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Comment by ipsi | Hacker News Reader

Slight tangent, but it seems that TechCrunch are also quite bad at privacy - following the link initially redirects to https://guce.techcrunch.com/consent?brandType=nonEU&done=htt...} with a 307, which, when followed redirects to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_...} with a 302.

I like that the "consent" URL doesn't actually ask for consent - it just immediately redirects to "collect identifiers" - it's possible they already assume they have my consent, but since this was checked with a cookie-less cURL command, that seems unlikely. Since my adblocker is blocking the guce.advertising.com domain, I guess I don't get to visit TechCrunch.

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I always find it baffling that news pages are amongst the worst offenders regardings tracking (at least that how it feels). Here in Germany we have news pages like Spiegel Online, whose journalists criticise Facebook et al. in quite harsh words, but you can't read any of these articles without loading a bazillion tracking cookies on your browser. This probably stems from the seperation of webpage tech, advertising and newsroom, but it strongly feels for me that these newspapers are not living by the values they preach.

> it strongly feels for me that these newspapers are not living by the values they preach.

This isn’t as big a problem as people make it out to be. Their role is to report. If they are corrupt but still report on corruption, then they haven’t failed as journalists, merely as an organisation. If they violate privacy, but still report on it, same deal. We can denounce them while still appreciating their actual reporting.

Problems arise when their nefarious behaviour affects the actual reporting. But, ironically, the more hypocritical they are (i.e. the more they report on the thing they do wrong) the less likely that is.

I’d say with every damnation of a news organisation for their privacy violations, we should in parallel celebrate their dedication to report on that which they are guilty of. The alternative of total silence would be worse.

> If they are corrupt but still report on corruption, then they haven’t failed as journalists.

In this specific case, yes, I think they have failed. It's different when you're a non-vegan writing about veganism and critizise non-vegans.

It's not okay to be corrupt and condemn corruption in your article. I can't take your opinion seriously if you don't live at all by the values you seem to protect or preach for in your writing...

This is called a tu quoque fallacy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

“ Tu quoque (/tjuːˈkwoʊkwi, tuːˈkwoʊkweɪ/;[1] Latin for "you also"), or the appeal to hypocrisy, is an informal fallacy that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by asserting the opponent's failure to act consistently in accordance with its conclusion(s).”

A moral framework is only useful if it can be adhered to. If we define "good" as a standard that can't be maintained it ceases to be a valuable definition.

Sometimes "whatabouism" is just trying to make sure that the standard being demanded is based in reality and can be maintained by others who find themselves in the same position.

Hypocrisy has value in instances like addiction. As an addict I could advise against certain behaviors or whatever.

This is different. They are taking part in the same behavior they are calling out as detrimental while being detrimental to the people they supposedly giving advice to.

It’d be like a addiction counselor selling addictive substances to people the counselor is advising about addiction.

It's pretty common for addictologists to prescribe opiate substitutes, benzos or antidepressants to their patients. All of which addictive substances.

But then, they do it because it's supposed to help their patients with their addiction, not because it makes them money.

Don’t take so literally.

In any case, it’s not like these outlets are doing it to eventually wean people from trackers by tracking them more mildly.

Press is informally exempt from these regulation in exchange for favourably reporting of EU Commission dealings.

10 years ago there was a lot of loud voices calling for the news industry to join the 21st century in regards to their technology and publishing practices.

They have.

I’ve think we’re all in glass houses on this one because we’ve helped make Google and Facebook into absolute juggernauts by letting them track the hell out of us while continuing to use their products. It shouldn’t be surprising that a struggling industry like journalism would follow suit.

> Here in Germany we have news pages like Spiegel Online, whose journalists criticise Facebook et al. in quite harsh words, but you can't read any of these articles without loading a bazillion tracking cookies on your browser.

There is some good part about this: There is some amount of separation of journalism and business. The journalists should be free to report anything they consider worthy to cover and the business running the site and going out to advertisers etc. doesn't influence this. This is good as it prevents big advertisers from preventing bad reporting. Of course it doesn't fully work, but in Germany it is better than in many other places in that regard.

Even if your system doesn't block guce.advertising.com, when you visit this site, you get an obnoxious page saying that you now have a choice whether to grant consent to tracking or "manage options", and then if you select "manage options" it says that there is no option - you must consent in order to view the web site.

This is illegal. Simple as. Flag the post and move on. Complain to the Information Commissioner if you feel like it.

