Neat approach! This extension is proprietary (according to license on Firefox Addons site).
I Don't Care About Cookies and UBlock Origin are open source. Given that such an addon requires access to all sites, I have to trust a random french developer/company not to steal my banking credentials.
This is not intended to be hate and I will keep this in mind for the future as this is a good new approach.
I ask that you consider if your soon to be monetized features are compatible with open source.
You are right!
To be honest: Ninja Cookie is really young and this is the first time I try to post on hackernews and I didn't plan to get all those comments. Because Ninja Cookie is really young, we are still thinking on our business model. We would like to open our sources so that you will be confident but we need first to find the right business model. No business model = no futur. And we want a futur for our Ninja Cookie. :)
Meanwhile, you need to trust us :/
The reason this comment is probably being so poorly received is that, as users, we have to look no further than the Adblock Plus shitshow. That was a pro-privacy/pro-user addon that was acquired and then silently started tracking users.
We can't trust you in the mean-time because we have hard proof that we should never trust addon publishers, especially where "free" plugins are concerned.
You need to figure out what your monetization is ASAP.
Assume I trust you, and tomorrow your CEO changes. Or you're acquired by Google. You're basically asking me to trust Google. And with an addon that apparently:
"needs to:
Access browser tabs
Access browser activity during navigation
Access your data for all websites"
Maybe someday this can be added to browsers, and the browsers can advertise the users’s preference to the server. Maybe even have a special request header for it. We could call it “Do-Not-Track”. A value of “1” would opt-out of all tracking (cookies).
The article is literally about how this is similar/different from Do Not Track and how new laws such as GDPR give it a chance to work where the former didn't.
There's no need to notify the server that your user-agent is opting out of cookies. Cookies only work because your user agent remembers them. You can opt out of cookies today by turning off cookies in your user agent. As a bonus, this even works for shady servers that don't respect earnest requests.
Yes. The comment I referred to specifically referred to cookies. Also, if you're being tracked by canvas fingerprinting and font enumeration, I doubt asking nicely will have any effect.
Blocking cookie banner is a solution. We (Ninja Cookie) believe you have to say that you don't want to be tracked.
We like to take the example of democracy and elections as a way of explaining our stance: many people complain that their opinion is never heard, or even that their voice cannot change the final outcome. But how can anyone expect an opinion to be heard, and taken into account, if it is not stated?
Great from a user perspective - but wouldn't this mean the end of online advertising? I imagine conversion tracking, or even sending requests to external servers wouldn't be okay with this setting.
People would still be perfectly capable of selling advertisements that worked similarly to the way ads worked before everything was online - a magazine/newspaper/tv show/etc says "our audience size is roughly X, our audience demographics are Y, here's what our ad rates are".
Modern hyper-invasive ads that follow you around the net, build up a profile based on everywhere you go, and occasionally try to install unpleasant software payloads, would have trouble surviving. Can you truly make a case that this would be a bad thing?
I would actually like site-related ads rather than a stupid version of mini-me chasing me around and suggesting crap I don't need.
Targeted ads are dead-end, because they inhibit exploration. They act on assumption that a person is fixed and cannot change or want to change. Before adtech I actually liked ads on paper, because it was shiny and showed things I maybe wanted to want. E.g. watch, suits, travel, home utility. I have read ads out of curiosity. Now it is an idiotic AI that thinks I need items that I bought a week ago, single women near me, and nothing more. I have some money but I don't have any watch, suits and I barely travel, partially because no one suggested that it is cool and I'm too lazy to do full-time research myself. Where are your really targeted ads, adtech industry? Can you do your job and empty my pockets? You're too dumb for that.
Based on a description of powerful datasets they have, they should show me:
- rtx 3080 with discount (free shipping!)
- compare se 2020 and 12 mini at coolstore.com
- stop walking and get a scooter!
