So now I have to PAY you to NOT store files on my device that I don't want?

ilikecoffee@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 553 points –

Was trying to read a news story and... What fresh shitfuckery is this? Why do I now have to pay money to a company just for the privilege of not being spied upon and not getting your cookies that I don't want or need? How is this even legal?

RE: "Why are you even reading that shitrag?" -- I clicked on a link someone posted in another sublemmit, didn't realise it was the Sun till after. I do not read the Sun on the regular, chill. My point stands regardless that this is extremely shitty and should probably not be allowed.

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OP, The Sun is one of the trashiest rags on the face of this Earth. Your best option regardless of their ad practices was always to stay well away from them.

Oh I know, I clicked a link here on lemmy and was taken to that site. I never read it otherwise, but now Im definitely not reading it...

you can block websites if you want if you’re on voyager. It’ll filter out posts which link to whatever websites you list.

Radical approach, because I might miss the post with interesting comments, and people often provide alternative links or straight up embed summaries.

I'm on Sync. I might have a look later.

oh man that's an incredible option. i was already super happy with the "share as image" option they have, but it seems like they just keep outdoing themselves

And they're not even the worst in the UK.

I forget which one it was that decried the Brass Eye paedophile special as sick, while on the page directly opposite it was an article telling you how big 15 year old Charlotte Church's tits were getting along with a photo.

Daily Mail?

Brass Eye was incredible for shining a light on media and political hysteria. Their episode on drugs was hilarious and tragic.

They have a reputation in the UK for a reason, I don't even want to start thinking what the us version is like

I'm pretty sure this is illegal under GDPR. They're just seeing how long they can get away with it for, before they have to apologise and get no punishment.

I'm seeing this kind of thing on an ever increasing number of sites in Germany. It's especially galling on sites I already pay a subscription fee for! Isn't that enough? Now I'm supposed to pay another monthly subscription to avoid tracking cookies?

I've already cancelled one news website due to this, letting them know why (they're small enough that I know they read it, since it was part of a conversation). Fat lot of good it'll do, but ....

I wouldn't call what they're asking for a subscription – it's ransom.

Indeed. There must be no downside to clicking no. Consent must be freely given.

Although I'd argue almost nobody complies with the spirit of the law. Popping up a consent form every time you visit unless you accidentally click accept and then never asking you again doesn't feel like consent was truly given.

Well, to be fair, "Why can't websites just remember that I said no to cookies?"

Cookies required for the website to work (like that one) are totally fine and, in fact, they don't even have to ask you about them - if they're not used for tracking. So no, asking each time is definitely avoidable.

This appears to be a US specific website, where they could get away with the geoblocking technique to bypass gdpr

It's The Sun. A British newspaper.

It for sure is The Sun, but if you look closely at the logo, you will see it actually says "The U.S. Sun". So it's an American offshoot of the British newspaper and the domain OP was accessing is likely hosted in the U.S.

Sadly it is not, as you need to pay to access content by money or pay by viewing ads.

Facebook uses the same model.

If you don't want the "premium content" by paying with way 1 or way 2, you can't use the site.

This will end up being a final nail in the coffin for these sites, I wish.

The best part of this is you would need to give them your personal information to pay them, and you'd need to accept the necessary cookies for them to know you've paid when you access the website. 🤣🤣🤣

you'd need to accept the necessary cookies for them to know you've paid when you access the website

Cookies that are required for and only used for operational purposes (like knowing if the user is logged in) don't require consent.

Yeah fair enough, I was just highlighting the irony.

Not any factor lotion will protect your mental health from "the Sun" o_O

I am really fucking sick and tired of every goddamn company thinking they're entitled to colonize my property and hack it to serve them instead of me.

My computer is my property, you fascist fucks, not yours, and my actual property rights trump your Imaginary "Property" "rights" (i.e. temporary government-granted privileges) every single time and in every single circumstance!

I broadly agree with your sentiment, in particular computing equipment that I purchase and ongoing trends in tech (like smart TVs) that are abusive to consumers.

