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> I click “accept the cookies” almost every time. I just personally don’t feel it’s worth the effort and cost to try to avoid it. the effort and cost to downlo

> I click “accept the cookies” almost every time. I just personally don’t feel it’s worth the effort and cost to try to avoid it. the effort and cost to download an ad-blocker that automatically removes the prompt to accept/deny entirely is practically zero and the amount of clicks you'd save yourself would quickly exceed the clicks it took to install the blocker. > I just don’t think it is something that is worth stressing out about and fighting against. Maybe I am actually naive It seems like you are, but that's just how our brains work. We're very bad at judging long term and abstract risks, especially when the consequences and their connection to the cause are intentionally kept unclear. For example, when people's cars started collecting data on their driving habits and selling that data to insurance companies a lot of people saw their insurance rates go up, but none of the insurance companies said that it was because of the data collected from their cars. I'd be willing to bet the data being collected by tracking your browsing history has already been screwing you over in various aspects of your life, online and offline, but you won't be told when it happens or why.

fiddlerwoaroof 7mo ago
> the effort and cost to download an ad-blocker that automatically removes the prompt to accept/deny entirely is practically zero It's only zero if you don't need to interact with sites that break when you're running an adblocker. I run an ad-blocker nearly continuously, but there are all sorts of sites where I have to disable it in order to use the actual functionality of the site (and these are frequently sites I _have_ to interact with).
bethekidyouwant 7mo ago
this is definitely happening and for some reason, no one has any clear evidence on it. Conspiracy theories are gossip for men.
- autoexec 7mo ago
  We have all kinds of evidence for it (for example, here's an article about the data sold to insurance companies https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...) and we've had evidence for a very very long time (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/data-brokers-selling-personal-information-60-minutes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/data-brokers-selling-personal-i...) The data collected about us online is extensively used against us both online and offline. The multi-billion dollar industry around collecting and selling every scrap of data about you and your personal life didn't spring up because nobody was making money from it.
  - bethekidyouwant 7mo ago
    We were talking about browsing history, not credit card, purchases and metrics from your car.
    - autoexec 7mo ago
      At all gets added to your dossier and it all gets sold and resold and used against you. You can't know what is going to prejudice someone against you, or what assumptions they'll make. Your browsing history can be a lot more relieving than your credit card purchases or your driving data. It can give them your medical issues, your sexual preferences, your addictions, your political views, your religion, etc. Just knowing the dates and times you're going to websites can tell them a lot.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
gpvos 7mo ago
> the effort and cost to download an ad-blocker that automatically removes the prompt to accept/deny entirely is practically zero and the amount of clicks you'd save yourself would quickly exceed the clicks it took to install the blocker. For less-often used, e.g., non-English language sites, these often leave a site in an unusable state, e.g., non-scrollable. I often have to go into the developer tools to fix a site manually, sometimes hunting for the element to fix if it's not body or html.
sdevonoes 7mo ago
There’s a burden in ad blocker plugins: you never know when they will get compromised. Im comparison to that, simply ignoring the cookie baner is less effort imho
- autoexec 7mo ago
  Preventing add-ons from auto-updating is helpful. Enshittification happens more often than serious security updates, especially when it comes to add-ons that do something very basic such as hide a banner.
cortesoft 7mo ago
> I'd be willing to bet the data being collected by tracking your browsing history has already been screwing you over in various aspects of your life, online and offline, but you won't be told when it happens or why. Ok, can you give me a plausible example of what that harm could be? This seems in line with the exact thing I said in my comment; every time I ask how it could harm me, I am given vague statements about tracking and data. Charging me more if they think I can afford it is surely a thing to worry about, but there are so many ways to do that without tracking that I already need to take actions to defend against that (comparison shopping, price history tools, etc). I am not saying I don’t think companies can take data they have access to and use it to extract more value from me… I am saying I don’t thing opting out of cookies is going to do much to change that, for better or worse.
- autoexec 7mo ago
  > Ok, can you give me a plausible example of what that harm could be? There are countless ways the data collected about you can be used against you. Companies are using this data for everything from setting prices, to deciding which policies they'll apply to you, what services they'll offer or deny you, even shit as trivial as deciding how long they should leave you on hold when you call them on the phone. It's been used to deny people housing, or employment. It's even resulted in innocent people being arrested and investigated by law enforcement. This guy (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike...) wasn't worried about Google tracking everywhere he went until he had to get his parents to clean out their savings to pay for a lawyer in order to prove his innocence. AI is only going to make it easier for companies to leverage the massive amounts of data they've collected against us. Companies have been trying to get consumers to accept discriminatory pricing practices this data enables for a very long time (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-019-00224-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-019-00224-3) and it looks like they're starting to wear us down. Digital price tags are becoming increasingly common. So are demands that consumers scan QR codes to get prices. Prices don't have to be set so high that they become unaffordable to you, they can just slowly eat away at more and more of your earnings. The system is set up so that you will never know when or how the data being collected about you is used against you, but every company is looking to leverage that data to their advantage every chance they get. I get that it's easy to feel defeated and think "My ISP already sells my browsing history, Google chrome already collects all by browsing history, so who cares if I let 30 other random companies collect it too by accepting their tracking cookies on every website I visit?" but those companies collecting your data care very much and it's not because they have your best interests in mind. They aren't going through all the trouble to track you across every website you visit because it doesn't matter. Taking a few basic steps to help protect yourself is just the smart thing to do, especially when it's something as simple as using an ad blocker or an add-on to auto-reject the countless "Can we track you" requests.