Why is it illegal? If I understand gdpr correctly tracking is okay if it’s necessary for business purposes. If a publisher’s business model is ad-supported then it seems necessary.

> If a publisher’s business model is ad-supported then it seems necessary.

If that were true, everyone would simply claim "tracking is essential for my business" and the law would be toothless.

If they want to show ads for Ford in the car section of the newspaper, that's fine. If they want to show targeted ads provided that I agree with it, that's also fine. But showing targeted ads with no way to opt-out is not allowed.

I got 18 hits on PrivacyBadger, 12 his on NoScript, 19 hits on AdBlockPlus. I configure all 3 manually, and every now and then I check them to see if there is anything new in the ad/tracking domain, and block it immediately.

I don't know what my HOSTS file is blocking, but I assume it also cuts off some of the ads/trackers.

Just fyi Adblock Plus has an Acceptable Ads program [1], so you will still get ads, only the ad providers paid Adblock to get through.

If you actually want all ads blocked, I'd suggest Raymond Hill's uBlock Origin [2].

[1] https://help.getadblock.com/support/solutions/articles/60000...

[2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock

Just for the record, uBlock Origin already seems to block 2 items when opening just the consent form.

Since I never got farther than that on <whatever yahoo calls their privacy non-consent tech this week>, I don't know how much it blocks later.

> Since my adblocker is blocking the guce.advertising.com domain, I guess I don't get to visit TechCrunch.

Same here. I usually 'proxy' through the Internet Archive in these situations: https://web.archive.org/web/20200213123006/https://techcrunc...

Another post where the top part of the thread is a tangent/unrelated to the post. This is becoming common on HN and I don’t find it helpful.

Totally agree. It’s especially annoying because it’s the top thread.

It's the top thread because people find it interesting. If you don't, just click the [-] and it will close the whole thread.

This problem is already solved by 2 mechanisms:

1. HN's upvote/downvote system. This allows posts that the audience finds more interesting to move to the top. If you don't want to see something, downvote it. If it's on the top that means other people want to see it.

2. The little [-] icon allow you to close an subtree of conversations with a single click.

I absolutely want to hear about these things but maybe in a little tangents section. Though that means more UI complexity. Hiding the thread works well too.

It's gotten to the point where I assume that the top comment on every story about privacy by a news outlet will be about their hypocrisy. It's pretty disappointing. (Almost like tech workers feel defensive and want to change the subject, or that maybe these upvotes aren't in good faith? If the HN audience actually got organized around this kind of thing certain organizations stand to lose quite a bit.)

Surely it just demonstrates the level of feeling at HN that the privacy issue is actually important, and can people please stop posting articles like this. Post a link to outline.com or the internet archive instead if the content is particularly important.

Are you outside the EU? It probably decided they don't need your consent, as I did get a consent page. It was convoluted, impossible to decline (I'm still looking around) and illegal under the GDPR, but I did get it.

EDIT: Yeah, it doesn't seem possible to withdraw consent. I stopped after ten clicks that only led to "informational" pages where sentences stopped mid-way.

Is there a form somewhere that can be used to report websites that do not comply with GDPR?

GDPR is a regulation enforced on a per country basis. The EU wrote it and the EU guarantees / enforces that all member states enforce it.

Therefore, talk to your local DPA. For example, in The Netherlands, you'd talk to the "Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens" (translated: Personal data protection agency"). All EU countries have some sort of governmental institution, usually named something along the lines of 'data protection agency'. As per the article, the one in Ireland is called "Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC)" – and they took the lead on blocking FB Dating.

If you're in the UK you can report it to the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office): https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/.

They have a form specifically for reporting concerns with websites' use of cookies, see https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/cookies/.

I'm in Germany, so definitely inside the EU. Though I'm using a non-European DNS (NextDNS) so maybe that has something to do with it?

The web site you are accessing doesn't get to know which DNS server you are using.

yes, and no. Some sites use DNS to route traffic to different servers for different regions. For instance you could have you site hosted on 2 different data-centers. 1 in EU and 1 in US. And then make US-centric DNS route traffic for your site to the US-datacenter and he EU-centric-dns to EU-data-center.

In that way you kinda know which DNS they used.

Yeah, it likely isn't using eDNS.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who couldn't figure out how to decline consent. I gave up; now, when I see "guce" at the beginning of the hostname, I bail.

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