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A Boring Dystopia @lemmy.world

gruhuken @slrpnk.net

2d ago

The Guardian now blocks privacy settings behind a paywall. And you still see adverts if you pay.

28 comments

I choose option 3, violence. PopUpOFF, AdNauseam, CanvasBlocker, and Bypass Paywalls Clean. Fuck you, fuck your ads, and fuck your tracking. Please eat shit and die. 🙃

The normal paid one (~£15 a month or £150 a year) is still fully ad-free, and can be (officially) shared with "a few friends and family". This looks like a new "pay less but have adverts" subscription option, which is obviously a bit shitty and questionable.
It's a bit pricey, but it's one of the few British news sources without a right wing bias, and we need it to still exist.
It doesn't excuse the privacy paywall though.
- They’re still rife with TERFs, they sacked Carole Cadwalladr, and now they’re pivoting to AI, so I wouldn’t give them a penny.
  
  All very fair points. The recent Observer sell-out raised a few alarms for me, though I'm still currently a subscriber, though looking at what my other options are.
- I'm American and I pay for an annual Guardian membership.

There's no ads when you use uBlock Origin.
- This pop-up finally caused me to learn how the element zapper feature works
  
  There's a filter list for cookie popups.
- No tracking cookies, either lol

Presses back button
- Exactly what I did. I'm more petty than interested in the Spanish neanderthal bones

Pretty sure this is illegal but I guess whatever fine they get is just the cost of business
- i get they need to make money but i don't think threatening to sell people's data is going to foster goodwill
  
  Get someone in CA or CO to sue. Laws are very straight forward there
- Funnily enough, the UK has just had a report commissioned about it (and I'm focussing on the UK here since the Guardian is based there and OP alson said they were accessing the UK site). It notes that "In principle, data protection law does not prohibit business models that involve consent or pay." Direct pdf link: https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/impact-assessments/4032418/consent-or-pay-impact-assessment.pdf
  
  Gotta love how the legal system here outright ignores the laws that they're ruling on, GDPR states that the accept and reject buttons need to be equally accessable.

Only the rich can afford privacy

tangential but I've given up on managing cookie preferences on most sites
I installed cookie autodelete and allow sites I care about, then let the rest get purged when I close their tab
it's probably not perfect -- they could still build a profile based on IP address, browser fingerprint, etc. -- but I figure it at least makes it harder for a lot of em
plus I'm not on Facebook or Google or the other big advertising platforms so that helps
- Probably the most reasonable strategy tbh. And fencing. And using multiple browsers for different purposes.

archive.is

How did it come to be expected that information should be free?
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free
  
  Had a long day and I don't understand how that applies to my comment. Please elaborate.

28 comments