[hedora]

I think the author is upset because publishers want to have their cake and eat it too: It has long been google’s (and all other successful search engines’) policy that sites should present the same content to the web crawler and to human beings.

Soft paywalls are essentially a loophole in that (at least superficially) pro-consumer rule, and incognito blockers are apparently taking that loophole one step too far. This move will fix the issue by changing the browser instead of page ranks.

Here is an unfounded conspiracy theory: People noticed that regularly clearing cookies works better than incognito mode, so they were switching to that because of incognito blockers, and that presents an existential threat to Google’s cash cow.

I don’t believe the previous paragraph, but I really want an extension that nukes all browser state if my computer / device is idle for more than 4 hours. The only exceptions would be bookmarks and password management.