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Blaming the website for your own agent doing something you don't want it to is learned helplessness. Every marketing cookie generates revenue for the website i

Blaming the website for your own agent doing something you don't want it to is learned helplessness. Every marketing cookie generates revenue for the website in some way or another. The website wants revenue, so it asks the user agent to maintain those cookies. The user agent agrees. Then the operator of the user agent gets upset that the website asked their agent to store the cookies? Get upset that your agent agreed, not that a request was made. Or better yet, don't get upset at all and just solve the darned problem yourself. Is this Hacker News or Complier News?

jstimpfle 4y ago
Cookies as a mechanism are useful and required for a solid modern web experience. However, tracking cookies are arguably the opposite of that. A typical modern website with marketing comes with, I don't know, 100s of cookies. Are you really arguing that the user should be required to vet each individual cookie whenever following a link with unvetted cookies? Or how do you solve this problem? Personally, the most I can be arsed to do is install some Adblock Plugin. I did that only a few months ago and I'm not even sure that it improved my experience by a lot.
- jimmaswell 4y ago
  There is no problem to solve, the cookies can't hurt you and the website needs to stay afloat.
  - jstimpfle 4y ago
    To state the obvious, some people don't love the extensive profiles that are created of them.
    - eternityforest 4y ago
      Those people should be able to avoid the profiling, but any solution should be aimed at protecting those people, without impacting the 95% who don't care enough to give up convenience or pay for private services too much.
      - jstimpfle 4y ago
        Maybe my view is warped (I'm from Germany) but 95% seems a tad high...
        eternityforest 4y ago
        It might be. I actually have no idea how to assess the real number. The Cisco survey(https://iapp.org/news/a/new-cisco-study-emphasizes-consumer-mistrust-in-ai/ https://iapp.org/news/a/new-cisco-study-emphasizes-consumer-...) says 79% are willing to invest time or money to protect their privacy, but a lot less seem to actually do anything about it. Almost everyone I know is on Facebook and Gmail, most seem to use Chrome, etc. It seems to vary a lot with subculture. Programmers always seem to be more willing to sacrifice convenience, and people who watch porn seem to be more interested in privacy than most. I suspect there's a pretty large segment that only cares in theory, at most, and only then just on principle because of the other people who have more interesting data. Maybe not 95% but probably 90% of certain subsets at least.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  > and required for a solid modern web experience Absence of cookies don't make things unstable (non-solid?), and fuck knows what 'modern' is supposed to mean, or why it's good. > Or how do you solve this problem? Block all cookies except for rare moments like posting on HN, which then immediately get deleted. And no JS, which means CPU is trivial (so no burn-a-core-for-every-open-tab which is so common with page-sized pointless animations). Many problems can be solved if you want them to be.
  - jstimpfle 4y ago
    But you realize you're the oddball that considers the problem solved like that? I'm not sure that being a "hacker" means to straight out refuse things. You're missing out on a lot of fun and inspiring information (and yes, many many hours wasted to irrelevant content).
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      You make your choices and I make mine. Should a person make the informed choice to immerse themselves in the web as-is with all its problems & risks, ok, but most people just pick the easy path then bitch after. I'm not one of them, and straight out refusal is in fact a viable option for me. If I do need anything more, there's VMs. BTW what 'fun and inspiring information' do you refer to? Shadertoy is a loss I grant, but what else?
      - jstimpfle 4y ago
        If you miss Shadertoy it won't be hard to imagine other similar things, of which there are plenty. Anything that requires interactivity beyond the one provided by HTML & CSS will obviously require Javascript. Any personalized experience (not only suggestions which yes are evil, but also personal storage) will obviously require cookies to function. Deleting Cookies on exit (and/or at regular intervals) will probably not help much in terms of avoiding tracking, especially if you log back in using your reinitialized cookies.
        4y ago
zasdffaa 4y ago
Word. Tired of these "I don't want this but I won't spend any time or money on fixing it so someone else should do it" posts. Hint: it's under Tools|Preferences in firefox/palemoon
- Rygian 4y ago
  No, it's not under "Tools|Preferences." There is no setting anywhere, in any web browser, to "retain cookies that are technically necessary and reject marketing cookies" which is the desirable behaviour.
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    Define marketing cookie for me - do you mean 3rd party? (Some possible control via Tools|Preferences|Exceptions... button allows you to customise by website, although I've never used it. Or just disallow all, which is what I do) --- Edit: answer the question please, there may be an easy solution to what you want. Edit2: No reply because god forbid there's an actual way you could take control, that would simply ruin everything (in a parallel universe, man complains the streets are rife with face stabbing but when presented with proof they're not, stabs self in face to prove otherwise). Biggest problem with learned helplessness is that they like it that way. Gives them something to be angrily resentful about.
    - rini17 4y ago
      Easy, enable only cookies for the things you want (maintain your session with 1st website, plus core functionality like payments). Everything else are marketing cookies. I used umatrix for years but gave up. The guessing what to enable to get a site to work got tiresome, and IIRC there was also problem with browser support.
    - Rygian 4y ago
      Définition of cookies I don't consent to: any cookie that is not mandatory for the site to technically work.
matthewmacleod 4y ago
Blaming others for making legitimate complaints about pervasive bad practices is learned assholishness. We should all complain loudly and far more than we do about the creeping tendency of many companies to do so many obviously shitty things, instead of merely shrugging our shoulders.
Rygian 4y ago
Blaming the user-agent for accepting an abusive amount of cookies set by the website is outright bad faith. The only entity with any real power to decide which cookies the website uses is the website itself. Asking the user or the user agent to comb through cookies and decide, one by one, which ones seem marketing-related and which ones are technically required, and then block, is way too much to ask from a regular internet user. I have tried, but fail to see good faith in your reply.
- grumbel 4y ago
  The browser is the one who stores and sends cookies. It would be trivial to make that action explicit and only at the users request. That wouldn't even be a new feature, that used to be how things worked 20 years ago. Lynx is however the only browser left that I know that still asks you before storing cookies. You don't even have to shift through cookies for this to work, you can just reject all by default until the user explicitly request them to be stored (or use a whitelist or wait until the users tried to login that would necessitate a cookie, etc.) Lots of possibilities. > is way too much to ask from a regular internet user. That's kind of the point. By making it all transparent and seamless browser makers played into the hand of marketing companies. If cookies had a cost and would degrade the user experience, they might be thinking twice before putting hundreds of them on a site. Marketing companies are just making use of the tools they are given. And browser manufacturers gave them a lot of tools, while taking control away from the user.
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    There are many different yet legitimate uses for cookies. It's impractical to expect the user to sift through to find the ones that are necessary and the ones that aren't. Even if the browser requests them beforehand, how is the user supposed to know if the request is for a marketing cookie or functional cookie. > That's kind of the point. By making it all transparent and seamless browser makers played into the hand of marketing companies. If cookies had a cost and would degrade the user experience, they might be thinking twice before putting hundreds of them on a site. Cookies do have a cost, namely the bad PR from people complaining about the unnecessary tracking cookies. If you think that's not enough, then you are free to reject cookies as well to degrade your own experience. But they aren't mutually exclusive. Complaints and bad PR can also drive users away from the site and enact change.

