Are we really blocking ads or are we really blocking malware? Calling our privacy tools adblockers is a misnomer don't you think for any site can simple put ad in a div and not get it blocked.
First they came with the blink tag. Then they added animated GIFs everywhere.
They came with the pop-up. Then they put the pop-up under the main window.
Ad-blockers' first usage was to make the Web readable. Then years later privacy concerns took over.
At this point, ads are just one of many problems. Newsletter popups, cookie consent (10x worse since GDPR), auto-playing video, in-browser crypto mining..?
At this point, basic self-respect demands I simply disable JavaScript. It's incredible how much faster the web is without it, and how much smoother, and how much less cluttered.
> how much faster the web is without it, and how much smoother, and how much less cluttered
I know HN has some JS, but I realized that I usually click on comments link for HN stuff since I know it's going to load super fast and not have a ton of useless crap on the page. If the comments are interesting I might read it, but most of the time there's more information in comments than the article itself. Or people quote the interesting parts. Maybe this is lazy or just the parent-of-two way to ingest tech info over morning cereal
>"I simply disable JavaScript. It's incredible how much faster the web is without it, and how much smoother, and how much less cluttered."
I'm curious is there any practical fallout turning JS off completely? Do you just switch it back on for things like e-commerce, web UI's etc? I always find the context switching to the settings menu a bit of a pain. Do you have some recommendations for things that make JS-free web browsing practical or seamless? Cheers.
I've attempted to keep whitelists working, but now I just use a separate chrome profile with javascript+cookies disabled that is for random blogs/news sites/etc. If you have 2+ chrome profiles open, there is a menu item for "Open link as > No Javascript" that does wonders.
Maybe the consent workflow should be abstracted and standardized, and put into web browsers. Rather than everyone rolling their own workflow (most which are horrible), the browsers could offer a unified way to do this, and a central place to revoke consent.
Though it would probably take legislation to make orgs use it. The current workflows have a lot of dark patterns, despite GDPR.
Content owners don't want a standard way because they depend on user apathy, confusion and dark patterns to "trick" users into allowing websites to monetise their consumers data.
I say "consumers" rather than "customers" because at this point it feels more like the people buying data are the customers, rather than the actual daily website visitors.
> Then when a user visits a site, P3P will compare what personal information the user is willing to release, and what information the server wants to get – if the two do not match, P3P will inform the user and ask if he/she is willing to proceed to the site, and risk giving up more personal information.[4] As an example, a user may store in the browser preferences that information about their browsing habits should not be collected. If the policy of a Website states that a cookie is used for this purpose, the browser automatically rejects the cookie.
This sounds ideal, or at bare minimum, vastly superior to preferences boxes which take 10+ seconds or more of JavaScript to load, and impede access to content, (and sometimes don't load properly and never go away).
It is, and unfortunately it's also incredible how much of it simply doesn't work, or fails in obscure ways, without JavaScript. I use NoScript on my personal laptop, and I often have to add sites to the temporary-allow list several times a day.
(Please don't say "just don't use those sites, then." I'll use something else if there's an alternative, but there often isn't, and I'm not willing to cut myself off from a big chunk of the web on principle alone.)
Which is okay because most sites only require javascript served from 10-30% of the domains listed to actually function. The other 70-90% of domains serving the JS running on your browser are for tracking and monetization.
I don't mind JS, but when you go to a Kinja website, 20+ domains are serving up JS that runs in your browser. That's insane; but also very typical.
Traveling to different countries makes cookie consent an amazingly broken thing. Every website needs an "ok" button clicked every time you arrive in a new place.
I travel quite frequently between the EU and the US and occasionally elsewhere - I've never seen a new OK button when I arrive in a new location. Can you provide an example of this?
> “cookie consent” pop-ups are stupid and pointless. Pop-ups do not improve privacy, and they make the web worse.
GDPR is not about cookies or consent popups. Even the previous directive from 2011, known as the "cookie law", wasn't about cookies or consent popups.
Both laws are about tracking (GDPR also covers personal data in a broader sense).
Developers are completely free to use cookies, or any other technology, in order to implement their sites. GDPR and the "cookie law" don't care about that.
What they do care about is the purpose of what's been implemented. If it's something that the user wanted, by virtue of visiting the site, e.g. the ecommerce features of an online shop, then that's fine. Use cookies for your shopping carts, use local storage for your word processor's undo, use Flash supercookies for your game's high scores, whatever.
