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Well, if WaPo makes a distinction between subscribers and non-subscribers for this behavior (I'm not sure if they do or don't), they they are very clearly givin

Well, if WaPo makes a distinction between subscribers and non-subscribers for this behavior (I'm not sure if they do or don't), they they are very clearly giving you a choice for how to pay for your content, with your money or with whatever information that can get out of you, and to that end they don't want you to block that because they actually want to get something of value out of the transaction. > I think it's more crucial than ever that everyone use adblockers and refuse to support sites that retaliate with anti-social behavior. How is this anti-social? WaPo offers subscriptions. I have one. Does that also trigger this? I can't seem to make it do so (but I also can't while not logged in as of now). If paying bypasses this, then there might be some anti-social behavior going on, but I'm not convinced it's on the part of WaPo.

blub 8y ago
I don't know how WaPo does this, but all newspapers I've tried including NYT and The Guardian and The Economist have a lot of tracking in their apps even for subscribers. So it's a crap deal.
- bscphil 8y ago
  Yep, this is what really makes me mad. You can't argue that alternatives to tracking don't exist when no one is actually trying the alternatives. You can't choose between paying and getting tracked; it's get tracked regardless and hear them nag you to pay them for the privilege.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Living billboard here: While ars technica is not a newspaper they often have posts that some of us find interesting. They turn off ads and tracking for all but the lowest tiers.
  - Freak_NL 8y ago
    > You can't choose between paying and getting tracked […] Well, you can of course pay and use an ad-blocker. I have a subscription to a Dutch newspaper (on actual paper even), and use their site as well, but not without protection. The ads in the paper newspaper are usually fine. Rarely do they affront or annoy; and they are tailored to the general profile of the newspaper's readership. But whenever I use a clean browser profile to verify some piece of behavior in a website, or to see if a bug on it was caused by the use of uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger, I am acutely reminded why I choose to shield my brain from the repetitive onslaught of internet advertisements with all their tracking and insulting attempts at trying to put me into a specific profile. I don't mind internet advertisements as such though. There is a certain social media site that starts with an F but is not Facebook (and quite empathically and by design the opposite in terms of prudishness) which serves ads that are vetted by the website's advertising department, and are shown to users at random without the option of narrowing the reach to users with specific interests or demographics. These have never bothered me, and sometimes even serve to introduce me to a business that sells products I am interested in. Like my paper newspaper, advertisers only know the general profile of the site's members. More sites should consider that option. No tracking, no tailoring beyond 'people that visit our website', and vetted by the site itself. Newspapers in particular have the knowledge of how to acquisition advertisers for this; they already do it in their paper editions.
    - AsyncAwait 8y ago
      > Well, you can of course pay and use an ad-blocker. But why pay if they're still being tracked? The value proposition here is off. Might as well not pay and use an ad blocker.
    - vslira 8y ago
      >The ads in the paper newspaper are usually fine. Rarely do they affront or annoy; and they are tailored to the general profile of the newspaper's readership. Now I feel stupid. For all the doom and gloom about the impossibility about paying to not getting tracked and how Chinese and American spy agencies and Megacorps know everything about your online behavior, I never thought about simply returning to consumption of analog content as a reaction. Well, it's more expensive and worse for the environment, but I guess if you really value privacy that's bearable
