Ask HN: HTTP request headers to facilitate better UX on web sites? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: HTTP request headers to facilitate better UX on web sites?

5 pointsmactavish885 comments

Are there any, or can we maybe come up with (i.e. suggestions please if it seems like a good idea), HTTP headers that browsers can send to sites that automatically instruct them in terms of:

1. The kinds of cookies I'm willing to accept (e.g. strictly necessary). For example, `X-Prefer-Cookies: strictly-necessary` or `X-Prefer-Cookies: all`.

2. The fact that I don't, and probably never will, care about your newsletter. (If your content really interests me, I'll find a way through your UI to subscribe.) For example: `X-Offer-Newsletter: no`, or `X-Offer-Newsletter: yes`.

If you wanted to facilitate more general UX preference indications from the client side, you could potentially come up with a scheme like `X-UX-Preferences: strictly-necessary-cookies; no-newsletters`.

This way I can set these preferences once in my browser and be done with your annoying cookie selection and newsletter popups (if your site honours those headers, of course).

I think that, if most websites honoured those headers, it might just fix 80% of what I personally feel is wrong with the modern web. (The other 20% I think involves completely eradicating online advertising-driven business models from the face of the planet, which I think is quite a bit harder to achieve than this.)

EDIT: grammar

I feel you are looking at this from the wrong perspective.

You are looking at this from the perspective of the user (not customer). Since you are not paying for any of this content you are not the customer.

It is trivial for sites to improve the UX (emphasis on U) but the site is optimising for CX (customer experience). Given that C pays the bills, not U, C wins.

Sites don't need headers to do the things you want. They don't do those things because they feel they improve _your_ life. They do them because ultimately they need things like advertising to pay the bills.

To be frank, I really don’t care. The ad-driven business model needs to die.

The ad-driven business model is making our society sick on so many levels. The incentivization it creates is totally toxic. It’s one of the biggest driving forces behind our near total loss of privacy online and offline (the psychological ramifications of which we’ll be unpacking for decades to come - if, of course, we don’t destroy ourselves first in advertising-promoting algorithmically driven social media-induced fits of rage).

There are many other ways to make money online that allow you to make the user and the customer the same person. And if you can’t find a way, maybe your site/service shouldn’t exist in the first place.

While I don't disagree with your premise, I feel you may be a tad over dramatic here.

If you don't want to be advertised to, then don't use services paid for by advertising. For example use Netflix, not broadcast-TV, pay for YouTube premium, not plain YouTube and so on.

Your fears on psychological damage have been around since media was invented - I still remember panic about subliminal advertising in the 70s - and meh - it's just advertising.

Social media, and advertising, are not the source of the current political climate - they are just tools used to stoke a fire that has been burning for hundreds of years.

Maybe, we’ll see how we turn out in the coming decades :-)

As for the psychological ramifications (not “damage”), I was talking specifically about the loss of privacy. There seems to be something very important about privacy that facilitates a healthy individuation process (at least from a Jungian perspective). Not to mention the notion of lack of respect for healthy boundaries.

What does it do to a person when their boundaries are continually intruded upon (either against their will or without their knowledge)? In my experience, it erodes a person’s sense of identity.

What does it do to a society whose devices continually listen in on their private conversations without their consent and use those conversations to subtly infiltrate their digital lives, manipulating the content to which they’re exposed?

This is beyond, of course, the Big Brother-esque uses for which this same technology is now being employed. As inequality rises and people become unhappier, Big Brother will need to keep ever-tighter control on people. We will be manipulated, and ultimately coerced into submission in order to preserve the current social order - much of which will be achieved using repurposed ad-tech.

technically that could be a straightforward solution. the issue is... that the issue isn't technical. GDPR started this clusterfuck, who knows if it'll take some 20 years until decision makers get together and address this.

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