[foundry27]

It’s great satire, but it really does mirror a larger societal shift where the burden of safeguarding personal autonomy has shifted from institutions/regulators to individual users. Do-Not-Stab, Do-Not-Track, whatever it might be, any sort of “voluntary compliance” is a non-starter in the face of financial pressures

IMO we need to start normalizing being militant about this stuff again, to aggressively and adversarially defend the freedom to use your computer the way you choose to use it

[pims]

It's amusing to see this message heavily upvoted on HN when most mentions of Firefox here are welcomed with an avalanche of perfect solution fallacies.

I'm dubious about people becoming militant about this when the software engineering industry gave Chrome a red carpet by using it and installing it on their relatives' computers while knowing very well it's adware and when switching to the alternative is incredibly cheap.

[mschuster91]

Chrome had the advantage for a long term because their dev tools were just so much better than Firebug in both features and performance. Even today, I can't pinpoint it to specific things because it's (relatively) little and subtle differences, but Chrome's dev tools feel way more polished than Firefox's.

It's almost as if Steve Ballmer and the legendary "developers developers developers" speech still rings true today - the key to getting people to use your software is to make life as easy for the power users as possible, let them spread the word. And it's ironic how Microsoft lost its ways there... a lot of people I know have gone from Windows to Mac and convinced their close relationships (aka those whose computers they fix) to do the same. It's just so much more relaxing to boot into an OS that doesn't try to shove advertising down your throat at every turn.

[svrtknst]

Personally I disagree. IMO, devtools were better when competing with firebug, but I haven't experienced much of a difference in the past... 8? years. Something like that.

[pims]

> Chrome had the advantage for a long term because their dev tools were just so much better than Firebug in both features and performance. Even today, I can't pinpoint it to specific things because it's (relatively) little and subtle differences, but Chrome's dev tools feel way more polished than Firefox's.

My point exactly! You're talking about which browser to use for web development. That's not relevant for engineers not touching html/js/css, and for all non tech savvy family members whose computers we set up.

[myfonj]

Interesting, in my murky memory Chrome's developer tools were at most "quite decent" but for a long period of time could hardly compete with Firefox's, maybe even with mere Firebug. It it true that in total "feature count" Chrome most probably leads now, and especially recently they seem to adapt features that used to be Firefox exclusive in remarkably increasing rate. But I really do not remember being blown away by Chrome's devtools, like, ever, actually. Even today I pretty much prefer Firefox Developer Tools over Chrome's, because they mostly has more features I actually need and also feel way less cluttered. Most of the times I need to do anything with Chrome's devtools it takes me just a little moment to stumble upon some missing detail I am used to (for example overflow/layout/event listeners badges directly in the DOM inspector tree) or to be mildly offended by unfamiliar (or missing) keybinding, or confusing layout. There are quite a few features In Chrome that I'd like to see in Firefox (command palette for example), but still prefer "living" in Fx albeit without them.

Yes, al subjective, biased and anecdotal, but wanted to leave one real (yet still virtual) vote in favour of Firefox's Developer Tools here.

[imglorp]

I think we shouldn't minimize the harm Chrome does by calling it adware. It monitors all your activity for Google to tie it to your identity, who then publish your demographics, preferences, history, and mental state on the global markets. Let's call it what it is: a brain tap.

[SauntSolaire]

> who then publish your demographics, preferences, history, and mental state on the global markets.

Is there any evidence this actually happens? Or are we just going based on vibes?

[imglorp]

No vibes and there is voluminous evidence, eg many links here: https://spreadprivacy.com/how-does-google-track-me-even-when... as well as Google Takeout itself. Oh and I forgot location data and shopping records, those are huge. So the collected data about you are well documented.

Given the data, why would a trillion dollar company leave money on the table? Their shareholders DEMAND they monetize it. There are few forces against this.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/google-says-it-doesnt-...

Given the 2.095 trillion reasons why this should happen, and few reasons it shouldn't, you should demand evidence it DOESN'T happen. Presumption of innocence is backwards when there are market forces.

[greycol]

For most of it you can just go to the customer facing part of ad services and see these as distinct chooseable options, for mental state you could hand wave it away as "do we really know the mental state of someone who closely followed political news and has been searching for air tickets and migration processes since Nov 6?"

[moomin]

Read any of the “I asked site X for my personal data” articles to get an idea of what’s going on.

[voxic11]

I asked Google for my personal data and they had almost nothing on me. But I have opted out of every form of data collection so it makes sense to me.