- rusk 8y ago
  I would say especially for subscribers. For an advertiser it’s those who can pay that are the most interesting.
- Shacklz 8y ago
  As much as I like the NYT for its journalism, they cannot even stop from advertising their subscription service even though I'm already a subscriber...
- Symbiote 8y ago
  When I visit washingtonpost.com from the EU, I see a page giving me three options: > Free > Read a limited number of articles each month > You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads > Basic Subscription > > $6 every 4 weeks or just $78 $60/year > ... > You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads > Premium EU Ad-Free Subscription > > $9 every 4 weeks or just $117 $90/year > ... > No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking (That last line is bold on the page.) I don't know if this approach is fully compliant with the letter and spirit of the GDPR. The page itself contains three trackers, according to Ghostery, and has set several long-lived cookies without any interaction.
brynjolf 8y ago
They still track you if you pay though
petyrbaelish 8y ago
When you pay with your money,i.e. subscribe : you enable them to get more information out of you. Tracking becomes almost perfect : no matter how many browsers you change, operating systems, keep deleting cookies, give random data to finger printing : they can track you with your subscriber ID. So paying is a double whammy.
- kbenson 8y ago
  This assumes all tracking is equal. I don't care if they track what I read and engage with on their site, that's how they learn to make it better. That's sort of like complaining that a store owner pays attention to what items you look at in the store. Of course they do that. What we don't want is them following us around when we're out of the store to see what else we like at other places. The simplest way for WaPo to achieve this without having to deal with any adbockers or trackers would be to use an in-house system served from their own servers. Unfortunately, since they also have a free subscription where they do track people, that would mean two systems which would be redundant, and the in-house one also probably takes a lot of effort and manpower. Unfortunately, that leaves subscribers not knowing exactly what is being tracked and who is doing the tracking. I mitigate this by using ublock and a container tab for news sites in Firefox. I would prefer to know this isn't needed because WaPo did the right thing, but I would still do anyways, as just because something shouldn't be needed for protection doesn't mean you shouldn't do it anyways if the cost is small enough.
  - petyrbaelish 8y ago
    No, this doesn't assume anything of the sort. By identifying yourself conclusively on one website, you add to the information these trackers have on you. By associating this information with other tracking they are doing to you, they still track you worse than if you were not subscribing. Container tabs help protect from cross site tracking : whether or not you subscribe. So that is irrelevant here.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      I see what you're saying now. But my point is also mostly unchanged. Perfect tracking can be benign, or it can be harmful. Any site which requires signing in (whether a subscription or now) gets at a minimum the same information, but generally more and better information, than one in which you aren't signed into. What matters though is what they track, and what they do with it. The problem with most tracking is that there are services that aggregate it between sites such that your viewing habits in one are available for use in another. There is tracking in an effort to make your service better, including for who you're tracking, and there's tracking as a source of revenue. The first is not a problem, and not anything fundamentally different than what you could experience while using a corner store in 1900. The problem is it's very hard to confirm which is being done much of the time.

