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How Facebook and Other Sites Manipulate Your Privacy Choices:
Electronic Frontier Foundation was fed up with Facebook's pushy interface. The platform had a way of coercing people into giving up more and more of their privacy. The question was, what to call that coercion? Zuckermining? Facebaiting? Was it a Zuckerpunch? The name that eventually stuck: Privacy Zuckering, or when "you are tricked into publicly sharing more information about yourself than you really intended to."
[...] Researchers call these design and wording decisions "dark patterns," a term applied to UX that tries to manipulate your choices. When Instagram repeatedly nags you to "please turn on notifications," and doesn't present an option to decline? That's a dark pattern. When LinkedIn shows you part of an InMail message in your email, but forces you to visit the platform to read more? Also a dark pattern. When Facebook redirects you to "log out" when you try to deactivate or delete your account? That's a dark pattern too.
Dark patterns show up all over the web, nudging people to subscribe to newsletters, add items to their carts, or sign up for services. But, says says Colin Gray, a human-computer interaction researcher at Purdue University, they're particularly insidious "when you're deciding what privacy rights to give away, what data you're willing to part with." Gray has been studying dark patterns since 2015. He and his research team have identified five basic types: nagging, obstruction, sneaking, interface interference, and forced action. All of those show up in privacy controls. He and other researchers in the field have noticed the cognitive dissonance between Silicon Valley's grand overtures toward privacy and the tools to modulate these choices, which remain filled with confusing language, manipulative design, and other features designed to leech more data.
Those privacy shell games aren't limited to social media. They've become endemic to the web at large, especially in the wake of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation. Since GDPR went into effect in 2018, websites have been required to ask people for consent to collect certain types of data. But some consent banners simply ask you to accept the privacy policies—with no option to say no. "Some research has suggested that upwards of 70 percent of consent banners in the EU have some kind of dark pattern embedded in them," says Gray. "That's problematic when you're giving away substantial rights."
[...] Many of these dark patterns are used to juice metrics that indicate success, like user growth or time spent. Gray cites an example from the smartphone app Trivia Crack, which nags its users to play another game every two to three hours. Those kinds of spammy notifications have been used by social media platforms for years to induce the kind of FOMO that keeps you hooked. "We know if we give people things like swiping or status updates, it's more likely that people will come back and see it again and again," says Yocco. "That can lead to compulsive behaviors."
[...] Worse, Gray says, the research shows that most people don't even know they're being manipulated. But according to one study, he says, "when people were primed ahead of time with language to show what manipulation looked like, twice as many users could identify these dark patterns." At least there's some hope that greater awareness can give users back some of their control.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 13 2020, @09:26PM (24 children)
More and more, news sites throw up some kind of popup when you land on their pages. "We use cookies, click to accept!" WTF, how do I dismiss this thing? There is an "accept" button, and a "more information" button. On some of those sites, the "more info" button leads to a menu where you can reject all the cookies. But - how does that site remember my settings, unless it is setting a cookie, which I have just rejected?
Coercive tactics are coercive tactics. I don't want the cookie, don't want to be tracked, don't want to be remembered - I want to be the ghost in the machine. But, I can't read anything at all, in some cases, unless I do accept the stupid cookie.
Alternet is a good example. They desperately need to get their anti-Trump message out, but they want me to accept their cookies? Fek 'em. Then, there's WaPo. You can read some small number of articles per month, without registering. How do they know how many articles I've read? They set some cookie, which I rejected? You bet they did!
The EU and US need to outlaw all cookie and cookie-like tech, unless it is EXPLICITLY approved by the visitor. It would be nice if Russia and China joined in.
(Score: 2, Informative) by gmby on Thursday August 13 2020, @09:33PM (2 children)
uBlock has an element zapper. Gets the crap out of the way so you can continue without a response to the site. As far a the site is con concerned you just never clicked the coockie monster poopup.
Bye
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday August 13 2020, @11:45PM (1 child)
I sometimes dive into the browser preferences, privacy section, and manually delete the cookies. That stops the 5 articles per month limit. Mostly though, I just don't read the NYT or WaPo sites any more.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @09:14AM
"Cookie AutoDelete" in FF. You can whitelist whatever site you want, the rest has all cookies deleted as soon as you close the tab.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snotnose on Thursday August 13 2020, @09:38PM (1 child)
I hit those all the time, clicking "do not sell my personal information" usually leads to a really confusing page where you're basically asked "have you stopped beating your wife".
I generally read whatever of the 3-4 lines the website allows, or just fuck right off.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @09:30AM
Aren't you not sure you don't not want to not continue not using a lack of cookies?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @09:56PM (4 children)
Nothing gets by Runaway! May not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he is the one that has shovelled the most bullshit!
