…says a cunty website that won’t let me refuse cookies with one click
They’re all just as bad as meta. Click on “choices” and see how many times these fuckers are selling your data 😡
Meta cancelled climate change ads, then cancelled a local newspaper that reported about the ads, then a blogger who reported on the paper's cancellation, and now has escalated to blocking all of LGF for posting the blogger's story
Submitted 8 months ago by mozz@mbin.grits.dev to technology@beehaw.org
https://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/53549_WTF_Meta_Cancels_LGF
Comments
Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee 8 months ago
mozz@mbin.grits.dev 8 months ago
Who the fuck is upvoting this
LGF's policy is one of the most upfront and protective ones I've ever seen, second only to something like Pluralistic or other sites which simply don't do ads. Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks like they make it clear they run Google Ads which require cookies, tell you how to opt out of the data collection on Google's side, and promise not to leak your information to anyone except Google.
Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on the site.
Google’s use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to users based on their visit to your sites and other sites on the Internet.
Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy.
We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business.
We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential.
Whether you believe their privacy policy is a separate issue, but if you're gonna pick out someone's privacy policy to call cunty and complain about, this is about the last one I would do it to.
Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Who the fuck is upvoting this
People with consumer rights
It’s a requirement in the EU to be able to refuse all cookies within a couple of clicks. This website should either not load in the EU, or have a “refuse” button
geophysicist@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
websites that serve users in the EU need to allow you to decline cookies, not just tell you about the fact they use them. this website is actually breaking EU privacy law, it’s definitely not what the I would consider protective
exocrinous@startrek.website 8 months ago
I upvoted it. I don’t think it’s literally just as bad as meta, but I still think it’s bad. Websites should let you opt out of cookies in one click. If they don’t, I prefer not to use them. I’m sure this website’s article is very important, but if they want their journalism to be read they should present it in a respectful manner. Otherwise I’m just reading the headline. I like the headline, it’s a good headline, it will inform my views going forward. I will not read the article and I will not give them ad traffic.
ryannathans@aussie.zone 8 months ago
“They’re all just as bad as meta”
Lol if only you knew what meta have and do with that data
mozz@mbin.grits.dev 8 months ago
Hi, I'm Lemmy BadTakes! You may remember me from such movies as "Biden's exactly as bad as Trump" and "Sure Russia's a one-party state where challenging the leader means literal death, but the United States has racist police and wealth inequality, which is actually far worse!"
survivalmachine@beehaw.org 8 months ago
If you continue using our website, we’ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on this website.
You literally have an “x” button in the top-right of your web browser (or similar exit feature if you’ve disabled or moved that).
mozz@mbin.grits.dev 8 months ago
Or, you can use a browser or plugin which blocks a fairly-accurate blacklist of ad tracking cookies, and not involve the sites' dubious assurances that they'll respect your requests for privacy into the equation at all. That seems like a way, way better way. If you want to go past that I would just configure the browser to reject cookies except from a whitelist of sites you trust, and still not involve the site's assurances into it.
I think the EU overall does a great job at doing consumer protection and I think the "you gotta have a cookie dialog" is one isolated aspect where the law does nothing but create hassle for everyone involved, but I don't really know; that's just my uninformed opinion.
tempest@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
The word cancelled has lost all meaning.
Infynis@midwest.social 8 months ago
Which was their goal
ryannathans@aussie.zone 8 months ago
Cancelling has been cancelled
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
2004: The Internet is going to lead us into a utopian future of free communication where we exchange ideas with each other without corporate media being gatekeepers telling us what to read, write and think!
2024: Hi, I’m Meta and everyone gets their information from my platforms and I can decide what ideas to allow there. What do you mean we weren’t supposed to have that anymore by now, whoever told you that kind of nonsense.
mozz@mbin.grits.dev 8 months ago
When Netscape Navigator's initial announcement post went out, people were alarmed about the idea that someone might be trying to charge money for software related to the internet. Some people questioned if it was legal to even do that, since the supporting software, backbone, and all the content were freely created by other people -- it was basically at that point a 100% non commercial environment.
