include anything with a login (no youtube, no forums, no HN...), then it feels like it includes so little as to be meaningless. The "business" internet (at least most of it) needs to be anonymous if we want to have a free society and efficient markets.
> You cannot have a functioning "Business Internet" without identity verification. Yes, you can. Just like you can have a functioning grocery store without checking the identity of each shopper that walks through the door. What you cannot have is a free and democratic society or an efficient free market without robust protections for individual privacy. Privacy is the best shield the less powerful have from being abu…
Most grocery stores in every place I have lived have security cameras so that if you did something illegal you'd be identified very quickly. At this point this is even true of small bodegas. Also scammers can't waltz into my grocery store from the other side of the planet and wreak havoc. Ultimately you can use privacy enhancing tools, just like servers can choose to block them. I wish there was a better system but t…
A security camera, on its own, doesn't tell the grocery store who you are. There was a time when CCTV didn't even exist and yet we still had commerce.
"What we've got" isn't "the best we can do". There absolutely are better possibilities that would protect consumers. The best way to ensure we never get to experience those better systems is to shrug our shoulders and passively accept whatever treatment we receive.
You’re looking at it with the perspective of someone who understands the language the site defaults to. Most non-native speakers have a hard time finding the link and they leave.
No, I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone who has needed to use that language selector in the past. Understanding the language the site defaults to wouldn't help, because the selector doesn't use that language anyway . > Most non-native speakers have a hard time finding the link You might notice the colorful flag right next to it.
Flags are a terrible way to indicate language. At best, they are unclear. At worst, they can be offensive.
Assuming you are a US company catering to non-English speakers in the US, which flag would you use for Spanish? Which flags would you use to differentiate between Mandarin and Cantonese? What would you do in Canada where they speak English and French? Show a French flag?
No, I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone who has needed to use that language selector in the past. Understanding the language the site defaults to wouldn't help, because the selector doesn't use that language anyway . > Most non-native speakers have a hard time finding the link You might notice the colorful flag right next to it.
Flags are a terrible way to indicate language. At best, they are unclear. At worst, they can be offensive. Assuming you are a US company catering to non-English speakers in the US, which flag would you use for Spanish? Which flags would you use to differentiate between Mandarin and Cantonese? What would you do in Canada where they speak English and French? Show a French flag?
Except they're recognizable across languages. Faced with a UI in a language I don't know, going to settings -> languages -> my preferred language is a total guessing game. Meanwhile, if I'm confronted by a UI that has a tiny flag icon in the top, I know I can click on that and get to something familiar. Yes, someone looking to get offended can nitpick your flag choice, but a Spanish flag vs a Mexican flag for Spanish will at least let the user get to something closer to what they know, even though there's quite a bit of difference on the ground between Spanish in Spain and Spanish in Mexico. If your internationalization team is well funded enough to offer both, then show both flags. Same for UK English and American English, Chinese Simplify, Traditional, and Cantonese. And yes, Quebecoise French and French in France. Offer as many flags as you actually have translations for. If you can have a Chinese flag and a Hong Kong flag, users will appreciate it. Having a two level menu is also an option. Click on the Canada flag, which then offers Francaise and English is also an option.
Flags are a terrible way to indicate language. At best, they are unclear. At worst, they can be offensive. Assuming you are a US company catering to non-English speakers in the US, which flag would you use for Spanish? Which flags would you use to differentiate between Mandarin and Cantonese? What would you do in Canada where they speak English and French? Show a French flag?
Except they're recognizable across languages. Faced with a UI in a language I don't know, going to settings -> languages -> my preferred language is a total guessing game. Meanwhile, if I'm confronted by a UI that has a tiny flag icon in the top, I know I can click on that and get to something familiar. Yes, someone looking to get offended can nitpick your flag choice, but a Spanish flag vs a Mexican flag for Spanish…
Well, one of us has done research and work in this area. I don’t know what you’ve been doing. All of your suggestions perform poorly in the real world.