fiddlerwoaroof 7mo ago

> the effort and cost to download an ad-blocker that automatically removes the prompt to accept/deny entirely is practically zero It's only zero if you don't need to interact with sites that break when you're running an adblocker. I run an ad-blocker nearly continuously, but there are all sorts of sites where I have to disable it in order to use the actual functionality of the site (and these are frequently sites I _have_ to interact with).

bethekidyouwant 7mo ago

this is definitely happening and for some reason, no one has any clear evidence on it. Conspiracy theories are gossip for men.

autoexec 7mo ago
We have all kinds of evidence for it (for example, here's an article about the data sold to insurance companies https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driver-tracking-insurance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...) and we've had evidence for a very very long time (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/data-brokers-selling-personal-information-60-minutes/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/data-brokers-selling-personal-i...) The data collected about us online is extensively used against us both online and offline. The multi-billion dollar industry around collecting and selling every scrap of data about you and your personal life didn't spring up because nobody was making money from it.
- bethekidyouwant 7mo ago
  We were talking about browsing history, not credit card, purchases and metrics from your car.
  - autoexec 7mo ago
    At all gets added to your dossier and it all gets sold and resold and used against you. You can't know what is going to prejudice someone against you, or what assumptions they'll make. Your browsing history can be a lot more relieving than your credit card purchases or your driving data. It can give them your medical issues, your sexual preferences, your addictions, your political views, your religion, etc. Just knowing the dates and times you're going to websites can tell them a lot.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

gpvos 7mo ago

> the effort and cost to download an ad-blocker that automatically removes the prompt to accept/deny entirely is practically zero and the amount of clicks you'd save yourself would quickly exceed the clicks it took to install the blocker. For less-often used, e.g., non-English language sites, these often leave a site in an unusable state, e.g., non-scrollable. I often have to go into the developer tools to fix a site manually, sometimes hunting for the element to fix if it's not body or html.

sdevonoes 7mo ago

There’s a burden in ad blocker plugins: you never know when they will get compromised. Im comparison to that, simply ignoring the cookie baner is less effort imho

autoexec 7mo ago
Preventing add-ons from auto-updating is helpful. Enshittification happens more often than serious security updates, especially when it comes to add-ons that do something very basic such as hide a banner.

cortesoft 7mo ago

> I'd be willing to bet the data being collected by tracking your browsing history has already been screwing you over in various aspects of your life, online and offline, but you won't be told when it happens or why. Ok, can you give me a plausible example of what that harm could be? This seems in line with the exact thing I said in my comment; every time I ask how it could harm me, I am given vague statements about tracking and data. Charging me more if they think I can afford it is surely a thing to worry about, but there are so many ways to do that without tracking that I already need to take actions to defend against that (comparison shopping, price history tools, etc). I am not saying I don’t think companies can take data they have access to and use it to extract more value from me… I am saying I don’t thing opting out of cookies is going to do much to change that, for better or worse.

autoexec 7mo ago
> Ok, can you give me a plausible example of what that harm could be? There are countless ways the data collected about you can be used against you. Companies are using this data for everything from setting prices, to deciding which policies they'll apply to you, what services they'll offer or deny you, even shit as trivial as deciding how long they should leave you on hold when you call them on the phone. It's been used to deny people housing, or employment. It's even resulted in innocent people being arrested and investigated by law enforcement. This guy (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike...) wasn't worried about Google tracking everywhere he went until he had to get his parents to clean out their savings to pay for a lawyer in order to prove his innocence. AI is only going to make it easier for companies to leverage the massive amounts of data they've collected against us. Companies have been trying to get consumers to accept discriminatory pricing practices this data enables for a very long time (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-019-00224-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-019-00224-3) and it looks like they're starting to wear us down. Digital price tags are becoming increasingly common. So are demands that consumers scan QR codes to get prices. Prices don't have to be set so high that they become unaffordable to you, they can just slowly eat away at more and more of your earnings. The system is set up so that you will never know when or how the data being collected about you is used against you, but every company is looking to leverage that data to their advantage every chance they get. I get that it's easy to feel defeated and think "My ISP already sells my browsing history, Google chrome already collects all by browsing history, so who cares if I let 30 other random companies collect it too by accepting their tracking cookies on every website I visit?" but those companies collecting your data care very much and it's not because they have your best interests in mind. They aren't going through all the trouble to track you across every website you visit because it doesn't matter. Taking a few basic steps to help protect yourself is just the smart thing to do, especially when it's something as simple as using an ad blocker or an add-on to auto-reject the countless "Can we track you" requests.