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The other day they forced me to give full consent to all advertising cookies in order to read without a subscription. I found this surprising, I do read them a

by rozab 2y ago

The other day they forced me to give full consent to all advertising cookies in order to read without a subscription. I found this surprising, I do read them a great deal, it might only happen for heavy users.

wkat4242 2y ago
Yeah weird, it's never done that to me. I'm in the EU though. Maybe that is a difference.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- KomoD 2y ago
  Nope, I'm in the EU and I've gotten it.
sega_sai 2y ago
Yes, I had the same. After that I decided to put them in separate firefox container.
Nursie 2y ago
Apparently the ICO in the UK has decided that "consent or pay" can be compliant with the UK GDPR, the post-brexit version of the GDPR that's in UK law. It feels wrong to me, but there we are. Personally I use an ad-blocker, but I also subscribe for a few bucks a month.
- pests 2y ago
  I have no issue with "consent or pay". They have to pay the bills somehow. The alternative to "consent or pay" is "pay". I'm really struggling to see how you feel its wrong. I am actually having difficulty writing this, as "consent to share your data" is ultimately a way to track and collect data on you. But what can you do? They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data. Isn't this choice better than companies just always tracking you, and also trying to get you to buy something? Deep down I know most people don't understand the amount of data and other information companies collect on them nor what they do with it. But at a certain point we have autonomy. I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying. There is always the third option of not consuming the content. The choices we make.
  - Nursie 2y ago
    > I'm really struggling to see how you feel its wrong. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/online-tracking/consent-or-pay/about-this-guidance/#different https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re... On the same page that the ICO gives guidance that "consent or pay" is legal, "take it or leave it", in which you are invited to pay with your data or go elsewhere, is not. This seems very weird to me. Either data is a form of payment or it isn't, and I had laboured under the (mis?)apprehension that the GDPR removed it from this sort of situation - that one had a right to say "no" to invasive tracking and that shouldn't affect the service provided one way or another. This muddies the water over true consent to track and it seems the ICO agrees - "When the only alternative to consent is paying a single price which combines access to the core product with a fee for avoiding sharing personal data for the purposes of personalised advertising, it can be difficult to demonstrate freely given consent." > They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data. In this case I do pay for it with money > I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying. Personally I'd rather government legislate away the tracking unless it can be genuinely demonstrated that someone opted in, with no form of coercion at all, and those who wanted to be paid to host advertising switch to a more context-sensitive rather than audience-sensitive model. And I had thought that was where we were going. This feels a bit like backsliding on that. (I'm not going to argue this is black and white "OMG so wrong!", I can definitely see there's room for differing opinions here, and I am aware I carry an anti-advertising, anti-tracking bias.)
    - pests 2y ago
      I do agree with you. This is an issue that I need to think more on before I decide my stance. My initial comment was my immediate reaction but I do agree this is a difficult and nuanced decision. Even reading the quotes you provided gave me a feeling of the amount of time and decision making that went into the law and the various guidelines. On one hand, content creators need to be paid. On the other, users should be able to protect their privacy. In the case of news, all should be welcome to participate in their society. Is there a limit in where providing data in compensation opposed to money makes sense? I wouldn't trade my data for the weather, they can get a zip code. On the other hand, I do trade my data to my financial institutions so they can do fraud checks. So we do exist on a spectrum of data intrusion and getting our needs met. Is trading data for news closer to checking the weather or doing banking? In todays world, I would say access to news is important and if you can't pay with money, its okay to pay with data in order to be informed about the news.
- reidrac 2y ago
  I've seen it in some Spanish newspapers and those are subject to the regular GDPR. You get tracked when you subcribe as well. The Guardian is far from perfect, and that bothers me more when I'm paying a subscription.
  - Nursie 2y ago
    Fair enough - I don't think the laws have diverged much in this area in the last several years, and while there was always a difference in national legislation and how the actual enforcement bodies would act, there's generally more commonality than difference. And yes, that sucks. I object very much to the "you subscribe and we still track/advertise" model, just as I object to ads creeping into paid tv streaming services now. And yes, I would expect the guardian to hold itself to a higher standard :/
- rwmj 2y ago
  Yeah that's what the ICO thinks and it's clearly wrong, since you don't consent if the alternative is paying.
6LLvveMx2koXfwn 2y ago
NoScript resolved this issue for me.
robocat 2y ago
I haven't seen that - but I recently saw them do a self-advertising segment before one of their videos on their site.

by rozab 2y ago

wkat4242 2y ago

Yeah weird, it's never done that to me. I'm in the EU though. Maybe that is a difference.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
KomoD 2y ago
Nope, I'm in the EU and I've gotten it.

sega_sai 2y ago

Yes, I had the same. After that I decided to put them in separate firefox container.

