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I don’t intend to diminish the article itself, since yes ditching chrome and Google is a win for personal privacy. But I can’t ignore the irony of this article

I don’t intend to diminish the article itself, since yes ditching chrome and Google is a win for personal privacy. But I can’t ignore the irony of this article loading dozens of trackers. Like, is the cognitive dissonance that bad in web publishing? Do the teams writing the content not know about the way the publisher presents the data? Is this just pure hypocrisy? I’m at a loss.

agilob 4y ago
Are you writing this on internet - a tech that most if not all government use to spy on their citizens? Did you buy your computer online paying by a card or cash? Is your hardware, software all opensource and audited? Did you compile it all yourself?
dylan604 4y ago
An author doesn't get to choose what the website of the publisher does. It's not like this is the author's personal website that they have decided to put all of these trackers on it. This is a voice crying from within the system about how bad the system is. Is there a lot of cognitive dissonance in understanding how web publishing works?
- a2800276 4y ago
  An author does get to choose which platform they publish on. I'm really surprised by all the apologists here, the article is clearly click bait trying to cram ads down your throat. The real irony is that while the post is bearable to look at in chrome it's near enough unreadable in Firefox.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Funny, I had no problem reading it in FF. Of course, I run uMatrix, so my experience is probably better. Also, the author in this case is a staff writer for the publication. The entire point of her being on staff is to write content for that site.
  - shortformblog 4y ago
    People don’t usually automatically get to write at a specific outlet just because. In this case, the writer spent nearly a year freelancing at this outlet before they became a full-time staff writer just last month, which means they had to put a lot of work in to even get their spot. Publishing is a very competitive field, especially in the last decade as newspaper jobs have gone dry. Don’t trash on the writer because of where they work.
  - haswell 4y ago
    > An author does get to choose which platform they publish on. A climate scientist traveling to a conference to meet with policy makers with a goal to increase awareness about a particular issue might be forced to use a mode of transportation that itself contributes to the problem of climate change. Should the scientist adopt an absolutist/idealist position and refrain from anything that contributes to the problem, up to and including not traveling at all, because of the harm that the plane will cause in transit? Should they discard the potential longer term impact of convincing policy makers to change policy? This is a classic case of missing the forest for the trees. > I'm really surprised by all the apologists It think you are misinterpreting the sentiment. An apologist would defend the tracking and ads themselves. People are not defending tracking, they are defending the utility of using the available medium to raise awareness about tracking and tools that can help mitigate it. > the article is clearly click bait trying to cram ads down your throat I would reframe this to something like: the majority of the content publishing business has adopted a model that embraces click bait and cramming ads down readers' throats. This is the reality we're in. As an author, if you want to bring awareness to this problem, or offer solutions to this problem, it only makes sense to publish that content where the readers are. At no point does the article try to reframe the problem of tracking itself as a good thing. If it did, this would be a very different conversation.
rjbwork 4y ago
Traditionally, at publications of repute, the advertising and journalism departments were entirely segregated from one another. This gives the appearance of independence, rather than being influenced by an advertiser. I expect that, especially since the skill sets are rather orthogonal, that kind of segregation still happens today on web publications.
sdoering 4y ago
This was one of the reasons I left online publishing. When I did my internship in an ad agency the first thing I was told was to install an adblocker. Talking about hypocrisy.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  > When I did my internship in an ad agency the first thing I was told was to install an adblocker. Is it possible there's an innocent explanation? Like to avoid accusations of impression fraud or otherwise mitigate the risk of false impressions? Yet I imagine one would also need a non-blocked browser to check results and competitor ads too.
  - Bayko 4y ago
    Was a software developer in the ad industry. We dealt with billions of ads. A hundred hell thousand ads here or there won't make any difference. I did use ad block though except for running tests on the code that I wrote.
for1nner 4y ago
In fairness, the person writing the article doesn't really have a say in the infra that the publisher is using. I agree that doesn't make the hypocrisy magically disappear, but it shouldn't detract from the points being made about the platforms we use to access the web.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- phkahler 4y ago
  A team owner can advocate for safety related rules in a league while not having his own players adopt those changes and start losing. Warren Buffet can advocate for changes in the tax laws that benefit the country while still playing hard by the existing rules. Authors can advocate for changes to the web while their host is still doing the bad thing. These can be seen as hypocrisy, but I think there is a large dose of honesty and in some cases humility in these situations.
  - _fat_santa 4y ago
    True in theory but you also have to consider most writers are just freelance and therefore have zero pull with the publisher.
    - ta988 4y ago
      And many are just desperate to have a publisher at all.
    - phkahler 4y ago
      So those are the least guilty of the examples I gave :-)
tapper 4y ago
Yeah that site is rideled with shitty trackers!
rvz 4y ago