Things have changed
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
I am too young to remember that. Of course browsers are now free (at least as in beer, many also as in speech) again and that is a good thing. In my childhood, computers were pretty much synonymous with Windows and the web was mostly unusable without Flash Player and it’s a good thing that that has changed. Still, we don’t live in the utopian society I imagined the Internet would lead to.
Midnitte@beehaw.org 8 months ago
Which is funny because Meta has wanted to avoid the “information arbiter” label to avoid the regulations it would inevitably impose.
But I guess no company can resist eating the cake once they have it.
darkphotonstudio@beehaw.org 8 months ago
Don’t use their platform.
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Nick Heer wrote intelligently about this.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 8 months ago
Hard disagree with this person.
They’re position basically boils down to “Facebook won’t tell us what problems were identified with the domains that caused the blocks, but it’s better to have guards against malicious domains than not”. That is a false dichotomy.
A better response is, “unless Facebook is actually disclosing what issues with the domains caused the flagging, we should not allow them to block news websites, especially when they’ve been critical of Facebook”. To do otherwise is basically just giving them carte blanche to block domains whenever they want to, and assuming on their behalf that they’re being honest and benevolent.
They go on to make excuses for Meta all throughout the article:
Whatever issue Facebook flagged regarding those ads — Kendall is not clear, and I suspect that is because Facebook is not clear either
And even their sarcastic comment that
If you wanted to make a kind-of-lame modern conspiracy movie
is a completely unwarranted dismissal of assertions that Meta polices political content on their platforms, which we in fact know they do. Reporting has shown that Meta does actively take political stances and translate those into actions and policies in their sites.
Hanlon’s Razor is about assumptions sans evidence, because of the natural human tendency to automatically interpret actions that harm you as intentional. It’s not, however, meant to discount evidence of patterns of behavior.
And this is not a new, one-off behavior on Facebook’s part:
The climate divide: How Facebook’s algorithm amplifies climate disinformation - Feb2022
Facebook did not label over 50% of posts from top climate change deniers, says new report - Feb2022
Facebook’s New Ad Policies Make It Harder for Climate Groups to Counter Big Oil - Mar2022
mozz@mbin.grits.dev 8 months ago
Thank you
The writer also totally skips over, as far as I can tell, the escalating series of blocks of additional outlets who were covering the story. With each additional one, it becomes geometrically less likely that it was just the kind of mistake he is claiming is a plausible explanation (which, he then parlays into arguing that it means it is the plausible explanation).
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 8 months ago
Interesting take. You’ve certainly got me thinking about it a bit more.
I won’t try to interpret the author’s intent because that’s for him to do and I don’t want to speak on his behalf. But I do think he’s right about the tone of the response to the error being wildly wrong. News orgs should be dispassionate and I don’t get a sense that they were at all.
I think Meta fucks up. I think mass media is terrible at understanding what they’re reporting about. I think conservatives in particular see boogie men everywhere. Anyway, I’d read Nick’s piece earlier in the day and that had been my only exposure to the story, so I chose to link to it because to me it was a reasonable response.
NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 8 months ago
This is a well written and a very rational take on the situation. Nick is probably right.
chahk@beehaw.org 8 months ago
Nice try, Nick.
moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com [bot] 8 months ago
Reminder that the majority of social media are private companies and not the street.
darkphotonstudio@beehaw.org 8 months ago
However, they are monopolies, and should be treated as such.
BurningRiver@beehaw.org 8 months ago
So…mercilessly incinerated to a pile of ashes?
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Isn’t LGF an alt-right shitter?
mozz@mbin.grits.dev 8 months ago
On November 30, 2009, Johnson blogged that he was disassociating himself with "the right," writing: "The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff. I won't be going over the cliff with them." He has been heavily critical of conservatives and libertarians since then.