However, I find this argument not terribly persuasive in this particular case. The content of a website isn't an extension of your property. It is not even public property. Visiting a site is voluntary. You clearly didn't pay for accessing the site, nor was it subsidized through a social program. So exactly how should content (regardless of how trashy it is) be funded? Statements like "rights" (i.e. temporary government-granted privileges) suggest you are espousing libertarian views, but at the same time, you are not expressing willingness to pay for a service privately?

I dunno, it just comes across as demanding a handout. Meanwhile, not visiting websites that don't meet your vision for how funding content should be done seems like a perfectly simple and reasonable approach to have for this problem.

The content of a website isn't an extension of your property.

No, but it is my property which is to be used to store files that this company has put there, just so they can track me across the web to sell me more crappy shit I do not need.

So exactly how should content (regardless of how trashy it is) be funded?

With ads, but either be good and use ads that arent spyware, or let me choose to opt out of the tracky ones and use general ads instead.

Meanwhile, not visiting websites that don't meet your vision for how funding content should be done seems like a perfectly simple and reasonable approach to have for this problem.

Yup, hence why I noped outta there as soon as I saw that popup cause fuuuck that...

Oh no. It's not like that. They don't even ask you about cookies any more.

This is a payment so they don't sell all your cookie data to their 1354 trusted data partners/advertising vultures.

I find it amusing that they "use cookies to give you the best possible experience", but then ask you to pay to not have them.

The red flag there in the screenshot shows you the name of the publication you should avoid using or visiting.

A naive question of mine, but isn't using a browser/extensions that silently/transparently blocks cookies (such as Brave, but not just it) enough to fearlessly click "Accept All Cookies", since ultimately they would be pointless for the purpose of tracking (due to the browser's own cookie blocking capabilities)?

Yeah it would. But as I said elsewhere, this is probably enough to be 'too much effort' for the majority of users, and definitely a lot more effort than it should be. I already know several people who habitually click accept all on cookie banners, and I know I have caught myself doing that a couple times too...

It asks to play DRM content but plays videos anyway.

Their devs must be so sick of their business dept.

When I was working on data protection issues, I asked a specialist lawyer more than two years ago how something like this could be reconciled with the GDPR. He couldn't answer the question, but said that with the best will in the world he couldn't imagine that this would be OK under data protection law. Nevertheless, this approach is now common practice for the vast majority of news sites in Europe and also in the EU, which has strict regulations regarding tracking, at least in theory. I still don't know the legal details, but at least I know that there are no serious penalties whatsoever if there is no distortion of competition involved - and since none of the news companies would sue another in this matter, this has become common practice even in the EU.

How is this even legal?

Because Brits voted Brrrrexit?

We still have the UK implementation of GDPR. That didn’t go away when we left the EU.

We won’t have any changes to it that might have happened since brexit but we didn’t remove the law either.

Yeah I learned of this before, you are 100% correct. The EU GDPR is in place for any UK company doing business in the EU and the UK GDPR visa versa, but they differ on topics as immigration, national security and such as you might know anyhow. The rest is very similar.

"To change all cookie settings click_here" <-- this is the bit you want. It's free to reject all the cookies yourself.

I don't think I've ever had 63 tabs open on my browser. Well done.

Really? I regularly have well over 100, constant ♾️ Don't get me wrong, I wish I didn't.

Mad lad, hats off to you. If I have 6 or more open I start to feel uncomfortable.

I had 1600 open in Firefox on my computer (and maybe 200 on my phone) until I decided enough is enough and closed all of them. These days I close every tab at the end of the day.

I have so many open my browser doesn't give me a count anymore and just shows me a surprised face.

This is a legitimate option per EU guidelines btw. They just want you to accept cookies.

I'm pretty sure the EU rejected this. Facebook tried the exact same thing except the paid version has no ads at all (so either you get tracked, or you pay for an ad-free untracked experience) and the EU's initial findings were that it wasn't compliant because every user should have the freedom to opt out of tracking without having to pay. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/european-union-says-meta-breaking-digital-rules-with-paid-ad-free-option-for-facebook-and-instagram

Having said that, Brexit happened so I don't know if the UK still follows the same laws.

EU Withdrawal Act effectively retained all applicable EU law as UK law so anything would have to be specifically rescinded after that.

I don't think anything's changed wrt gdpr

Jokes on you, to remember your choice for no coockies they have to use a cookie.

