Was trying to read a news story and… What fresh shitfuckery is this? Why do I now have to pay money to a company just for the privilege of not being spied upon and not getting your cookies that I don’t want or need? How is this even legal?

RE: “Why are you even reading that shitrag?” – I clicked on a link someone posted in another sublemmit, didn’t realise it was the Sun till after. I do not read the Sun on the regular, chill. My point stands regardless that this is extremely shitty and should probably not be allowed.

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    OP, The Sun is one of the trashiest rags on the face of this Earth. Your best option regardless of their ad practices was always to stay well away from them.

  • joe_archer@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I’m pretty sure this is illegal under GDPR. They’re just seeing how long they can get away with it for, before they have to apologise and get no punishment.

    • fancy_coffeetable@feddit.org
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      2 months ago

      I’m seeing this kind of thing on an ever increasing number of sites in Germany. It’s especially galling on sites I already pay a subscription fee for! Isn’t that enough? Now I’m supposed to pay another monthly subscription to avoid tracking cookies?

      I’ve already cancelled one news website due to this, letting them know why (they’re small enough that I know they read it, since it was part of a conversation). Fat lot of good it’ll do, but …

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      Indeed. There must be no downside to clicking no. Consent must be freely given.

      Although I’d argue almost nobody complies with the spirit of the law. Popping up a consent form every time you visit unless you accidentally click accept and then never asking you again doesn’t feel like consent was truly given.

      • Sotuanduso@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Well, to be fair, “Why can’t websites just remember that I said no to cookies?”

        • Kayana@ttrpg.network
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          2 months ago

          Cookies required for the website to work (like that one) are totally fine and, in fact, they don’t even have to ask you about them - if they’re not used for tracking. So no, asking each time is definitely avoidable.

    • KSP Atlas@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      This appears to be a US specific website, where they could get away with the geoblocking technique to bypass gdpr

        • Spraynard Kruger@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          It for sure is The Sun, but if you look closely at the logo, you will see it actually says “The U.S. Sun”. So it’s an American offshoot of the British newspaper and the domain OP was accessing is likely hosted in the U.S.

    • redfellow@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      Sadly it is not, as you need to pay to access content by money or pay by viewing ads.

      Facebook uses the same model.

      If you don’t want the “premium content” by paying with way 1 or way 2, you can’t use the site.

      This will end up being a final nail in the coffin for these sites, I wish.

  • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The best part of this is you would need to give them your personal information to pay them, and you’d need to accept the necessary cookies for them to know you’ve paid when you access the website. 🤣🤣🤣

    • dan@upvote.au
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      2 months ago

      you’d need to accept the necessary cookies for them to know you’ve paid when you access the website

      Cookies that are required for and only used for operational purposes (like knowing if the user is logged in) don’t require consent.

  • grue@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I am really fucking sick and tired of every goddamn company thinking they’re entitled to colonize my property and hack it to serve them instead of me.

    My computer is my property, you fascist fucks, not yours, and my actual property rights trump your Imaginary “Property” “rights” (i.e. temporary government-granted privileges) every single time and in every single circumstance!

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    2 months ago

    Oh no. It’s not like that. They don’t even ask you about cookies any more.

    This is a payment so they don’t sell all your cookie data to their 1354 trusted data partners/advertising vultures.

      • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        This is happening because the site is shitty so don’t use the shitty site. Sounds pretty f’n on-point to me.

        • Jarix@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I agree with the sentiment about the shittyness of the site.

          But this was about a new bullshit cookie bullshit.

          If you can understand the persons problem here then maybe you need to do some work about that

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 months ago

    It’s legal because the Sun is a private company and they have the right to charge you to not datamine you. It’s not a public service and they’re not the only source of news out there, so you have a choice: if you don’t like it, get your news elsewhere.

    What’s the problem exactly?

    • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I’m no fan of ads, but you’re right. Expecting everything for free with no ads is just greedy.

      • twinnie@feddit.uk
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        2 months ago

        I don’t mind ads, but I don’t expect to be tracked around the internet. It’s like every website you visit being able to view your browser history. That’s private information.

        • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Technically, whatever the Sun prints is private information available for purchase. You can either pay cash or trade their information for yours.

          I still get frustrated by it, so I understand where you’re coming from. My local paper is ONLY viewable with a subscription. There are ways around it, like turning off JavaScript, but if we don’t count cheating the system, you gotta pay. They have to make money to pay their employees somehow, at least the Sun gives you an alternate option.

      • ilikecoffee@lemmy.worldOP
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        2 months ago

        Give me all the ads you want but at least give me the option whether they’re personalised or not… Why is this now a paid choice? The companies get paid by the advertisers either way, right? I’m not expecting it for free but I don’t like thousands of unknown companies tracking me thank you very much.

          • ilikecoffee@lemmy.worldOP
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            2 months ago

            Of course they do :/… Surely though, even with the previous free choice of general or personalised ads, I bet a decent few people still habitually clicked ‘accept all’, so I can’t imagine this making that much of a difference financially… And this way they’ll probably drive away some more privacy-savvy readers as well. Oh well, guess they wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t pay off for them.

      • hedgehog@ttrpg.network
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        2 months ago

        Expecting everything for free with no ads is just greedy.

        In this case you’re not paying to not have ads. You’ll still get ads; they just won’t be personalized.

        Personalized ads are more valuable to advertisers, so it still makes sense for them to charge a bit for it, but it’s not something I’ve seen before.

        I’m guessing they charge a decent amount more than the difference, though - and probably even more than they make from personalized ads per person. On that note, I really wish ad free subscriptions were closer to the revenue providers get from serving ads - if they were, I’d be more willing to pay for them than just running an adblocker all the time. YouTube Premium, for example, costs 14 USD monthly, but annual ad revenue per non premium user was 1.21 USD.

  • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    I find it amusing that they “use cookies to give you the best possible experience”, but then ask you to pay to not have them.

  • Gikiski@fedia.io
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    2 months ago

    The red flag there in the screenshot shows you the name of the publication you should avoid using or visiting.

  • Rookeh@startrek.website
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    2 months ago

    Solution: don’t read that shitrag. It was always a waste of paper, now it is a waste of bandwidth as well.

  • Daemon Silverstein@thelemmy.club
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    2 months ago

    A naive question of mine, but isn’t using a browser/extensions that silently/transparently blocks cookies (such as Brave, but not just it) enough to fearlessly click “Accept All Cookies”, since ultimately they would be pointless for the purpose of tracking (due to the browser’s own cookie blocking capabilities)?

    • ilikecoffee@lemmy.worldOP
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      2 months ago

      Yeah it would. But as I said elsewhere, this is probably enough to be ‘too much effort’ for the majority of users, and definitely a lot more effort than it should be. I already know several people who habitually click accept all on cookie banners, and I know I have caught myself doing that a couple times too…

    • nogooduser@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      We still have the UK implementation of GDPR. That didn’t go away when we left the EU.

      We won’t have any changes to it that might have happened since brexit but we didn’t remove the law either.

      • kindenough@kbin.earth
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        2 months ago

        Yeah I learned of this before, you are 100% correct. The EU GDPR is in place for any UK company doing business in the EU and the UK GDPR visa versa, but they differ on topics as immigration, national security and such as you might know anyhow. The rest is very similar.