I'd say that's about 10-15 years too late, but as a total outsider who's not at all familiar with the situation, it looks like his realization and action on it was sincere.
Also as TA notes, LibsOfTikTok is still up, so even if was still hosting extensive right wing propaganda (which would be a fine effort to engage in obviously) it would still look like they're doing a pretty selective job of it and I'd still see a decent argument for the real reason being the Kansas Reflector story and not anything propagandastic except by accident.
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I’d say that’s about 10-15 years too late, but as a total outsider who’s not at all familiar with the situation, it looks like his realization and action on it was sincere.
2009 is better than realizing it in 2016. The GOP took the Tea Party and funneled all of that hate and racism over Obama and his “tan suits” into something much worse.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Mediabiasfactcheck.com puts them into the “Left Bias”-Category
octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Link this next time someone is complaining how unfair it is to refuse to federate with Threads.
mozz@mbin.grits.dev 8 months ago
Defederating and blocking bots is the old way, it's defensive and passive and lets them continue what they're doing. It puts the decent people always one step behind.
A better way is the "you're locked in here with me" approach. Redirect bots to a version of your site that provides naught but LLM-generated Nazi furry gibberish and an endless spiral labyrinth of new pages and product reviews of nonexistent products. Try to see if there are any that do that little Javascript-evaluation-to-render-the-client-side-site thing, and if there are, have them mine cryptocurrency for you. Federate with Threads, but serve to the Threads bot an endless series of users who say nothing but constantly-rephrased additional comments which highlight in plain English language situations like this and the types of harm that Meta causes in the real world, and good things to search for if you want to pursue a better solution.
Let the botgarbage come to harm through what comes back to them from your instances. Let them figure it out, if they can, and affirmatively defederate with you instead. Welcome all comers and give good free content to the humans and nothing but pain and misery to the semi-malicious bot traffic. View any bot that talks to you that hasn't got the message yet as a new opportunity and a new challenge.
This is the new way
MisterD@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Tldr version; blocking is too passive. Lets shadow ban them to the tar pits and make them our slaves
yukichigai@kbin.social 8 months ago
Using your evil powers for good I see.
jarfil@beehaw.org 8 months ago
Stop selling Threads to me…
ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I know Canada semi-recently said a company would have to honor a deal its LLM came up with. I have to wonder if they would hold people liable for hate speech if they hosted a LLM that outputted Nazi propaganda.
Steve@startrek.website 8 months ago
So its like kitboga, but no humans at all
tooLikeTheNope@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Have to say that I kinda use to like old experimental bot only subs like farside.link/libreddit/r/SubredditSimulator/, but the more recent versions using more recent LLMs are a bit “too much” to be funny (farside.link/libreddit/r/SubSimulatorGPT2/ or farside.link/libreddit/r/SubSimulatorGPT3/)
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Okay so I can’t write for shit, but I’m officially putting out the call to all programmers who aren’t shit:
Reply to this commenr, and be friends, even if you hate each other. World needs saving. Truth needs saving.
state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
I have not seen a single person argue for federation with Threads.
octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
You’ve missed out on some lively debate then.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 8 months ago
…why?
octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
The usual argument against pre-emptive defederation goes something like, “Well we should wait to see what kind of influence they will be on the fediverse.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook#Criticisms_and_con…
en.wikipedia.org/…/Lawsuits_involving_Meta_Platfo…
theintercept.com/…/meta-gaza-censorship-warren-sa…
arstechnica.com/…/netflix-ad-spend-led-to-faceboo…
We know what kind of influence they will be. They will be the most anti-consumer, exploitative influence the law will allow, and probably a little bit more than that, because it’s been their entire history, and every few days we get another headline confirming that it’s who they are.
And while there is a lot they can do even if many instances refuse to federate with them, there’s no good argument for going along willingly, IMO.