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A comment on Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection. Parent comment

Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by _jal on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:36PM (#18199001)
I agree that news outlets serve an important function. That's exactly why it is especially disheartening to see them turn into organs of surveillance capitalism.

Regardless, if you attempt to extort me with a choice between privacy or an uninformed populace, I'll happily share my view on where exactly you can stick that and spin. There are decent media outlets doing good work out there who can report and respect their readers at the same time [1].

I frankly don't care if the papers who can't figure out how to function without selling out their customers fail. Let their corpses be a cautionary tale.

[1] One outlet I subscribe to, Talkingpointsmemo.com, is in the process of offering ad-free options. I blocked them previously, and they've made no effort to break the site in the presence of blockers.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by mdex on Friday October 12, 2018 @12:29AM (#18199215)
Has reading national news or keeping up with politics ever benefit you in a real life scenario? If so, in what way?

Also, what do you think of Chomsky's 'Manufacturing Consent'?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by unit91 on Friday October 12, 2018 @12:42AM (#18199269)
Agree with you mostly, though on occasion it's nice to know if my taxes are increasing or decreasing soon, and where most people in my country stand on "Merry Christmas" vs "season's greetings" (whatever that means).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefo... by _jal on Friday October 12, 2018 @03:06AM (#18199817)
It has saved my life once, via weather report. It has let me know that there was a disaster in the area where I knew people I cared about greatly were, enabling me to prep some support. And once, it told me that a project my then-company was working on was indirectly doomed by the advent of this little thing called the iPhone. Off the top of my head.

I think Chomsky is fairly correct, but a bit blinkered.

Your turn: How to you think Manufacturing Consent applies to message boards like this? Does that tell you anything about human behaviour, whether or not mediated by institutional imperative?

[ Parent | on HN ]