jstimpfle 4y ago

Cookies as a mechanism are useful and required for a solid modern web experience. However, tracking cookies are arguably the opposite of that. A typical modern website with marketing comes with, I don't know, 100s of cookies. Are you really arguing that the user should be required to vet each individual cookie whenever following a link with unvetted cookies? Or how do you solve this problem? Personally, the most I can be arsed to do is install some Adblock Plugin. I did that only a few months ago and I'm not even sure that it improved my experience by a lot.

jimmaswell 4y ago
There is no problem to solve, the cookies can't hurt you and the website needs to stay afloat.
- jstimpfle 4y ago
  To state the obvious, some people don't love the extensive profiles that are created of them.
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    Those people should be able to avoid the profiling, but any solution should be aimed at protecting those people, without impacting the 95% who don't care enough to give up convenience or pay for private services too much.
    - jstimpfle 4y ago
      Maybe my view is warped (I'm from Germany) but 95% seems a tad high...
      - eternityforest 4y ago
        It might be. I actually have no idea how to assess the real number. The Cisco survey(https://iapp.org/news/a/new-cisco-study-emphasizes-consumer-mistrust-in-ai/ https://iapp.org/news/a/new-cisco-study-emphasizes-consumer-...) says 79% are willing to invest time or money to protect their privacy, but a lot less seem to actually do anything about it. Almost everyone I know is on Facebook and Gmail, most seem to use Chrome, etc. It seems to vary a lot with subculture. Programmers always seem to be more willing to sacrifice convenience, and people who watch porn seem to be more interested in privacy than most. I suspect there's a pretty large segment that only cares in theory, at most, and only then just on principle because of the other people who have more interesting data. Maybe not 95% but probably 90% of certain subsets at least.
zasdffaa 4y ago
> and required for a solid modern web experience Absence of cookies don't make things unstable (non-solid?), and fuck knows what 'modern' is supposed to mean, or why it's good. > Or how do you solve this problem? Block all cookies except for rare moments like posting on HN, which then immediately get deleted. And no JS, which means CPU is trivial (so no burn-a-core-for-every-open-tab which is so common with page-sized pointless animations). Many problems can be solved if you want them to be.
- jstimpfle 4y ago
  But you realize you're the oddball that considers the problem solved like that? I'm not sure that being a "hacker" means to straight out refuse things. You're missing out on a lot of fun and inspiring information (and yes, many many hours wasted to irrelevant content).
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    You make your choices and I make mine. Should a person make the informed choice to immerse themselves in the web as-is with all its problems & risks, ok, but most people just pick the easy path then bitch after. I'm not one of them, and straight out refusal is in fact a viable option for me. If I do need anything more, there's VMs. BTW what 'fun and inspiring information' do you refer to? Shadertoy is a loss I grant, but what else?
    - jstimpfle 4y ago
      If you miss Shadertoy it won't be hard to imagine other similar things, of which there are plenty. Anything that requires interactivity beyond the one provided by HTML & CSS will obviously require Javascript. Any personalized experience (not only suggestions which yes are evil, but also personal storage) will obviously require cookies to function. Deleting Cookies on exit (and/or at regular intervals) will probably not help much in terms of avoiding tracking, especially if you log back in using your reinitialized cookies.
      - 4y ago