Well I had a look at this article on Firefox, just to see what all the fuss is about and instantly in my face are all these Ads on TechRadar's website. They weren't even disabled by default on the first install and then you have Google being set as the default search engine. I wonder who is going to tell the editor why that is? So either way, nothing has changed from the typical user standpoint who wants to just use a browser that not only doesn't hog their computer but takes privacy very seriously and with that simple experiment I have done, it is clear users are still no better off. They might as well use Brave instead of Firefox which actually disables ALL these ads by default on the first install by having Brave Shields ON.
z3t4 4y ago
It's corporate politics. The amount of tracking and data collected is not decided by the engineers nor the content creators. Most entrepreneurs think that the more data the better and that it somehow can be monetized in the future - and analyzed by "AI", but don't want to to be liable so they use third parties to collect and store the data.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
I feel this sort of black-and-white thinking about morality is responsible for a lot of problems. Short of moving into the desert and becoming some sort of Hesychastic hermit, it's difficult, near impossible to lead a life where you do no evil. The conclusion many draw from that is not to even bother trying. I think the better conclusion is to be forgiving of the failings of others, because they too struggle with this. Maybe the point isn't to be perfect, but to reach for what's good.
- Epa095 4y ago
  Perfect is the enemy of good!
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  Black and white? Or is the publisher + author being a hypocrite? Feels like the latter. "Do as I say, not as I do" is rarely forgivable. One or two lingering trackers? Maybe. But that's not the case here.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    OP's point is that we're all hypocrites to some degree. Expecting someone to be doing everything right before they can comment on how we can all improve leaves us waiting for deity to resolve our problems.
    - alex_sf 4y ago
      I don't think it's ever fair to expect someone to do everything right, but if you want to pontificate on a specific issue, you should act in congruence with that.
    - chiefalchemist 4y ago
      Yes we are. Agreed. But in this case the publisher + author are on the wrong side of the grey area. The number of trackers is not an "oops".
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
afrcnc 4y ago
abandonliberty 4y ago
Is it a win? Last I heard FF was generating a unique identifier on each installer download. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-a-unique-identifier/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-... I'm hoping the Duck Duck Go browser or Vivaldi is better.
- judge2020 4y ago
  Usage analytics are pretty important for any product to stay competitive, and IMO it’s very different from any sort of personalized ad tracking.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  One-time download telemetry is a pretty minor reason to choose an entirely different browser
- jeltz 4y ago
  Chrome does the same and more. So, yes, it is a win. But Firefox should really stop doing that.
mikkergp 4y ago
The primary goal of this article is clearly ad impressions, any attempt to educate and inform on privacy is clearly secondary.
- lolinder 4y ago
  The article encourages people to install uBlock. If it's primarily designed to drive ads, that's some bad short-term thinking.
blacksmith_tb 4y ago
I was actually pretty impressed that a mainstream (read 'ad-supported') outlet would run a story that encourages you to set up uBlock etc. Contrast it to this article that ran recently[1] on 'securing' your browser, which somehow manages to avoid mentioning that adblocking would do ten times more to protect you than any of the config changes it recommends... 1:https://gizmodo.com/how-to-secure-web-browser-chrome-edge-firefox-safari-1849176198 https://gizmodo.com/how-to-secure-web-browser-chrome-edge-fi...
- notriddle 4y ago
  There are sensible game-theoretical reasons for behaving that way. Individually choosing to forgo tracking hurts your competitive edge. Advocating for ad blocking, environmental regulations, or other industry-wide taxes will not, because everyone gets hit with that.
sparrc 4y ago
It's pretty simple. The journalist/editors want to write an article about privacy and web tracking. The business people want ads on the website to keep the lights on. And to be fair to the business people, it's not like they have much choice. There are no major privacy-focused ad networks and they need a source of revenue. What do you expect them to do?
- bombcar 4y ago
  Sometimes the only moral act is to die. "Finally, it is always possible that man, as the result of coercion or other circumstances, can be hindered from doing certain good actions; but he can never be hindered from not doing certain actions, especially if he is prepared to die rather than to do evil." At some point a company may have to make a decision that results in their death if they want to continue to act morally. But much, much more often they simply modify their morals slightly and continue on. We humans are great at that.
  - lolinder 4y ago
    What good would dying do in this case? There will be no shortage of other publications that will fill in the gap and happily embrace invasive advertising. If an organization keeps the lights on with ad revenue and teaches its readers to protect themselves from trackers, they've done more good than if they never existed at all.
  - shortformblog 4y ago
    Don’t aim your weapons at the publishers, who are generally working as morally as they can within the parameters they’ve been given. Aim them at the ad technology firms that set the ground rules for the industry decades ago. The publishers are generally not the ones who let it degrade like this—the ad industry, which set the expectations for advertisers and marketers, did.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

agilob 4y ago

Are you writing this on internet - a tech that most if not all government use to spy on their citizens? Did you buy your computer online paying by a card or cash? Is your hardware, software all opensource and audited? Did you compile it all yourself?

