What if the manpulation was easily avoidable? The last time this website came up on HN (same issue), I conducted an experiment. The annoyances and manipulatio

What if the manpulation was easily avoidable? The last time this website came up on HN (same issue), I conducted an experiment. The annoyances and manipulation described by the blogger sounded like it relied on Javascript and graphics. I wanted to see how far I could get without using a graphical browser. I was able to 1. search hotels, 2. return a list of properties in CSV/JSON/TXT, 3. return prices and 4. book. It required only a shell script of 107 lines, 308 characters, 2934 bytes. This could be further reduced. I used only a command line http client, sed and tmux send-key (optional). Further optional: Fully customized HTTP headers, including randomized User-Agent if desired. I had to store a session cookie for getting price or booking but no cookies were required for searching. I used no Javascript. I was able to eliminate all the annoyances and manipulation cited by the blogger. Conclusion: At least for booking.com all these annoyances can easily be avoided by choosing the right browser. (I did occasionally see the "Only ___ rooms left" message as this is returned in plain text. I did not however see the number change over repeated searches for the same hotel. In any event, I just deleted that line in the output, assuming it is untruthful.)