All three are at least $800+ to spend at my location. Instead it shows:
- cheap mobile op that sucks and will never regain me a visit cost
- Xiaomi phone that I both have and hate
- python courses (I helped someone with script deployment at my linux box an hour ago)
It is like a psycho that follows you all the time and just repeats every action or mistake you do; every time you kick a stone on a road, they bring it back and pull your arm.
Where are your really targeted ads, adtech industry?
I think the lack of innovation is due to several problems:
1. the constant barrage of ads hurts their reputation making recruiting hard
Wherever you land on the ethics of it, it's a bit like porn: you may not disagree with it in principle, but in practice it seems skeezy enough you don't want to tell your friends that's what you do.
Or it could be some group has genuinely new ideas, but there is so much competition they can't demonstrate why their technology is better.
2. their data sucks
On a lark, I went to Walmart (they're more vertical than Amazon) and I searched for men's belts. When I filtered for "yellow" most of the belts were, indeed bright yellow. (Seriously, Walmart sells a lot of bright yellow men's belts.) Except, of course, for the ones that were black or brown.
And if you search for "t-shirts" and filter by fabrics, Walmart thinks reasonable t-shirt fabrics include acrylic, canvas, chiffon, corduroy, down and vinyl.
So, retailers don't even know what's in their inventory, because they don't know what "yellow" means or what a t-shirt is made of.
3. they have too much data
You point out, "they act on assumption that a person is fixed and cannot change or want to change." I'm pretty sure they're studying the data longitudinally.
The trouble is that they're hoping that magic algorithms can somehow purify petabytes of raw sewage into a clear description of consumer behavior. That's led them to invest in these big data money sinks.
And it's not just a sunk cost fallacy at work, I think they do get some apparent financial returns from the weird and inexplicable inferences those algorithms generate.
So they keep going down this rabbit hole while consumers, regulators and advertisers are steadily getting fed up with them.
This works great for a media organization like ours. It's not hard to convince a company that sells power plant control software that anyone who reads utilitydive.com is a good candidate for their ad.
But it's gonna be tough for sites that are "general interest" or even very specific but on a topic that just doesn't have big ad budgets behind it. Our approach also depends on building a recognizable brand in the industry and having a robust in-house ad sales and operations people.
I'm not here to defend programmatic advertising, but I think if/when it goes away it's gonna suck for a lot of small indie sites.
I sure do miss having Project Wonderful ads against my comics. Moderately targeted to my audience, no flash/javascript/etc bullshit. Worked real well for my solo-creator stuff.
Honestly though once Patreon came along I had a goal of "turn off ads" and I'm pretty happy with that, too. "Everything on the Internet will be free forever, supported solely by ads!" was a terrible idea.
I've bought a lot of useful things through instagram ads. TBH their targeting is really good and I in-fact do like the ads because they're so relevant.
I think you are absolutely right. And that's why I think cookies are definitely not dead yet :)
Cookie warnings are designed to be hard to opt-out in order to increase tracking opt-in... So that's why Ninja Cookie is good for user's privacy and web experience.
These modals being everywhere is 100% a failure of lawmakers being technically inept (again) and being vague with execution. Did EU lawmakers not have anyone providing them advice when writing GDPR?
I almost wonder if there was some lobbying done pro-banner because it probably results in higher engagement (I'm guessing most people click accept blindly) versus disabling cookies.
I'm sure Google likes the current state better than if they had to change their browser to encourage folks to disable cookies.
Yeah the banners are annoying and in fact may make it more likely for people to keep cookies. I have my browser set to clear all cookies on close, but that also deletes my "I accept" clicks, so every time I start a new browser session, and this is multiple times per day, my cookies reset. Result before: my cookies would all reset multiple times per day, all nice. Result after: I have to click stupid banners about cookies that I'm deleting soon thereafter anyways.
Oh man that's annoying! The funny part is that it annoys especially those who are careful about their data. So it is basically an incentive for being loose with privacy. Long ago I used set this setting in my parent's browser but they simply could not stand it.