dylan604 4y ago

An author doesn't get to choose what the website of the publisher does. It's not like this is the author's personal website that they have decided to put all of these trackers on it. This is a voice crying from within the system about how bad the system is. Is there a lot of cognitive dissonance in understanding how web publishing works?

a2800276 4y ago
An author does get to choose which platform they publish on. I'm really surprised by all the apologists here, the article is clearly click bait trying to cram ads down your throat. The real irony is that while the post is bearable to look at in chrome it's near enough unreadable in Firefox.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Funny, I had no problem reading it in FF. Of course, I run uMatrix, so my experience is probably better. Also, the author in this case is a staff writer for the publication. The entire point of her being on staff is to write content for that site.
- shortformblog 4y ago
  People don’t usually automatically get to write at a specific outlet just because. In this case, the writer spent nearly a year freelancing at this outlet before they became a full-time staff writer just last month, which means they had to put a lot of work in to even get their spot. Publishing is a very competitive field, especially in the last decade as newspaper jobs have gone dry. Don’t trash on the writer because of where they work.
- haswell 4y ago
  > An author does get to choose which platform they publish on. A climate scientist traveling to a conference to meet with policy makers with a goal to increase awareness about a particular issue might be forced to use a mode of transportation that itself contributes to the problem of climate change. Should the scientist adopt an absolutist/idealist position and refrain from anything that contributes to the problem, up to and including not traveling at all, because of the harm that the plane will cause in transit? Should they discard the potential longer term impact of convincing policy makers to change policy? This is a classic case of missing the forest for the trees. > I'm really surprised by all the apologists It think you are misinterpreting the sentiment. An apologist would defend the tracking and ads themselves. People are not defending tracking, they are defending the utility of using the available medium to raise awareness about tracking and tools that can help mitigate it. > the article is clearly click bait trying to cram ads down your throat I would reframe this to something like: the majority of the content publishing business has adopted a model that embraces click bait and cramming ads down readers' throats. This is the reality we're in. As an author, if you want to bring awareness to this problem, or offer solutions to this problem, it only makes sense to publish that content where the readers are. At no point does the article try to reframe the problem of tracking itself as a good thing. If it did, this would be a very different conversation.

rjbwork 4y ago

Traditionally, at publications of repute, the advertising and journalism departments were entirely segregated from one another. This gives the appearance of independence, rather than being influenced by an advertiser. I expect that, especially since the skill sets are rather orthogonal, that kind of segregation still happens today on web publications.

sdoering 4y ago

This was one of the reasons I left online publishing. When I did my internship in an ad agency the first thing I was told was to install an adblocker. Talking about hypocrisy.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
> When I did my internship in an ad agency the first thing I was told was to install an adblocker. Is it possible there's an innocent explanation? Like to avoid accusations of impression fraud or otherwise mitigate the risk of false impressions? Yet I imagine one would also need a non-blocked browser to check results and competitor ads too.
- Bayko 4y ago
  Was a software developer in the ad industry. We dealt with billions of ads. A hundred hell thousand ads here or there won't make any difference. I did use ad block though except for running tests on the code that I wrote.

for1nner 4y ago

In fairness, the person writing the article doesn't really have a say in the infra that the publisher is using. I agree that doesn't make the hypocrisy magically disappear, but it shouldn't detract from the points being made about the platforms we use to access the web.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
phkahler 4y ago
A team owner can advocate for safety related rules in a league while not having his own players adopt those changes and start losing. Warren Buffet can advocate for changes in the tax laws that benefit the country while still playing hard by the existing rules. Authors can advocate for changes to the web while their host is still doing the bad thing. These can be seen as hypocrisy, but I think there is a large dose of honesty and in some cases humility in these situations.
- _fat_santa 4y ago
  True in theory but you also have to consider most writers are just freelance and therefore have zero pull with the publisher.
  - ta988 4y ago
    And many are just desperate to have a publisher at all.
  - phkahler 4y ago
    So those are the least guilty of the examples I gave :-)

tapper 4y ago

Yeah that site is rideled with shitty trackers!

