I imagine the company behind this site is hosted at the US. There are not many places one can still do this.
It is sadly perfectly legal afaik. Nobody is entitled to your content without agreeing to some terms. Luckily, archive.is works very well. Wish there were more alternatives.
You basically cannot enter if you don’t agree or have payed.
Example: https://t3n.de
So for at least that site, it appears that all of the 'protection' is provided by javascript, and if one does not allow the javascript to execute, one receives the article content. There also does not look to be much in the way of ads with the javascript blocked as well.
[1] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/...
You can also access any site in the google cache with prepending "https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:", that will you show you the website like the google bot saw it.
For example github.com would become "https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%..."
It is still worth to try, but many sites already prevent this.
"Consent is presumed not to be freely given if it does not allow separate consent to be given to different personal data processing operations despite it being appropriate in the individual case, or if the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is dependent on the consent despite such consent not being necessary for such performance."
Since GDPR clearly does not consider ad-tracking cookies as "necessary for the performance of service", this should be against the spirit of the law. I guess it's up for the BfDI and relevant state-level commissioners to prosecute this and I don't know what is their stance, but this type of behavior does not seem compliant.
Of course, there are many other types of non-compliant behavior. Most cookie banners out there make rejecting cookies harder than accepting, and there are many cookie walls that block you from accessing the site at all until you dismiss them. These are clearly non-compliant, but prevalent. Even oversized or disruptive banners that goad you to click "I Agree" in order to dismiss them, cannot be considered as "freely-given consent".
Which of course requires an account, which requires a cookie, which is then tied to your payment details, and therefore far less private than ads, but that's GDPR for you. A nonsensical law in which nobody involved thought anything through.
What they can't do is say "no tracking, no service".
If we could turn tracking I to a banned way to earn money from free visitors, I think we’d all be better off. This is not how gdpr works today.
Legitimate interest is things like a legal requirement to maintain PII because of the services offered.
[0]: https://www.garanteprivacy.it/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/d...
No it isn't.
You need the same feature for visiting EU government websites:
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/ (best example)
There's "NoJS", a extension where you can enable all JS through a switch, but it doesn't handle iframes very well at the moment.
You only have to do this once per website, so (unless you've already uninstalled it) you've already done the hard work time investment for the sites you visit most often.
Basic / Premium / Ultra
With you guessed it, Ultra being the most tracking cookies. I was flabbergasted.
But of course, for maximum trap potential, we need to find a wording such that Premium is the option without, while Ultra tracking and Basic tracking should both do roughly the same amount of tracking (modulo not really relevant details). With a sufficiently discouraging wall of text, a bad UX, and a limited time option, no one would spend the time to figure out they need to click the middle option.
(This tweet brought to you by our sponsor, Moloch.)
I don't even care about all the dark patterns of now allowing you to dismiss and ignore with one click.
Thank you Europe
I agree, sites shouldn't be doing the things that require showing one.
> I don't even care about all the dark patterns of now allowing you to dismiss and ignore with one click.
How is this a dark pattern?
> Thank you Europe
Indeed! If such tracking has to be allowed, I'm happy that at least I can opt out of it.
Like what, showing ads? Collecting payment from the user in leiu of ads? I wonder what website you're imagining that doesn't do something that requires a cookie consent popup. GeoCities, maybe?
Any popup or obstruction is cancer, cookie consent or otherwise.
We need the same approach as for ad blocking. Just remove the crap from the DOM tree. Block the tracker cookies, based on curated blacklists or heuristics, or both.
We need to take back control of our devices, not leave it to every single website to hopefully obey some law.
Edit: remove double post of link
According to this sentence the aim is to "just to read" the article. It does not mention anything about looking at images or being able to see a web developer's design choices.
Maybe it's implied that images are required to "read" the article, along with fonts and other graphical enhancements. Not sure.
But just for fun let's assume that the only requirement is to read the text of the article. There are already browsers that allow this and the user will see no cookie popups, and no permanent cookies will be set because the browser only supports "session" cookies. These browsers may not even automatically retrieve resources, e.g., they will not make automated HTTP requests for ad tracking purposes, telemetry, etc. To be clear, there is no point trying set cookies because the browser does not support them. Consequently there's no need for a cookie popup.
Below is exactly what this article looks like in the browser I have been using for over 20 years. I have not used a mouse on a personal (cf. work) computer in over 25 years. NB. Usually pages do not have "ADVERTISEMENT". This blog is obviously trying to cash in on traffic. Generally, pages all look more or less the same. This allows me to read stuff quickly. When I use this browser, I'm only interested in reading text, nothing else. Suits me well for reading HN submissions.
The point I wish to emphasize is that while the web developer's choices, in this case the blog author's, are one part of the problem, another part of the problem is the user's choice of web browser or other client. Choosing a popular graphical browser from amongst a select group that by default process cookies and run Javascript, e.g., Firefox, encourages web developers, blog authors, etc. to use cookie popups, include gratuitous images, insert advertisements, pointers to third party resources, telemetry and so on.
Firefox may soon reject Cookie prompts automatically
Martin Brinkmann
Apr 17, 2023
Updated o Apr 17, 2023
Firefox
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21
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Most websites on the Internet display cookie banners to users. Certain regulations, like the GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation, by the European Union, require that sites get consent for placing cookies and data on user devices.
There are numerous different cookie dialogs that users get when they visit websites. From straightforward allow or decline prompts to prompts that provide a great deal of customization or dark patterns.
These cookie prompts can become annoying and at least some users click on the first button that is presented to them to get to the site's content.
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firefox cookie banner reductionfirefox cookie banner reduction
Mozilla Firefox's new Cookie Banner Reduction feature attempts to make the prompts less annoying for users of the browser. The feature was launched in Nightly recently, and users need to enable it before it becomes active. Firefox users could use extensions, like Auto Cookie Optout, to deal with cookie prompts automatically.
Do the following to enable the feature:
1. Load about:preferences#privacy in the Firefox address bar.
2. Scroll down to Cookie Banner Reduction.
3. Check the Reduce Cookie Banners box to enable the feature.