9 ms·

I just leave any site with adtech 'consent' overlays like Techcrunch. Hopefully, if enough people abandon sites that use dark patterns and invasive tracking te

by brylie 7y ago

I just leave any site with adtech 'consent' overlays like Techcrunch. Hopefully, if enough people abandon sites that use dark patterns and invasive tracking tech, the industry will get the message that these technologies are unethical and even illegal.

idlewords 7y ago
This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving.
- JadeNB 7y ago
  > This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving. If there were a real change in driving habits that the providers could trace to the presence of lead in gasoline, don't you think they would have taken it out?
  - earthboundkid 7y ago
    No.
- ben_w 7y ago
  In the 1950s was leaded gasoline illegal across a continent worth about 20% of gross world product?
  - earthboundkid 7y ago
    Idlewords is arguing for legally enforced privacy rights, rather than consumer-led boycotts (or worse, non-organized individual picking and choosing of which privacy violations to tolerate).
    - JadeNB 7y ago
      > Idlewords is arguing for legally enforced privacy rights, rather than consumer-led boycotts (or worse, non-organized individual picking and choosing of which privacy violations to tolerate). The context seems consistent with that being the intended thrust of the argument, but its literal wording (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19962410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19962410): > This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving. seems to claim, not just that enforced regulations rather than consumer-led boycotts were the right way to address the issue of leaded gasoline, but that boycotts wouldn't have worked. If your gloss is the correct one, then I find the argument much more plausible than a literal reading suggests.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - ben_w 7y ago
        Thanks, I genuinely wasn’t able to see that interpretation until I saw this, and instead took it in the literal sense you’re giving here.
- sieabahlpark 7y ago
  Just let them think GDPR is enforceable across the ocean.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Techcrunch has events in the EU (e.g. Disrupt Berlin).
- wnevets 7y ago
  It's a little easier to stop visiting a website than it is to stop driving a car in US.
  - kcorbitt 7y ago
    I wonder though! If you were to give every American today an ultimatum that they had to either (1) never drive a car again or (2) never use the internet again, what percentage would take each side of the deal?
    - nostalgk 7y ago
      Well, Uber uses the Internet to communicate. I know which one would be more useful overall to me. I think not using a few websites who use scummy ad practices (of which there are sometimes ethically reasonable alternatives, like this site) is a lot easier than never driving again, though.
    - kgwxd 7y ago
      But websites are on the internet, they're not the internet.
      - earthboundkid 7y ago
        Yes, thank you for using your Gopher client to post this highly relevant and on-topic comment that none of us had already known since forever.
    - btilly 7y ago
      Given that Americans gave YOU the internet, it seems more appropriate to ask Europeans whether they would prefer to not use the Internet, or to stop writing bad laws that cause problems for Internet companies.
      - read_if_gay_ 7y ago
        GP was not making this a US versus EU thing at all. Why are you?
nvr219 7y ago
I use ublock to hide those overlays
- JadeNB 7y ago
  Or, on a purely ad hoc basis, McDiarmid's "Kill Sticky Headers" (https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers).
  - kissgyorgy 7y ago
    Wow, this makes Medium almost readable! Thanks!
    - nostalgk 7y ago
      Ugh, Medium is the only site I've had to consistently break out the "Block Element" button with. I don't even mind ads and I'm happy to leave them on sites that I want to support, but Medium is an ugly beast with all of the headers and footers. I still frequent it for work, there's lots of great stories, but it's almost insufferable.
      - JadeNB 7y ago
        > Medium is an ugly beast with all of the headers and footers. They don't mind that you feel that way; they still want to make it official.
        nostalgk 7y ago
        At this point, while I carry a Medium account, I refuse to log into it out of principle.
  - ddebernardy 7y ago
    Slightly better implementation: javascript:(function(){(function(){var%20i,elements=document.querySelectorAll('body%20*');for(i=0;i<elements.length;i++){var%20p=getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position;if(p==='fixed'||p==='sticky'||p==='-webkit-sticky'){elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]);}}})()})() It's basically the same but it also catches `sticky` and `-webkit-sticky`, which some sites use instead of `fixed`.
14 7y ago
Could you describe a bit more what the consent overlay you are talking about please? I went to techcrunch with my ad blocker on at first then turned it off but did not see much change. What exactly are you talking about, I would appreciate knowing so I too can avoid deceptive sites. Thank you.
- simongr3dal 7y ago
  Techcrunch (and tumblr and yahoo and others) is part of something called Oath, you're probably only going to see the consent overlay/redirect if you have an IP that shows as being within the EU. You will have the option to accept or configure what "partners" you want to track you when you're on Oath sites. There is a list of hundreds of these partners with links to each of their privacy policies and a switch to turn them on or off. The problem is partly that they are defaulting to tracking you and sharing information with partners, under GDPR it is supposed to be the default to not tracking and share data. It is also supposed to be equally easy to choose tracking vs not-tracking, with the Oath dialogue the option to turn it all off is not as easy or prominent as the option to accept tracking. Sorry about the image not being in english, but the language is automatically set based on location. Example: https://imgur.com/a/PFM1W69 https://imgur.com/a/PFM1W69