rvz 4y ago

Well I had a look at this article on Firefox, just to see what all the fuss is about and instantly in my face are all these Ads on TechRadar's website. They weren't even disabled by default on the first install and then you have Google being set as the default search engine. I wonder who is going to tell the editor why that is? So either way, nothing has changed from the typical user standpoint who wants to just use a browser that not only doesn't hog their computer but takes privacy very seriously and with that simple experiment I have done, it is clear users are still no better off. They might as well use Brave instead of Firefox which actually disables ALL these ads by default on the first install by having Brave Shields ON.

z3t4 4y ago

It's corporate politics. The amount of tracking and data collected is not decided by the engineers nor the content creators. Most entrepreneurs think that the more data the better and that it somehow can be monetized in the future - and analyzed by "AI", but don't want to to be liable so they use third parties to collect and store the data.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

I feel this sort of black-and-white thinking about morality is responsible for a lot of problems. Short of moving into the desert and becoming some sort of Hesychastic hermit, it's difficult, near impossible to lead a life where you do no evil. The conclusion many draw from that is not to even bother trying. I think the better conclusion is to be forgiving of the failings of others, because they too struggle with this. Maybe the point isn't to be perfect, but to reach for what's good.

Epa095 4y ago
Perfect is the enemy of good!
chiefalchemist 4y ago
Black and white? Or is the publisher + author being a hypocrite? Feels like the latter. "Do as I say, not as I do" is rarely forgivable. One or two lingering trackers? Maybe. But that's not the case here.
- lolinder 4y ago
  OP's point is that we're all hypocrites to some degree. Expecting someone to be doing everything right before they can comment on how we can all improve leaves us waiting for deity to resolve our problems.
  - alex_sf 4y ago
    I don't think it's ever fair to expect someone to do everything right, but if you want to pontificate on a specific issue, you should act in congruence with that.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    Yes we are. Agreed. But in this case the publisher + author are on the wrong side of the grey area. The number of trackers is not an "oops".
tannhaeuser 4y ago

afrcnc 4y ago

abandonliberty 4y ago

Is it a win? Last I heard FF was generating a unique identifier on each installer download. https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-a-unique-identifier/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/03/17/each-firefox-download-has-... I'm hoping the Duck Duck Go browser or Vivaldi is better.

judge2020 4y ago
Usage analytics are pretty important for any product to stay competitive, and IMO it’s very different from any sort of personalized ad tracking.
lelandfe 4y ago
One-time download telemetry is a pretty minor reason to choose an entirely different browser
jeltz 4y ago
Chrome does the same and more. So, yes, it is a win. But Firefox should really stop doing that.

mikkergp 4y ago

The primary goal of this article is clearly ad impressions, any attempt to educate and inform on privacy is clearly secondary.

lolinder 4y ago
The article encourages people to install uBlock. If it's primarily designed to drive ads, that's some bad short-term thinking.

blacksmith_tb 4y ago

I was actually pretty impressed that a mainstream (read 'ad-supported') outlet would run a story that encourages you to set up uBlock etc. Contrast it to this article that ran recently[1] on 'securing' your browser, which somehow manages to avoid mentioning that adblocking would do ten times more to protect you than any of the config changes it recommends... 1:https://gizmodo.com/how-to-secure-web-browser-chrome-edge-firefox-safari-1849176198 https://gizmodo.com/how-to-secure-web-browser-chrome-edge-fi...

notriddle 4y ago
There are sensible game-theoretical reasons for behaving that way. Individually choosing to forgo tracking hurts your competitive edge. Advocating for ad blocking, environmental regulations, or other industry-wide taxes will not, because everyone gets hit with that.

sparrc 4y ago

It's pretty simple. The journalist/editors want to write an article about privacy and web tracking. The business people want ads on the website to keep the lights on. And to be fair to the business people, it's not like they have much choice. There are no major privacy-focused ad networks and they need a source of revenue. What do you expect them to do?

bombcar 4y ago
Sometimes the only moral act is to die. "Finally, it is always possible that man, as the result of coercion or other circumstances, can be hindered from doing certain good actions; but he can never be hindered from not doing certain actions, especially if he is prepared to die rather than to do evil." At some point a company may have to make a decision that results in their death if they want to continue to act morally. But much, much more often they simply modify their morals slightly and continue on. We humans are great at that.
- lolinder 4y ago
  What good would dying do in this case? There will be no shortage of other publications that will fill in the gap and happily embrace invasive advertising. If an organization keeps the lights on with ad revenue and teaches its readers to protect themselves from trackers, they've done more good than if they never existed at all.
- shortformblog 4y ago
  Don’t aim your weapons at the publishers, who are generally working as morally as they can within the parameters they’ve been given. Aim them at the ad technology firms that set the ground rules for the industry decades ago. The publishers are generally not the ones who let it degrade like this—the ad industry, which set the expectations for advertisers and marketers, did.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]