(Score: 4, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 13 2020, @09:59PM (1 child)
ᴵ ᵈᵒⁿ'ᵗ ᵐᶦⁿᵈ ˢʰᵒᵛᵉˡᶦⁿᵍ ˢʰᶦᵗ, ᵇᵘᵗ ᴵ ʰᵃᵗᵉ ᶦᵗ ʷʰᵉⁿ ᶦᵗ ˢᵒᵘⁿᵈˢ ˡᶦᵏᵉ ᵗʰᵉ ˢʰᶦᵗ ᶦˢ ᵗᵃˡᵏᶦⁿᵍ ᵗᵒ ᵐᵉ.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @10:20PM
What does the shit say to you, Runaway? Is it "Son of Sam Shit"? How long have you been hearing voices like this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @04:45AM (1 child)
Give him his due, he's a "bovine effluent transportation engineer".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @04:49AM
And for those who do not know, "nutherguy" is a sockpuppet for Runaway1956 guy, on the IRC, where he does not think it counts as a sockpuppet. But still, submissions by this entity are to be held suspect. Quarantined for at least two weeks. And terminated with extreme participles.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Booga1 on Thursday August 13 2020, @10:12PM (6 children)
There are myriads of options designed to hide your choices, deny meaningful choices, or just overwhelm you. You've covered a couple, but the most obnoxious one I came across was one that gave you three buttons: Accept, Decline, and Options.
Of course, "Accept" is a blanket approval and you get to see the site. Choose "Decline" and you receive a message stating "We're sorry, the site is unavailable without cookies. Some cookies are required for the functionality of the site. Please enable cookies and refresh the page to try again."
So, "Options" it is! Clicking "Options" gives you a pop-up dialog with a list of check boxes, all enabled by default. Right at the top are "Required site cookies" that list five or six directly related cookie choices from the site itself. Below that are "Optional site cookies" that listed another three or four things for stuff like site color themes.
Then you get to the "Partner site and advertising cookies" which listed over 60 different third party sites and advertising networks. You had to uncheck each and every one of them separately which made it clear they were simply trying to exhaust you into giving up and just clicking "Accept."
It's almost as if sites and advertisers are giving a giant middle finger to the public because they pushed back on all the intrusive tracking measures they've been implementing. "How dare they make a law to curtail our abuse!"
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @09:35AM (2 children)
When I run into that on a public computer, I like to randomly deselect one cookies the middle of the list, in case some guy reviews my entry manually. Just give him a moment of confusion as he wonders what that company in particular did to earn such an action.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @11:26PM (1 child)
https://optout.aboutads.info/ [aboutads.info]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @12:43AM
LOL, went to see what that was about and they claim to "evaluate your browser's compatibility with the WebChoices tool and verifying its opt-out status."
So, their idea of opting out of third party cookies is to tell you to turn ON third party cookies so they can store your choice of opting out of third party cookies. That right there is some next level bullshit ad network garbage.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday August 15 2020, @10:11AM (2 children)
Booga1 wrote:
You make it sound as if this is something unusual. You found only one like that? It's the norm these days.
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Saturday August 15 2020, @07:29PM (1 child)
It was over a year ago I ran into this particular one. It's becoming more common, but I still run across tons of sites that only say "We use cookies! [OK]-[X]" and it doesn't matter if you click the OK or X, the result is the same. There is no meaningful option to not accept cookies. We've even had a prior story about it [soylentnews.org] with a link to explicit guidelines [gdpr.eu] that forbid exactly this scenario.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday August 17 2020, @01:43AM
Not all websites are hosted in the Union or targeted specifically at viewers in the Union.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by krishnoid on Thursday August 13 2020, @10:19PM (2 children)
I think this is actually a GDPR requirement [cookiebot.com]. I remember seeing it on UK sites before I started seeing it on more and more US ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2020, @10:34PM
That's my understanding of it, the cookies were being set regardless of whether or not you wanted to, but now there's a notification. You can still block the cookies using the same methods as before, it's just that they're notifying you that they want to that's changed.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @12:49AM
That website does clarify that a cookie banner with just an "accept" button is not allowed under GDPR; you have to give the user an option to reject cookies (and be informed that you're storing a single cookie that just says to not store any other cookies). But I've only ever seen ones with just the "accept" button.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Thursday August 13 2020, @10:21PM (1 child)
You've been lucky. Generally I find that if I opt not to accept cookies, I'm not allowed to use the website at all. And then I find it has dumped its cookies on me anyway.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by krishnoid on Friday August 14 2020, @12:22AM
You could set your cookies for current-session-only, or go in incognito mode, I guess. But if it's still dumping cookies on you, you may be able to submit that as a GDPR violation.
(Score: 2) by corey on Sunday August 16 2020, @11:04AM
I just use a plugin called Cookie Autodelete. Can be changed but 30 seconds after you close a tab, cookies from all websites visited in that tab are deleted. I like the notifications that tell me how many were just deleted and for whom.
Every time I go to a website, I'm a new person, unless I either have whitelisted them, or have a website from that domain open in another tab.
It's such a basic and cool concept: allow cookies for that session only, unless I choose to keep them longer. It's basically cleaning up after my web browsing.
I click accept cookies every time knowing that in about 2 minutes they're gone anyway.
Totally recommend.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Sunday August 16 2020, @06:51PM
I can think of a way for WaPo to fix that. It could instead track you by your screen size, browser brand, and operating system, what fonts you have installed, etc. Or if your IP isn't that of a major search engine's bot, it could hide everything past the first paragraph until you log in, as NYT and WSJ do.