Nursie 2y ago

Apparently the ICO in the UK has decided that "consent or pay" can be compliant with the UK GDPR, the post-brexit version of the GDPR that's in UK law. It feels wrong to me, but there we are. Personally I use an ad-blocker, but I also subscribe for a few bucks a month.

pests 2y ago
I have no issue with "consent or pay". They have to pay the bills somehow. The alternative to "consent or pay" is "pay". I'm really struggling to see how you feel its wrong. I am actually having difficulty writing this, as "consent to share your data" is ultimately a way to track and collect data on you. But what can you do? They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data. Isn't this choice better than companies just always tracking you, and also trying to get you to buy something? Deep down I know most people don't understand the amount of data and other information companies collect on them nor what they do with it. But at a certain point we have autonomy. I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying. There is always the third option of not consuming the content. The choices we make.
- Nursie 2y ago
  > I'm really struggling to see how you feel its wrong. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/online-tracking/consent-or-pay/about-this-guidance/#different https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re... On the same page that the ICO gives guidance that "consent or pay" is legal, "take it or leave it", in which you are invited to pay with your data or go elsewhere, is not. This seems very weird to me. Either data is a form of payment or it isn't, and I had laboured under the (mis?)apprehension that the GDPR removed it from this sort of situation - that one had a right to say "no" to invasive tracking and that shouldn't affect the service provided one way or another. This muddies the water over true consent to track and it seems the ICO agrees - "When the only alternative to consent is paying a single price which combines access to the core product with a fee for avoiding sharing personal data for the purposes of personalised advertising, it can be difficult to demonstrate freely given consent." > They are offering you something which takes time and money to produce. You can pay for it with money or with your data. In this case I do pay for it with money > I'd rather be given a choice between "we track all your data" or you can pay verses the default of tracking all data and paying. Personally I'd rather government legislate away the tracking unless it can be genuinely demonstrated that someone opted in, with no form of coercion at all, and those who wanted to be paid to host advertising switch to a more context-sensitive rather than audience-sensitive model. And I had thought that was where we were going. This feels a bit like backsliding on that. (I'm not going to argue this is black and white "OMG so wrong!", I can definitely see there's room for differing opinions here, and I am aware I carry an anti-advertising, anti-tracking bias.)
  - pests 2y ago
    I do agree with you. This is an issue that I need to think more on before I decide my stance. My initial comment was my immediate reaction but I do agree this is a difficult and nuanced decision. Even reading the quotes you provided gave me a feeling of the amount of time and decision making that went into the law and the various guidelines. On one hand, content creators need to be paid. On the other, users should be able to protect their privacy. In the case of news, all should be welcome to participate in their society. Is there a limit in where providing data in compensation opposed to money makes sense? I wouldn't trade my data for the weather, they can get a zip code. On the other hand, I do trade my data to my financial institutions so they can do fraud checks. So we do exist on a spectrum of data intrusion and getting our needs met. Is trading data for news closer to checking the weather or doing banking? In todays world, I would say access to news is important and if you can't pay with money, its okay to pay with data in order to be informed about the news.
reidrac 2y ago
I've seen it in some Spanish newspapers and those are subject to the regular GDPR. You get tracked when you subcribe as well. The Guardian is far from perfect, and that bothers me more when I'm paying a subscription.
- Nursie 2y ago
  Fair enough - I don't think the laws have diverged much in this area in the last several years, and while there was always a difference in national legislation and how the actual enforcement bodies would act, there's generally more commonality than difference. And yes, that sucks. I object very much to the "you subscribe and we still track/advertise" model, just as I object to ads creeping into paid tv streaming services now. And yes, I would expect the guardian to hold itself to a higher standard :/
rwmj 2y ago
Yeah that's what the ICO thinks and it's clearly wrong, since you don't consent if the alternative is paying.

6LLvveMx2koXfwn 2y ago

NoScript resolved this issue for me.

robocat 2y ago

I haven't seen that - but I recently saw them do a self-advertising segment before one of their videos on their site.