  - gjm11 7y ago
    "Not as easy or prominent" is quite an understatement. Here's how it goes. Visit, say, TechCrunch. You get an overlay saying "TechCrunch is part of Oath; please let us do all the things" with a big "OK" button and a "Manage Options" button-made-to-look-not-like-a-button. So, you click on "Manage Options". Now you have a new page with a big "OK" button (which obviously will, again, give them permission to do all the things), a "Learn more" link, and a "Manage" link. The "learn more" link takes you to a page saying how wonderful it is that Oath wants all your data; that page doesn't appear to give you any options to configure or control anything. So, you click on "Manage". This takes you, of course, to yet another page on which you cannot yet manage anything. "Oath works with partners ...". Three links. "You can change your choices at any time by visiting the 'Partners' tab in our _Privacy dashboard_"; "See how partners use your data. _Show_"; "See and customize which partners can use your data. _Show_". (And of course a big "Done" button which gives them permission to do all the things.) It sounds as if the first is for changing things once you've set them, and the second only lets you look but not touch. So, follow the third link. This doesn't take you to a new page. Instead, it replaces the paragraph the link was in with a two-tabbed thing. One tab is called "Foundational partners" and has a list of 11 partners (people like Amazon, Google, Facebook, as well as some less well-known names). You have no ability here to change anything, but there are links to these people's privacy policies. The first three I looked at (Amazon, Google, eBay) link to pages that give information but _still_ no ability to change anything. The other tab here is called "IAB partners". This has a list of _238_ separate partners and a little on/off switch for each. There is -- I'm sure there used not to be, so they've actually improved this -- an option that says either "Select all" or "Deselect all". ... But then, at the bottom, you see: "Visit the following industry links to opt out of personalised advertising from those third parties who are members of the _European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance_ (EDAA), _Digital Advertising Alliance_ (DAA) or _Network Advertising Initiative_ (NAI)." So. You need to go three levels in before you get any ability to change anything. At that point, you can opt out of personalized ads from their "IAB partners". (Can you opt out of _being tracked_ by them? It doesn't exactly say you can, but one can hope that that's the effect.) But if you want to opt out of anything involving their "Foundational partners" you need to go to their 11 individual websites and go poking around (good luck!). And then there are some unspecified _other_ partners in the EDAA, the DAA, and the NAI. For each of those there's a link taking you to the relevant organization's site, with its own clumsy and typically-dysfunctional mechanism for opting out. And, again, all they actually say will be achieved by opting out is that you won't get personalized ads; you might hope this will also stop them tracking you, and who knows? you might be right. None of this is anything remotely like GDPR-compliant, so far as I can make out.
thom 7y ago
Yup, but even if they don't, after a couple of weeks post GDPR rollout I realised I didn't actually care about any of these articles anyway, and in the end it's just strictly benefited my piece of mind.
phaylon 7y ago
I actually tend to try and work with them. With this article as well, I tried to change my data settings instead of just leaving. But I gave up after following the 7th link without encountering a single setting, just more links to follow.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
  Any Oath website is the absolute worst about this - I tried twice to go through their Byzantine windows to “set my ad preferences” and gave up. They specifically designed it to be as difficult as possible, obviously. Now I just leave immediately anytime it’s an Oath website
  - anoncake 7y ago
    I don't understand why companies are doing this. Without these overlays, they violate the GDPR. With these overlays, they violate the GDPR and annoy their users.
    - thirdsun 7y ago
      That's what I don't get. It's my understanding that these ad tracking options have to be opt-in. If I have to dig through countless hidden links and options to reject these settigns it's anything but opt-in. If I can't reject this nonsense within 3 clicks I'll leave the site.
314 7y ago
I came to say basically the same thing. The article sounded interesting but TechCrunch has such a bad consent form / use of data that I always just nope out of there and close the page.
zcid 7y ago
Surprisingly, Techcrunch is a great example of a site that works very well without JS. Very clean. Nothing makes me happier than rolling into an article and not having to enable JavaScript for 50 different domains to read 200 words of text.
koonsolo 7y ago
You are probably 0.01% of the population. Most people don't know or care what a cookie is, and just click "OK" when they see it. Most people heard about GDPR because companies panicked and send out mails to everyone, with GDPR in the title. But in the end, most people have no clue about what GDPR actually is. Please don't say we need to educate people on this, because not only do they not know, but they also don't care. They just want to search, read and watch stuff on the internet, and the less technology and knowledge the better. For me, I know what it all is, and I simply don't care. Some ad tech knows which websites I saw and what product I searched... I seriously don't give a shit. If you want to fix this issue, I think micro-transactions is the only way possible. Because content creators will always try (and need) to make money, which means the content reader will always pay. Whether is is with their attention (ads), data, or actual money. Subscriptions don't always work, because most of the time, I just want to read an article and not the whole website.

