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This article brought to you by the Oath network, a faceless media conglomerate that slaps a hostile privacy policy in your face when you dare click on such link

This article brought to you by the Oath network, a faceless media conglomerate that slaps a hostile privacy policy in your face when you dare click on such links and asks you to agree to their dubious handling of personal information and preferences. The social aspect of the Internet used to be about people communicating with people. Today it's about large corporations deciding how you interact, who gets to know about it and what consequences it'll have for your life in the following decades. Disgusting.

octosphere 8y ago
Outline to the rescue: https://outline.com/2XKLG2 https://outline.com/2XKLG2
- Kye 8y ago
  Outline's ToS and privacy policy are collectively almost 2000 words.
  - androidgirl 8y ago
    To be fair, even on small sites I have written, Privacy Policies can get truly huge due to the boilerplate. Most of my sites have Google Analytics that gets disabled when DNT is turned on. That plus server logs for fail2ban and DoS protection easily bumps the policy to 500 words. Do you use cookies for storing basic session data? That's more. Run ads or use affiliate links? That's even more. There's limit to a sane Privacy Policy, but all of this is rudimentary, common stuff.
dkersten 8y ago
Yeah. That privacy policy really put me off any of their sites.
mtgx 8y ago
Rejoice, Verizon's content acquisitions have turned into complete and utter disasters and Verizon announced that it will exit the content business (A Reuters article I can't seem to find now said so): https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-its-yahoo-aol-divisions-are-almost-worthless-n946846 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-its-y... The funny thing is Marissa Mayer made more from the deal than Yahoo is now worth for Verizon: https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-mayer-severance-stock-verizon/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-may... And she got a severance paycheck that's also worth 10% of Verizon's content business now.
- snovv_crash 8y ago
  The money she made was due to the Alibaba investment, not the content business.
jiveturkey 8y ago
yeah, i use adblocker so i have never supported them (except in viewer counts) but as of a few months ago i stopped reading them altogether. thanks for the reminder why.
a_imho 8y ago
The EU should really swing its GDPR stick around. Can someone shed some light on why the e.g Oath Family has not been hit with a serious fine yet? The violation is clear as a day.
- bogomipz 8y ago
  Could you elaborate? Aren't those ToS/Privacy Policy displays there in order to satisfy GDPR requirements? I thought the idea was that you could either agree to accept them and continue or decline. I don't claim to be that well-versed in GDPR law however but genuinely curious.
  - a_imho 8y ago
    Ianal but I don't think so. Without nitpicking all the finer details how Oath/Techcrunch fails (probably very much willingly) to comply, their wall of text is a bad excuse for informed consent. Eg I still have no idea what data they collect and who they share it with or how can I opt-out (itself is non compliant btw, but I'm assuming industry best practices here) I thought the idea was that you could either agree to accept them and continue or decline. IIRC forced/umbrella consent like that is explicitly forbidden.

octosphere 8y ago

Outline to the rescue: https://outline.com/2XKLG2 https://outline.com/2XKLG2

Kye 8y ago
Outline's ToS and privacy policy are collectively almost 2000 words.
- androidgirl 8y ago
  To be fair, even on small sites I have written, Privacy Policies can get truly huge due to the boilerplate. Most of my sites have Google Analytics that gets disabled when DNT is turned on. That plus server logs for fail2ban and DoS protection easily bumps the policy to 500 words. Do you use cookies for storing basic session data? That's more. Run ads or use affiliate links? That's even more. There's limit to a sane Privacy Policy, but all of this is rudimentary, common stuff.

dkersten 8y ago

Yeah. That privacy policy really put me off any of their sites.

mtgx 8y ago

Rejoice, Verizon's content acquisitions have turned into complete and utter disasters and Verizon announced that it will exit the content business (A Reuters article I can't seem to find now said so): https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-its-yahoo-aol-divisions-are-almost-worthless-n946846 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-its-y... The funny thing is Marissa Mayer made more from the deal than Yahoo is now worth for Verizon: https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-mayer-severance-stock-verizon/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-may... And she got a severance paycheck that's also worth 10% of Verizon's content business now.

snovv_crash 8y ago
The money she made was due to the Alibaba investment, not the content business.

jiveturkey 8y ago

yeah, i use adblocker so i have never supported them (except in viewer counts) but as of a few months ago i stopped reading them altogether. thanks for the reminder why.

a_imho 8y ago

The EU should really swing its GDPR stick around. Can someone shed some light on why the e.g Oath Family has not been hit with a serious fine yet? The violation is clear as a day.

bogomipz 8y ago
Could you elaborate? Aren't those ToS/Privacy Policy displays there in order to satisfy GDPR requirements? I thought the idea was that you could either agree to accept them and continue or decline. I don't claim to be that well-versed in GDPR law however but genuinely curious.
- a_imho 8y ago
  Ianal but I don't think so. Without nitpicking all the finer details how Oath/Techcrunch fails (probably very much willingly) to comply, their wall of text is a bad excuse for informed consent. Eg I still have no idea what data they collect and who they share it with or how can I opt-out (itself is non compliant btw, but I'm assuming industry best practices here) I thought the idea was that you could either agree to accept them and continue or decline. IIRC forced/umbrella consent like that is explicitly forbidden.