blub 8y ago

I don't know how WaPo does this, but all newspapers I've tried including NYT and The Guardian and The Economist have a lot of tracking in their apps even for subscribers. So it's a crap deal.

bscphil 8y ago
Yep, this is what really makes me mad. You can't argue that alternatives to tracking don't exist when no one is actually trying the alternatives. You can't choose between paying and getting tracked; it's get tracked regardless and hear them nag you to pay them for the privilege.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Living billboard here: While ars technica is not a newspaper they often have posts that some of us find interesting. They turn off ads and tracking for all but the lowest tiers.
- Freak_NL 8y ago
  > You can't choose between paying and getting tracked […] Well, you can of course pay and use an ad-blocker. I have a subscription to a Dutch newspaper (on actual paper even), and use their site as well, but not without protection. The ads in the paper newspaper are usually fine. Rarely do they affront or annoy; and they are tailored to the general profile of the newspaper's readership. But whenever I use a clean browser profile to verify some piece of behavior in a website, or to see if a bug on it was caused by the use of uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger, I am acutely reminded why I choose to shield my brain from the repetitive onslaught of internet advertisements with all their tracking and insulting attempts at trying to put me into a specific profile. I don't mind internet advertisements as such though. There is a certain social media site that starts with an F but is not Facebook (and quite empathically and by design the opposite in terms of prudishness) which serves ads that are vetted by the website's advertising department, and are shown to users at random without the option of narrowing the reach to users with specific interests or demographics. These have never bothered me, and sometimes even serve to introduce me to a business that sells products I am interested in. Like my paper newspaper, advertisers only know the general profile of the site's members. More sites should consider that option. No tracking, no tailoring beyond 'people that visit our website', and vetted by the site itself. Newspapers in particular have the knowledge of how to acquisition advertisers for this; they already do it in their paper editions.
  - AsyncAwait 8y ago
    > Well, you can of course pay and use an ad-blocker. But why pay if they're still being tracked? The value proposition here is off. Might as well not pay and use an ad blocker.
  - vslira 8y ago
    >The ads in the paper newspaper are usually fine. Rarely do they affront or annoy; and they are tailored to the general profile of the newspaper's readership. Now I feel stupid. For all the doom and gloom about the impossibility about paying to not getting tracked and how Chinese and American spy agencies and Megacorps know everything about your online behavior, I never thought about simply returning to consumption of analog content as a reaction. Well, it's more expensive and worse for the environment, but I guess if you really value privacy that's bearable
rusk 8y ago
I would say especially for subscribers. For an advertiser it’s those who can pay that are the most interesting.
Shacklz 8y ago
As much as I like the NYT for its journalism, they cannot even stop from advertising their subscription service even though I'm already a subscriber...
Symbiote 8y ago
When I visit washingtonpost.com from the EU, I see a page giving me three options: > Free > Read a limited number of articles each month > You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads > Basic Subscription > > $6 every 4 weeks or just $78 $60/year > ... > You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads > Premium EU Ad-Free Subscription > > $9 every 4 weeks or just $117 $90/year > ... > No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking (That last line is bold on the page.) I don't know if this approach is fully compliant with the letter and spirit of the GDPR. The page itself contains three trackers, according to Ghostery, and has set several long-lived cookies without any interaction.

brynjolf 8y ago

They still track you if you pay though

petyrbaelish 8y ago

When you pay with your money,i.e. subscribe : you enable them to get more information out of you. Tracking becomes almost perfect : no matter how many browsers you change, operating systems, keep deleting cookies, give random data to finger printing : they can track you with your subscriber ID. So paying is a double whammy.

kbenson 8y ago
This assumes all tracking is equal. I don't care if they track what I read and engage with on their site, that's how they learn to make it better. That's sort of like complaining that a store owner pays attention to what items you look at in the store. Of course they do that. What we don't want is them following us around when we're out of the store to see what else we like at other places. The simplest way for WaPo to achieve this without having to deal with any adbockers or trackers would be to use an in-house system served from their own servers. Unfortunately, since they also have a free subscription where they do track people, that would mean two systems which would be redundant, and the in-house one also probably takes a lot of effort and manpower. Unfortunately, that leaves subscribers not knowing exactly what is being tracked and who is doing the tracking. I mitigate this by using ublock and a container tab for news sites in Firefox. I would prefer to know this isn't needed because WaPo did the right thing, but I would still do anyways, as just because something shouldn't be needed for protection doesn't mean you shouldn't do it anyways if the cost is small enough.
- petyrbaelish 8y ago
  No, this doesn't assume anything of the sort. By identifying yourself conclusively on one website, you add to the information these trackers have on you. By associating this information with other tracking they are doing to you, they still track you worse than if you were not subscribing. Container tabs help protect from cross site tracking : whether or not you subscribe. So that is irrelevant here.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    I see what you're saying now. But my point is also mostly unchanged. Perfect tracking can be benign, or it can be harmful. Any site which requires signing in (whether a subscription or now) gets at a minimum the same information, but generally more and better information, than one in which you aren't signed into. What matters though is what they track, and what they do with it. The problem with most tracking is that there are services that aggregate it between sites such that your viewing habits in one are available for use in another. There is tracking in an effort to make your service better, including for who you're tracking, and there's tracking as a source of revenue. The first is not a problem, and not anything fundamentally different than what you could experience while using a corner store in 1900. The problem is it's very hard to confirm which is being done much of the time.