I dom‘t think so, it can even backfire big time since when data is collected based on consent the user can always retract their consent and demand all data tracked under consent to be deleted. I bet every single company would struggle to meet users´ rights under GDPR if they would be enacted more commonly or even on a regular basis.
Whatever script you are using for smooth scrolling on that webpage, for the love of God, remove it. If I disabled smooth scrolling in my browser's preferences the last thing I want is some script emulating it poorly.
I noticed the scrolling was janky as hell, guess that explains it. There should be a preference in Firefox to disallow websites to fuck with scrolling.
According to their FAQ, their approach is remarkably different from the popular I Don't Care About Cookies:
Some current extensions promise navigation, but without a cookie banner. However, Ninja Cookie removes cookie banners by refusing the use of advertising or tracking cookies. This is not the case with current extensions. For example:
I Don’t Care About Cookies: this is regularly described as the Internet user’s indispensable extension. But in fact, I Don’t Care About Cookies removes cookie banners by allowing the use of all cookies. At Ninja Cookie we understand that your online browsing privacy is important. Nous considérons donc que l’approche de I Don’t Care About Cookies n’est pas la bonne.
Interesting, I'm giving it a try, thanks for your work!
Thank you so much for this comment.
Cookie popups are a pain for internet user and privacy because the design of cookie banners make them easier to opt-in than to opt-out! And we are actually trying to develop a way to improve web experience AND privacy with Ninja Cookie.
I don't think I Don't Care about Cookies accepts the cookies. It hides them. And some sites (facebook) take you scrolling the site as accepting cookies and tracking. So when you hide and scroll, you are opted in.
Straight from the "I Don't Care About Cookies" homepage:
By using it, you explicitly allow websites to do whatever they want with cookies they set on your computer (which they mostly do anyway, whether you allow them or not).
uBlock is able to block cookie banners. But he is not able to reject cookie uses. And we (Ninja Cookie) are thinking you have to say you don't want to be tracked.
We like to take the example of democracy and elections as a way of explaining our stance: many people complain that their opinion is never heard, or even that their voice cannot change the final outcome. But how can anyone expect an opinion to be heard, and taken into account, if it is not stated?
You have to turn it on. In the options, there are several "Annoyances" blocklists (AdGuard Annoyances, Fanboy's Annoyances, uBlock Annoyances) that do this. Turn them all on for best results.
Personally when I visit a page I always turn off all the switchable cookies, it's really interesting to see how different pages force you to accept them, by obscuring the disable button, adding an "allow all and close" button in all steps of the process (so you click it after getting tired) or even allowing you to turn all on, but forcing to turn them off one by one. It's funny, but long and unpleasant process. I was aware of the "I don't mind cookies" extension, and that was perfect... but for the opposite! I was wondering why there wasn't an option to say no instead of yes.
So I'll definitely try this. If it works as expected and you keep at least the basic features free this will be a must have for me.
Some time ago I blocked third-party cookies in the Firefox settings. I was surprised it did not broke anything that I could notice. I wonder if this is still a meaningful way to prevent tracking?
It's definitely a power-user skill to be able to even recognize "oh, this functionality is probably broken because an extension is blocking a critical cookie/script or I clicked 'No' to the cookie banner".
Though I've noticed that sites that use cookie banners really do only put their ad/analytics cookies behind that gate. They don't tend to let you turn off, say, a shopping cart cookie with "No".
Well, I still think sometimes my AdBlocker is the issue when a site is not working, but when I disable it it still doesn't work so even for power-user is hard to know if an extension is breaking the site or not. This gets a lot harder when you use multiple such extensions.
I Don't Care About Cookies and UBlock Origin are open source. Given that such an addon requires access to all sites, I have to trust a random french developer/company not to steal my banking credentials.
This is not intended to be hate and I will keep this in mind for the future as this is a good new approach.
I ask that you consider if your soon to be monetized features are compatible with open source.
Best of luck.