Hopefully, if enough people abandon sites that use dark patterns and invasive tracking tech, the industry will get the message that these technologies are unethical and even illegal.
Without these overlays, they violate the GDPR.
With these overlays, they violate the GDPR and annoy their users.
If I can't reject this nonsense within 3 clicks I'll leave the site.
Nothing makes me happier than rolling into an article and not having to enable JavaScript for 50 different domains to read 200 words of text.
javascript:(function(){(function(){var%20i,elements=document.querySelectorAll('body%20*');for(i=0;i<elements.length;i++){var%20p=getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position;if(p==='fixed'||p==='sticky'||p==='-webkit-sticky'){elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]);}}})()})()
I still frequent it for work, there's lots of great stories, but it's almost insufferable.
They don't mind that you feel that way; they still want to make it official.
[0]https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/consent/
[0] https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/consent/
All my finances, banks, retirement, taxes, budgeting etc is online. most of my work (email, googling, tools) is only possible online, 90+ percent of my entertainment and social media is online. My maps, calendar, appointments, education, finding things out such as court houses address or phone number of restaurant is online. Much of my medical (presprections, appoint schedule, doctor/nurse correspondence) is online. Most of my shopping is on line.
I think not using a few websites who use scummy ad practices (of which there are sometimes ethically reasonable alternatives, like this site) is a lot easier than never driving again, though.
If there were a real change in driving habits that the providers could trace to the presence of lead in gasoline, don't you think they would have taken it out?
The context seems consistent with that being the intended thrust of the argument, but its literal wording (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19962410):
> This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving.
seems to claim, not just that enforced regulations rather than consumer-led boycotts were the right way to address the issue of leaded gasoline, but that boycotts wouldn't have worked.
If your gloss is the correct one, then I find the argument much more plausible than a literal reading suggests.
You will have the option to accept or configure what "partners" you want to track you when you're on Oath sites. There is a list of hundreds of these partners with links to each of their privacy policies and a switch to turn them on or off.
The problem is partly that they are defaulting to tracking you and sharing information with partners, under GDPR it is supposed to be the default to not tracking and share data. It is also supposed to be equally easy to choose tracking vs not-tracking, with the Oath dialogue the option to turn it all off is not as easy or prominent as the option to accept tracking.
Sorry about the image not being in english, but the language is automatically set based on location.
Example: https://imgur.com/a/PFM1W69
Interestingly, Tumblr respects the Accept-language header.
English screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/7yZLAir.png
Visit, say, TechCrunch. You get an overlay saying "TechCrunch is part of Oath; please let us do all the things" with a big "OK" button and a "Manage Options" button-made-to-look-not-like-a-button.
So, you click on "Manage Options". Now you have a new page with a big "OK" button (which obviously will, again, give them permission to do all the things), a "Learn more" link, and a "Manage" link. The "learn more" link takes you to a page saying how wonderful it is that Oath wants all your data; that page doesn't appear to give you any options to configure or control anything.
So, you click on "Manage". This takes you, of course, to yet another page on which you cannot yet manage anything. "Oath works with partners ...". Three links. "You can change your choices at any time by visiting the 'Partners' tab in our _Privacy dashboard_"; "See how partners use your data. _Show_"; "See and customize which partners can use your data. _Show_". (And of course a big "Done" button which gives them permission to do all the things.)
It sounds as if the first is for changing things once you've set them, and the second only lets you look but not touch. So, follow the third link.
This doesn't take you to a new page. Instead, it replaces the paragraph the link was in with a two-tabbed thing. One tab is called "Foundational partners" and has a list of 11 partners (people like Amazon, Google, Facebook, as well as some less well-known names). You have no ability here to change anything, but there are links to these people's privacy policies. The first three I looked at (Amazon, Google, eBay) link to pages that give information but _still_ no ability to change anything.
The other tab here is called "IAB partners". This has a list of _238_ separate partners and a little on/off switch for each. There is -- I'm sure there used not to be, so they've actually improved this -- an option that says either "Select all" or "Deselect all". ... But then, at the bottom, you see: "Visit the following industry links to opt out of personalised advertising from those third parties who are members of the _European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance_ (EDAA), _Digital Advertising Alliance_ (DAA) or _Network Advertising Initiative_ (NAI)."
So. You need to go three levels in before you get any ability to change anything. At that point, you can opt out of personalized ads from their "IAB partners". (Can you opt out of _being tracked_ by them? It doesn't exactly say you can, but one can hope that that's the effect.) But if you want to opt out of anything involving their "Foundational partners" you need to go to their 11 individual websites and go poking around (good luck!). And then there are some unspecified _other_ partners in the EDAA, the DAA, and the NAI. For each of those there's a link taking you to the relevant organization's site, with its own clumsy and typically-dysfunctional mechanism for opting out. And, again, all they actually say will be achieved by opting out is that you won't get personalized ads; you might hope this will also stop them tracking you, and who knows? you might be right.
None of this is anything remotely like GDPR-compliant, so far as I can make out.
I'd attempted to opt out of Oath's tracking a few days back and noted the same. Eventually gave up and blocked all cookies (including 1st party) in uMatrix, which addresses desktop but not mobile privacy.
I've also finally got OpenWRT adblock configured on my router, ofering LAN-wide covrage, which helps.
But yes, the exerience is utterly hostile and violates the GDPR in both letter and spirit.
I'm coming to think that domain-boxed containers as a default cannot come soon enough. Firefox's tools are useful but nowhere near complete.
[1] At least until 2020, see https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/574#issuecomm... and https://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-end-of-firefox-for-and...
A while ago android got slammed in (I think France) for hiding a privacy related option behind a single button. If that's the cutoff they'll probably be found to be in violation.
It won't come quickly of course, google got fined in 2018 for things they did in 2008/2009 ish? But at least people are documenting and reporting them. We can hope that in 10 years they'll get fined out of business.
Most people heard about GDPR because companies panicked and send out mails to everyone, with GDPR in the title. But in the end, most people have no clue about what GDPR actually is.
Please don't say we need to educate people on this, because not only do they not know, but they also don't care. They just want to search, read and watch stuff on the internet, and the less technology and knowledge the better.
For me, I know what it all is, and I simply don't care. Some ad tech knows which websites I saw and what product I searched... I seriously don't give a shit.
If you want to fix this issue, I think micro-transactions is the only way possible. Because content creators will always try (and need) to make money, which means the content reader will always pay. Whether is is with their attention (ads), data, or actual money. Subscriptions don't always work, because most of the time, I just want to read an article and not the whole website.