Ublock origins -> select element -> remove

Or auto accept/refuse cookies with extension, then auto delete cookies for all but approved sites when closing browser.

I mean, I'm not opposed to all cookies. Ones that I actually need like that one are fine. Just dont track me kthxbye...

I still don't care about Cookies + Cooking Auto-Delete is what I do. Do whatever the fuck is needed to get rid of the cookie banner and then delete all cookies when closing the tab.

I don't even whitelist websites, I just don't need cookies

Is a password manager, maybe with automatic login or at least autofill, part of your stack?

Yes, I use KeepassXC as a password manager. It takes me some clicks, but I am fine with that.

How is that not extortion?

Because you aren't compelled to use their site.

It's the Sun. No one should use their site. They're doing you a favour by showing you they're assholes the second you land on their site.

True, but shouldn't I be able to use it if I want to without having to choose between paying money or being spied on?

The only other option I can see would be ads -- but I'm betting you'd just use an ad-blocker.

Well, the fact that when there are ads, there's always like 20 of them is another issue... But yeah, I don't even care about ads but as I see it I should have a right to privacy without having to pay for it.

You don't have to pay for privacy. You still have that right.

What you don't have is the right to use that particular website without either paying for it, or allowing cookies.

You aren't a victim of anything here.

You are part of the problem here

How so?

Imagine, if you will, a world where things weren't shitty for the sake of being shitty.

Where perhaps, good things could just be good.

Wow, it sounds awesome!

Anyways:

You are part of the problem here

What, specifically, is "the problem here", and how am I part of it?

private session by default and using start page as your search engine with Anonymous View to search the pages saves the cookies but they are worthless one you leave the site

Okay, but that's still a lot of effort, and loads more effort than 90% of users would be willing to go through. All so these fucks can (try to) sell my data to 19000 different 'vendors' and their 'legitimate interests'. I swear this needs to be legally regulated somehow before we end up having to pay these people to not monitor our webcams while we read their shitty tabloids.

BTW I do use searXNG and Startpage

If you're on Firefox, you can also have certain sites automatically open in containers. "Sure, put cookies on my machine if you want. You can see me only browsing your website ever."

That's the solution I've landed on for using Youtube, since Invidious and Piped always cack the bed for me. I've deleted my old Google account and started a new one with a fake email address, too.

Good strategy for dealing with them. Reminds me that on the Hacker News article about the Internet Archive hack, a couple of commenters reported on whether they found their email addresses in the leak. They called them their "unique-to-archive.org email addresses."

The more we compartmentalize, the better off we are, I think.

Containers are great.

What do you think - cookie autodelete sound a little more private? “If you can’t fingerprint my browser, this might as well be my first visit to this website“

Cookie autodelete would be great, though then you potentially have to deal with the cookie popup every time you visit. Not a terrible thing, but worth noting.

ETA: Yeah, you can zap it with uBO, but then you might have to do it again if it comes back.

the Sun would personally sell your organs if it could

It looks like the big buttons are "accept all" or "pay for no ads", but the cookiescan still be tuned with the link under the "accept all"?

  • Just set up your browser to delete cookies on exit. If you want, just have it delete them from specifically that site. The entire debate over whether-or-not a site sets a cookie seems to me to be pretty pointless. If a site can set cookies, then some bad actor will. The dialogs that sites put up talking about it are pointless. No solution other than having your browser not retain them regardless of what a site wants to do is going to be a reliable solution. Not policies, not laws.

    I have my browser delete all cookies on exit. I have a very short whitelist of sites that I permit to keep cookies and track me. Every one of those is one that I need to log in to use anyway -- so I could be tracked with or without a cookie -- and the only thing the cookie does is buys me not needing to log in every time, doesn't have privacy implications.

  • Paying doesn't buy you anything unless they offer a no-log, no-data-mining policy. If you log in to use the site, then they can track you anyway via the credentials you use.

  • They're not imposing it on you. They're offering you a service that costs them money. They give you news, you give them money or data. If you don't want to do that deal, there's a whole Internet out there. Don't go to that particular site. There are lots of websites out there, many of which offer the same deal. Getting upset that somewhere on the Internet, someone is offering a deal that you don't want seems pointless.

