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.
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.
I wouldn’t bother switching for a fewture like that. Just wanted to share incase you were on voyager.
Ooh you can share settings like this? Whoa…
One of the best Sync features. Long press on any setting to copy a link to your clipboard.
Oooh, good tip. Didn’t know about that feature.
I use voyager and I love you for sharing this. fuck the s*n.
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.
Unfortunately, at least in Germany it’s legal. There was a special ruling recently.
(Link in German)
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.
I’m in the UK, the British version does this as well.
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…
Yeah exactly!
No you don’t.
The site is trash so you leave.
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.
you get ads whether pay or not. keep your money
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.
Solution: don’t read that shitrag. It was always a waste of paper, now it is a waste of bandwidth as well.
Not the f’n point
But a fair point nonetheless.
Only thing the papers were good for was paper mache
deleted by creator
Not the f’n point my dude
This is happening because the site is shitty so don’t use the shitty site. Sounds pretty f’n on-point to me.
I agree with the sentiment about the shittyness of the site.
But this was about a new bullshit cookie bullshit.
If you can understand the persons problem here then maybe you need to do some work about that
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.
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…
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
