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Comment by preya2k | Hacker News Reader

Oh the irony of this article being covered by a consent screen that starts with:

„We & our 735 technology partners ask you to consent to the use of cookies to store and access personal data on your device.“

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Normally I wouldn't upvote a reply like this, but here in the US I got this one instead:

> There appears to be a technical issue with your browser

> This issue is preventing our website from loading properly. Please review the following troubleshooting tips or contact us at support@foreignpolicy.com.

I had to disable Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection in order to proceed. This is the first time since that feature was rolled out that I've had to remember where they put that disable switch.

EDIT: This isn't just a generic error handler, there's a specific piece of code that detects if their analytics provider loaded or not and shows that message if it didn't load. More details here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41082004

Whenever something changes on the screen while reading Reader Mode gets activated immediately and without remorse.

Do you think it was deliberate or just a general reaction to an uncaught exception somewhere in the ad part of the app?

This is the code that does it:

    // The tinypass.min.js script was blocked due to a browser content filter
    console.log('Piano Script was blocked');
    // Show error modal to user
    FP.Utils.Piano.showBrowserCompatibilityErrorModal();

Looks like the code comes from their analytics provider: https://piano.io/

Link to the source: https://foreignpolicy.com/_static/??-eJy1lNtuwjAMhl9oIYCQGBf...

Piano really needs to be blocked harder by adblockers, they're currently underblocked by most public lists. Disgusting surveillance machine.

The experience mirrors mine

There are a lot of websites that make your phone boil in your hand with the amount of trackers, js and other crap

Yes the cookie banners are annoying. But not more than the sign up ones, the maling list ones, the "Summer sale" ones, etc

They can use any cookies required for providing services without having to ask users at all.

They do need to ask for cookies meant to siphon off people's data for all other purposes.

While adtech may be the most profitable part of tech industry, it's by far not the only part. Everything from advanced electronics to genomics to super-strong materials to reusable spacecraft is the "technology sector", and its parts are tightly intertwined.

If only the media had consolidated/unionized to be at the size scale of tech companies extracting advertising value from their reporting…

This is the "innovation" the article is also talking about though, so it's great they give an example.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com