    If you want to have some kind of tax-funded news site, go advocate for that. Yelling at them isn't going to get you there.

    If you want to just view news done by volunteers, something like WikiNews, then go visit those sites instead. Maybe contribute work as well. I don't think that volunteer news is going to realistically compete with commercial news, but hey, there was also a point when people thought the same thing about volunteer-run encyclopedias, so maybe it'll get there.

I'll also add that I'm going to be generous to the EU and assume that the goal of their "cookie warning" law, which is why many European websites show these, was to raise awareness of cookies and privacy implications by having warnings plastered all over, so that it starts people thinking about privacy. Because if the goal was actually to let people avoid cookies, then it is costly, disruptive and wildly ineffectual compared to just setting a setting in the browser, makes actually having the browser delete cookies more-annoying, and duplicates a browser-side standard, P3P, that already accomplished something similar, and was just all around a really bad law.

Yeah, I guess that's fair enough. Guess you can never fully trust these website owners anyway. That first part about clearing cookies on exit is definitely a good idea. But still, what has the internet come to..

bypass paywalls clean?

Is this a question, a suggestion, or some kind of stroke? Do you need medical attention?

its an extension that can be added to FF/chrome. it "cleans" up the webpage so you don't get the anti-ad-blocker/cookie crap on websites.

It's legal because the Sun is a private company and they have the right to charge you to not datamine you. It's not a public service and they're not the only source of news out there, so you have a choice: if you don't like it, get your news elsewhere.

What's the problem exactly?

I'm no fan of ads, but you're right. Expecting everything for free with no ads is just greedy.

I don’t mind ads, but I don’t expect to be tracked around the internet. It’s like every website you visit being able to view your browser history. That’s private information.

Technically, whatever the Sun prints is private information available for purchase. You can either pay cash or trade their information for yours.

I still get frustrated by it, so I understand where you're coming from. My local paper is ONLY viewable with a subscription. There are ways around it, like turning off JavaScript, but if we don't count cheating the system, you gotta pay. They have to make money to pay their employees somehow, at least the Sun gives you an alternate option.

Give me all the ads you want but at least give me the option whether they're personalised or not... Why is this now a paid choice? The companies get paid by the advertisers either way, right? I'm not expecting it for free but I don't like thousands of unknown companies tracking me thank you very much.

They get paid more by the advertisers for delivering personalized ads.

Of course they do :/... Surely though, even with the previous free choice of general or personalised ads, I bet a decent few people still habitually clicked 'accept all', so I can't imagine this making that much of a difference financially... And this way they'll probably drive away some more privacy-savvy readers as well. Oh well, guess they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't pay off for them.

Expecting everything for free with no ads is just greedy.

In this case you’re not paying to not have ads. You’ll still get ads; they just won’t be personalized.

Personalized ads are more valuable to advertisers, so it still makes sense for them to charge a bit for it, but it’s not something I’ve seen before.

I’m guessing they charge a decent amount more than the difference, though - and probably even more than they make from personalized ads per person. On that note, I really wish ad free subscriptions were closer to the revenue providers get from serving ads - if they were, I’d be more willing to pay for them than just running an adblocker all the time. YouTube Premium, for example, costs 14 USD monthly, but annual ad revenue per non premium user was 1.21 USD.

Bild is doing this shit too.

Yeah... That's what I fear is that once one has started doing it, others will follow.

In Europe? I would think there would be some European counsel to protest that...

And, though I don't know about this one in particular, just because you pay not to have personalized ads, doesn't mean you're paying not to have your data tracked and sold by this company or to not have tracking cookies added to your browser by them that other sites can use to target ads to you.

It's just that they won't use the information they collect or buy or get from partners' tracking cookies or advertising IDs already on your system to target the ads you see while on their site and logged in.

Visiting the Murdoch-owned Sun was your first mistake. Everything they do to you after that is your own fault.,

Might as well hand your credit card to the MyPillow Guy next and complain about how much money just got charged to your account from the nearest strip club.

Well, you are subscribing to the Sun.

Its your own shitshow.

No one fucking cares.

Where's the option where they send me their home address so i can mail them a baggie of my chili lunch liquishit?

I mean, do you expect news to be free?

Either pay for it by selling your data or with money, or don't use their website.