by brylie 7y ago

idlewords 7y ago

This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving.

JadeNB 7y ago
> This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving. If there were a real change in driving habits that the providers could trace to the presence of lead in gasoline, don't you think they would have taken it out?
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  No.
ben_w 7y ago
In the 1950s was leaded gasoline illegal across a continent worth about 20% of gross world product?
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  Idlewords is arguing for legally enforced privacy rights, rather than consumer-led boycotts (or worse, non-organized individual picking and choosing of which privacy violations to tolerate).
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    > Idlewords is arguing for legally enforced privacy rights, rather than consumer-led boycotts (or worse, non-organized individual picking and choosing of which privacy violations to tolerate). The context seems consistent with that being the intended thrust of the argument, but its literal wording (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19962410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19962410): > This is like saying in 1950 that companies will take the lead out of gasoline if we all stop driving. seems to claim, not just that enforced regulations rather than consumer-led boycotts were the right way to address the issue of leaded gasoline, but that boycotts wouldn't have worked. If your gloss is the correct one, then I find the argument much more plausible than a literal reading suggests.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - ben_w 7y ago
      Thanks, I genuinely wasn’t able to see that interpretation until I saw this, and instead took it in the literal sense you’re giving here.
sieabahlpark 7y ago
Just let them think GDPR is enforceable across the ocean.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Techcrunch has events in the EU (e.g. Disrupt Berlin).
wnevets 7y ago
It's a little easier to stop visiting a website than it is to stop driving a car in US.
- kcorbitt 7y ago
  I wonder though! If you were to give every American today an ultimatum that they had to either (1) never drive a car again or (2) never use the internet again, what percentage would take each side of the deal?
  - nostalgk 7y ago
    Well, Uber uses the Internet to communicate. I know which one would be more useful overall to me. I think not using a few websites who use scummy ad practices (of which there are sometimes ethically reasonable alternatives, like this site) is a lot easier than never driving again, though.
  - kgwxd 7y ago
    But websites are on the internet, they're not the internet.
    - earthboundkid 7y ago
      Yes, thank you for using your Gopher client to post this highly relevant and on-topic comment that none of us had already known since forever.
  - btilly 7y ago
    Given that Americans gave YOU the internet, it seems more appropriate to ask Europeans whether they would prefer to not use the Internet, or to stop writing bad laws that cause problems for Internet companies.
    - read_if_gay_ 7y ago
      GP was not making this a US versus EU thing at all. Why are you?

