Komonews now apparently does this crap where it needs to “process” your cookie opt-out, at least on mobile.

Any alternative news sources you’d recommend to follow? Just for stuff like weather or big events.

If you’re unfamiliar with this tactic, when you click “opt-out” the webpage basically displays this widget with a loading bar saying it needs to “process” your request. When in reality you’re asking them to simply not use cookies, so it’s saving the web browser time by not installing any cookies.

  • Pistcow
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    2911 months ago

    This is extremely dangerous to our democracy

    Fuck Komo.

  • @[email protected]
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    2611 months ago

    Pretty sure this is actually fraud. Trying to trick someone into abandon their rights by lying ist fraud right?

    • @[email protected]
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      211 months ago

      This is America and KOMO/Sinclair is an American company, serving American users. What “rights” do you think you are being tricked out of? You don’t have a right to not be tracked.

  • @[email protected]
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    1911 months ago

    Absolutely bullshit.

    Engineer here who implements cookie scripts, cookie banners, etc.

    1 or 2 seconds tops is how long it takes to wipe cookies that a site leaves behind. Half of that to ensure that future cookies aren’t generated.

    I’ve seen some real shitty systems in my life. This is literally impossible to create a system that requires a long processing time accidentally.

    This is active maliciousness to users.

  • @[email protected]
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    1511 months ago

    Note the logo on the status window there: TrustArc.

    A little searching for that company shows that this dark pattern is effectively a feature of their service. Twitter user “pixelscript” dug into their javascript a bit to find the cause of the delay. It turns out that, as you may have guessed, this isn’t any kind of asynchronous callback pause waiting on the remote server to do something. It’s just a self-imposed client side delay; because they feel like making you wait.

    Original post: https://twitter.com/pixelscript/status/1436664488913215490/photo/1

    Screenshot (from Starbucks’ implementation)

    Moral of the story: do not patronize businesses with hostile relationships with their customers.

    • @[email protected]
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      511 months ago

      TrustArc is website cancer.

      Accept and they’re gone in an instant, reject and they make it fucking annoying…

      I reviewed them as part of an RFP exercise to implement a cookie tool, and was shocked at their practices.

  • Zarlin
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    811 months ago

    Check Reuters for a good unbiased source of news. Its actually what a lot of other news outlets use as their source.

  • @[email protected]
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    511 months ago

    pro tip: they still leave cookies, even when you “opt out”. You’re American, you don’t have a right to not be tracked. Use Firefox Focus, purge your cookies regularly.

    • @[email protected]
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      111 months ago

      Using Fennec and I’ve turned on data deletion as soon as I close the app/all my tabs (almost hourly)

  • @[email protected]
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    411 months ago

    No bro, cookie settings are like, so CPU intensive. Always takes my 7800x3d twenty minutes to crank through all that code.