If the functionality is not something that the user wanted, i.e. they could achieve what they want (buying stuff, editing documents, playing a game) without that functionality, then that functionality is forbidden to use personal data (like tracking the user's activity) unless explicit opt-in consent is given. Again, it doesn't matter how that functionality is implemented: 1x1 images, iframes, local storage, browser fingerprinting, or cookies.
If you find cookie consent popups annoying, don't blame GDPR, the EU, etc. Blame the site, since either:
- It doesn't need to ask, since its functionality is wanted by the user.
- The developers wanted to do shady stuff so much, that they were willing to ruin their site's UX.
That doesn’t seem to be how it’s been interpreted by much of the web, unfortunately.
Even respectable sites that I’m pretty sure aren’t doing “shady stuff” with data, like the BBC, make us suffer through multiple “consent” pop-ups. One particular BBC site I use requires clicking though 3 pop-ups before you can use the damn thing. It’s ridiculous.
If it was really meant the way you interpret it, then the law should have been more clearly written. As it stands, it seems everyone is so paranoid about it that they implement popups by default.
> That doesn’t seem to be how it’s been interpreted by much of the web, unfortunately.
Yes, I find this really frustrating too :(
> As it stands, it seems everyone is so paranoid about it that they implement popups by default.
I implemented compliance with the first "cookie law" at two different companies. At the first, all we changed was making the login screen's "remember me" tick box off by default. At the second, our sites were full of trackers, which the marketing department didn't want to remove, so I had to add popups.
I think companies are so used to tracking as much as possible, that they don't see any value in avoiding it; hence they're willing to absorb the cost of poorer UX (especially since they're not alone).
I don't know if this situation will change. It's certainly possible, e.g. if we treat data as a liability rather than an asset (which I've seen mentioned here a few times, in the wake of data breaches). I have no idea how it will play out, but at least things like GDPR are making spying more painful and costly, even if only a little bit.
Why? If I'm a site owner that wants to track where you come from and where you're going, even within my own site, then I have the right to ask you to gtfo if you don't like it.
Those are not evidence of a bankrupted economy. Yes, the pound has tanked, and yet strangely the economy is not bankrupt. You're entitled to believe a thing may come to pass, but don't be under the illusion it either has (it objectively has not) or definitely will (it probably won't)
Why is this even necessary in most cases? We developed sites for years without any of these frameworks and the the latest CSS standards will hopefully make it possible again while staying sane.
The problem is, the people who shape the web, of which some are on HN, will soon notice that people are just switching off JS to evade their tricks, and will make sure websites are unusable without it. Now the opposite is true, but some already implemented loading loading the text via JS, so you can't just read an article without turning on JS first.
Regardless of how it began, using ad-blocking software today is a security measure to help keep your computer secure from malware. For me that's the primary purpose, the privacy concerns are important to but second to security.
"Scams" is too strong, but I don't think "undesirable" would be. Think about it: ads are nearly always unwanted. You can tell because advertisers have to pay to put their content in front of users. If consumers wanted to see ads, media would put in ads paid or not to better compete for viewers. Instead, "premium" sources are often ad-free (see Spotify, HBO, better movie theaters, etc).
I think the reason for this is that ads don't exist to inform consumers about things they might want to purchase. Instead, advertisers have learned to manipulate viewers to create desire for their products. The effectiveness of ads is almost entirely non-rational. Watching ads is effectively watching corporate propaganda, in many different degrees of harmfulness.
I'm admittedly an idealist. But something seems amiss to me when the supposed only way to pay for journalism (which exists to inform the public) is to embed advertisements (which exist to misinform the public).
> Think about it: ads are nearly always unwanted. You can tell because advertisers have to pay to put their content in front of users.
This isn't true. Advertisers pay to access a target audience, because publishers control that access and their business model depends on their ability to monetize it. In general adverts are not unwanted. In fact, some consumers even request companies to send them adverts intentionally, and even subscribe to marketing publications.
Heck, some consumers even pay to subscribe to catalogues.
In general, web adverts are disliked because they are very intrusive and degrade the performance of a website, and in some cases expose content that is socially frowned upon.
Has there ever been a major professional news service, in any medium, that wasn't at least partially ad-supported? Maintaining a stable of good reporters is expensive, consumers aren't willing to pay much (if anything) for news, and the only alternative is some kind of patronage. At least with ads it's theoretically possible to maintain editorial independence.
Try this: all is paid for by advertisers, it has always been. Deduce which of your "exist to" beliefs is mistaken - perhaps due to advertising about it ...
> all is paid for by advertisers, it has always been.
No. There have always been websites by people who just want to share with the world, and paid services, and useful government programs, and nonprofits (go on, find an ad on https://www.gnu.org/). Your belief is mistaken.
