I always do this when I can't see a page. I also do it when they pop out a big box with text in the middle of the reading and if they also pop out a big box begging me to accept the cookies.
The website doesn't really care; they have hosting costs so if you're not paying with money or by accepting ads then to them you're worse than not visiting at all as you consume resources, so it's good if you leave?
Don’t worry, once they have your credit card number they’ll track you even more. At best you’ll get a £2.35 cheque from a class action lawsuit in seven years, assuming they ever even get caught.
Yeah, they’ll still collect your data and happily sell it as soon as your subscription ends. Also, this subscription would likely only cover first-party tracking. It wouldn’t cover things like a Facebook Like button being embedded in the site, which allows Facebook to track you.
Not really, it's just phrased differently to the usual signup pitch, they're putting in a middle ground between full "premium" subscribers (whatever that is) and public access with tracking and ad metrics.
Companies need revenue to operate. They get that revenue from advertising data and selling ad slots, or subscriptions. Whether they actually cease all tracking and ad metrics when you subscribe is something I'd doubt though, and that could be a case for the legal system if they didn't do what they claim.
Personally, this behaviour is the point where I would not consider the site to be valuable enough to bother with.
Anyways I think that "pay or consent" model isn't that bad. You either pay with your data or your money. Seems fine to me though pay only would be better. Everyone is used to getting everything online for free. It has to change now imo. The internet isn't a bunch of hobby forum projects anymore. The price of running a popular website is big and idk if privacy-respecting ads can give enough profit at this point.
It is bad. Companies could just have some fucking standards.
The issue is profit-motivated companies existing in the first place.
Rather, they should be self-led, and motivated towards the best labour environment as according to their workers. That means their workers feeling accepted, heard and listened to, being able to not only live but also thrive. And all that, while still making the organisation more efficient.
You can show ads without tracking and keeping users their right to privacy, right? I think it's different selling user data than having some ads on your website.
I mean, if you don't want to participate in the advertisement based monetization model, which you shouldn't, then the alternative to it is a subscription model.
these sites aren't free. we have the right to block advertising content and trackers on our browsers but that doesn't mean we have the right to block advertising while retaining no payment access.
Err, this payment doesn't block ads. It only switches off personalised ads. So, the user is still seeing ads, just not targeted ones. So the site is getting both user's money plus ad money. And technically, I am not sure how privacy preserving this is because you will still need to create an account which technically leaves you vulnerable to tracking.
Yep. I wish more services asked for a nominal fee and just skipped the ads and data harvesting. They don't make much per user anyway, so just let us pay the few cents directly and skip the bullshit.