zasdffaa 4y ago

Word. Tired of these "I don't want this but I won't spend any time or money on fixing it so someone else should do it" posts. Hint: it's under Tools|Preferences in firefox/palemoon

Rygian 4y ago
No, it's not under "Tools|Preferences." There is no setting anywhere, in any web browser, to "retain cookies that are technically necessary and reject marketing cookies" which is the desirable behaviour.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  Define marketing cookie for me - do you mean 3rd party? (Some possible control via Tools|Preferences|Exceptions... button allows you to customise by website, although I've never used it. Or just disallow all, which is what I do) --- Edit: answer the question please, there may be an easy solution to what you want. Edit2: No reply because god forbid there's an actual way you could take control, that would simply ruin everything (in a parallel universe, man complains the streets are rife with face stabbing but when presented with proof they're not, stabs self in face to prove otherwise). Biggest problem with learned helplessness is that they like it that way. Gives them something to be angrily resentful about.
  - rini17 4y ago
    Easy, enable only cookies for the things you want (maintain your session with 1st website, plus core functionality like payments). Everything else are marketing cookies. I used umatrix for years but gave up. The guessing what to enable to get a site to work got tiresome, and IIRC there was also problem with browser support.
  - Rygian 4y ago
    Définition of cookies I don't consent to: any cookie that is not mandatory for the site to technically work.

matthewmacleod 4y ago

Blaming others for making legitimate complaints about pervasive bad practices is learned assholishness. We should all complain loudly and far more than we do about the creeping tendency of many companies to do so many obviously shitty things, instead of merely shrugging our shoulders.

Rygian 4y ago

Blaming the user-agent for accepting an abusive amount of cookies set by the website is outright bad faith. The only entity with any real power to decide which cookies the website uses is the website itself. Asking the user or the user agent to comb through cookies and decide, one by one, which ones seem marketing-related and which ones are technically required, and then block, is way too much to ask from a regular internet user. I have tried, but fail to see good faith in your reply.

grumbel 4y ago
The browser is the one who stores and sends cookies. It would be trivial to make that action explicit and only at the users request. That wouldn't even be a new feature, that used to be how things worked 20 years ago. Lynx is however the only browser left that I know that still asks you before storing cookies. You don't even have to shift through cookies for this to work, you can just reject all by default until the user explicitly request them to be stored (or use a whitelist or wait until the users tried to login that would necessitate a cookie, etc.) Lots of possibilities. > is way too much to ask from a regular internet user. That's kind of the point. By making it all transparent and seamless browser makers played into the hand of marketing companies. If cookies had a cost and would degrade the user experience, they might be thinking twice before putting hundreds of them on a site. Marketing companies are just making use of the tools they are given. And browser manufacturers gave them a lot of tools, while taking control away from the user.
- woojoo666 4y ago
  There are many different yet legitimate uses for cookies. It's impractical to expect the user to sift through to find the ones that are necessary and the ones that aren't. Even if the browser requests them beforehand, how is the user supposed to know if the request is for a marketing cookie or functional cookie. > That's kind of the point. By making it all transparent and seamless browser makers played into the hand of marketing companies. If cookies had a cost and would degrade the user experience, they might be thinking twice before putting hundreds of them on a site. Cookies do have a cost, namely the bad PR from people complaining about the unnecessary tracking cookies. If you think that's not enough, then you are free to reject cookies as well to degrade your own experience. But they aren't mutually exclusive. Complaints and bad PR can also drive users away from the site and enact change.