nvr219 7y ago

I use ublock to hide those overlays

JadeNB 7y ago
Or, on a purely ad hoc basis, McDiarmid's "Kill Sticky Headers" (https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers).
- kissgyorgy 7y ago
  Wow, this makes Medium almost readable! Thanks!
  - nostalgk 7y ago
    Ugh, Medium is the only site I've had to consistently break out the "Block Element" button with. I don't even mind ads and I'm happy to leave them on sites that I want to support, but Medium is an ugly beast with all of the headers and footers. I still frequent it for work, there's lots of great stories, but it's almost insufferable.
    - JadeNB 7y ago
      > Medium is an ugly beast with all of the headers and footers. They don't mind that you feel that way; they still want to make it official.
      - nostalgk 7y ago
        At this point, while I carry a Medium account, I refuse to log into it out of principle.
- ddebernardy 7y ago
  Slightly better implementation: javascript:(function(){(function(){var%20i,elements=document.querySelectorAll('body%20*');for(i=0;i<elements.length;i++){var%20p=getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position;if(p==='fixed'||p==='sticky'||p==='-webkit-sticky'){elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]);}}})()})() It's basically the same but it also catches `sticky` and `-webkit-sticky`, which some sites use instead of `fixed`.

14 7y ago

Could you describe a bit more what the consent overlay you are talking about please? I went to techcrunch with my ad blocker on at first then turned it off but did not see much change. What exactly are you talking about, I would appreciate knowing so I too can avoid deceptive sites. Thank you.

simongr3dal 7y ago
Techcrunch (and tumblr and yahoo and others) is part of something called Oath, you're probably only going to see the consent overlay/redirect if you have an IP that shows as being within the EU. You will have the option to accept or configure what "partners" you want to track you when you're on Oath sites. There is a list of hundreds of these partners with links to each of their privacy policies and a switch to turn them on or off. The problem is partly that they are defaulting to tracking you and sharing information with partners, under GDPR it is supposed to be the default to not tracking and share data. It is also supposed to be equally easy to choose tracking vs not-tracking, with the Oath dialogue the option to turn it all off is not as easy or prominent as the option to accept tracking. Sorry about the image not being in english, but the language is automatically set based on location. Example: https://imgur.com/a/PFM1W69 https://imgur.com/a/PFM1W69
- gjm11 7y ago
  "Not as easy or prominent" is quite an understatement. Here's how it goes. Visit, say, TechCrunch. You get an overlay saying "TechCrunch is part of Oath; please let us do all the things" with a big "OK" button and a "Manage Options" button-made-to-look-not-like-a-button. So, you click on "Manage Options". Now you have a new page with a big "OK" button (which obviously will, again, give them permission to do all the things), a "Learn more" link, and a "Manage" link. The "learn more" link takes you to a page saying how wonderful it is that Oath wants all your data; that page doesn't appear to give you any options to configure or control anything. So, you click on "Manage". This takes you, of course, to yet another page on which you cannot yet manage anything. "Oath works with partners ...". Three links. "You can change your choices at any time by visiting the 'Partners' tab in our _Privacy dashboard_"; "See how partners use your data. _Show_"; "See and customize which partners can use your data. _Show_". (And of course a big "Done" button which gives them permission to do all the things.) It sounds as if the first is for changing things once you've set them, and the second only lets you look but not touch. So, follow the third link. This doesn't take you to a new page. Instead, it replaces the paragraph the link was in with a two-tabbed thing. One tab is called "Foundational partners" and has a list of 11 partners (people like Amazon, Google, Facebook, as well as some less well-known names). You have no ability here to change anything, but there are links to these people's privacy policies. The first three I looked at (Amazon, Google, eBay) link to pages that give information but _still_ no ability to change anything. The other tab here is called "IAB partners". This has a list of _238_ separate partners and a little on/off switch for each. There is -- I'm sure there used not to be, so they've actually improved this -- an option that says either "Select all" or "Deselect all". ... But then, at the bottom, you see: "Visit the following industry links to opt out of personalised advertising from those third parties who are members of the _European Interactive Digital Advertising Alliance_ (EDAA), _Digital Advertising Alliance_ (DAA) or _Network Advertising Initiative_ (NAI)." So. You need to go three levels in before you get any ability to change anything. At that point, you can opt out of personalized ads from their "IAB partners". (Can you opt out of _being tracked_ by them? It doesn't exactly say you can, but one can hope that that's the effect.) But if you want to opt out of anything involving their "Foundational partners" you need to go to their 11 individual websites and go poking around (good luck!). And then there are some unspecified _other_ partners in the EDAA, the DAA, and the NAI. For each of those there's a link taking you to the relevant organization's site, with its own clumsy and typically-dysfunctional mechanism for opting out. And, again, all they actually say will be achieved by opting out is that you won't get personalized ads; you might hope this will also stop them tracking you, and who knows? you might be right. None of this is anything remotely like GDPR-compliant, so far as I can make out.

thom 7y ago

Yup, but even if they don't, after a couple of weeks post GDPR rollout I realised I didn't actually care about any of these articles anyway, and in the end it's just strictly benefited my piece of mind.

phaylon 7y ago

I actually tend to try and work with them. With this article as well, I tried to change my data settings instead of just leaving. But I gave up after following the 7th link without encountering a single setting, just more links to follow.

SOLAR_FIELDS 7y ago
Any Oath website is the absolute worst about this - I tried twice to go through their Byzantine windows to “set my ad preferences” and gave up. They specifically designed it to be as difficult as possible, obviously. Now I just leave immediately anytime it’s an Oath website
- anoncake 7y ago
  I don't understand why companies are doing this. Without these overlays, they violate the GDPR. With these overlays, they violate the GDPR and annoy their users.
  - thirdsun 7y ago
    That's what I don't get. It's my understanding that these ad tracking options have to be opt-in. If I have to dig through countless hidden links and options to reject these settigns it's anything but opt-in. If I can't reject this nonsense within 3 clicks I'll leave the site.

314 7y ago

I came to say basically the same thing. The article sounded interesting but TechCrunch has such a bad consent form / use of data that I always just nope out of there and close the page.

zcid 7y ago

Surprisingly, Techcrunch is a great example of a site that works very well without JS. Very clean. Nothing makes me happier than rolling into an article and not having to enable JavaScript for 50 different domains to read 200 words of text.

koonsolo 7y ago

You are probably 0.01% of the population. Most people don't know or care what a cookie is, and just click "OK" when they see it. Most people heard about GDPR because companies panicked and send out mails to everyone, with GDPR in the title. But in the end, most people have no clue about what GDPR actually is. Please don't say we need to educate people on this, because not only do they not know, but they also don't care. They just want to search, read and watch stuff on the internet, and the less technology and knowledge the better. For me, I know what it all is, and I simply don't care. Some ad tech knows which websites I saw and what product I searched... I seriously don't give a shit. If you want to fix this issue, I think micro-transactions is the only way possible. Because content creators will always try (and need) to make money, which means the content reader will always pay. Whether is is with their attention (ads), data, or actual money. Subscriptions don't always work, because most of the time, I just want to read an article and not the whole website.