[latexr]

> It's amusing to see this message heavily upvoted on HN when most mentions of Firefox here are welcomed with an avalanche of perfect solution fallacies.

HN is not a hive mind. There are people here who love Firefox, people who despite it, and everyone in between. It’s tiring to always be reading your type of comment, as if everyone is a hypocrite. Maybe, just maybe, the people making those contradictory comments are not the same individuals.

And it’s not like Mozilla is free from controversies, including several of betraying user trust. If every major browser maker is going to break your trust and sell your data, I can see why people choose their poison based on other factors.

I use neither Firefox nor Chrome. Is Safari any better? Or Brave? In some areas yes, in others no. I don’t think there’s a single browser vendor which gets it unambiguously right.

[pims]

> HN is not a hive mind. There are people here who love Firefox, people who despite it, and everyone in between. It’s tiring to always be reading your type of comment, as if everyone is a hypocrite. Maybe, just maybe, the people making those contradictory comments are not the same individuals.

I didn't mean to say that all of HN despises Firefox, but simply that it very often brings negative sentiments, so seeing the comment I was responding to so high up in the thread made me react. It was also a kind reminder that militating is as simple as using an alternative to Chrome.

> And it’s not like Mozilla is free from controversies, including several of betraying user trust. If every major browser maker is going to break your trust and sell your data, I can see why people choose their poison based on other factors. > I use neither Firefox nor Chrome. Is Safari any better? Or Brave? In some areas yes, in others no. I don’t think there’s a single browser vendor which gets it unambiguously right.

And you're making my point about the perfect solution fallacy as well! Of course Firefox isn't perfect and has screwed up on several occasions, does that mean it's comparable to a piece of software that sends every single bit of information it can gather to its parent ad company?

[latexr]

> but simply that it very often brings negative sentiments

Just as often as it brings positive sentiments. Something that is (from anecdotal observation) quite common from both camps on HN is disappointment with Mozilla’s governance.

> does that mean it's comparable to a piece of software that sends every single bit of information it can gather to its parent ad company?

Not the argument I made. As I said, I use neither.

[account42]

Mozilla would be the first to request permission to stab you so that they can then analyze the blood of the knife in order to make future product decisions.

[klabb3]

> IMO we need to start normalizing being militant about this stuff again, to aggressively and adversarially defend the freedom to use your computer the way you choose to use it

Yes. As a millennial the times of civil disobedience was better. Not only did we get a better internet for consumers, but better companies were rewarded and won. Rose tinted glasses? Possibly, but there’s another reason for disobedience: the other side does it, and they do it just for money.

Concretely, is there something like Adblock that can be done for cookies? I don’t think blocking is as effective as poisoned data though. They ask for data, they should get it. If you don’t get consent, poisoned data is merely malicious compliance.

It could even be standardized as an extension to DNT: “if asking for consent after a DNT header, a UA MAY generate arbitrary synthetic data”.

[rakoo]

Use ublock origin with the "Cookie notices" custom lists. Not explicitely accepting cookies is legally the same as refusing them (now, whether websites actually respect that is the opening keynote of the Naiveté conference)

[cjs_ac]

> Concretely, is there something like Adblock that can be done for cookies?

I use a combination of two browser extensions: Cookie AutoDelete[0] and I don't care about cookies[1]. The second hides any GDPR 'compliance' popup; the first deletes any cookies set by a website when you close the last tab with it open. Both extensions have whitelist functionality.

[0] https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete

[1] https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

[worble]

ublock origin now has specific filters for cookie popups, you just need to turn them on in the filter lists. I'd say this is probably preferential to downloading another addon (that already had a scare with being sold off)

[lucumo]

> I don't care about cookies[1]. The second hides any GDPR 'compliance' popup > [1] https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

I like to use Consent-o-Matic[1] for this. IDCAC accepts tracking when ignoring the request doesn't work. CoM rejects all tracking on those popups. I like the slight Fuck Off that that sends.

[1] https://consentomatic.au.dk/

[anticensor]

Firefox has built-in consent banner decline feature, see how to enable it: https://www.ghacks.net/2022/12/24/configure-firefox-to-rejec...

[Tarq0n]

GDPR compliance isn't about cookies, it's about processing personal data. You can be tracked without cookies, so ignore these at your own peril.

[tremon]

GDPR compliance also requires explicit opt-in, so ignoring those popups has the same effect as refusing to be tracked. YMMV of course, but I don't see why ignoring cookie banners should lead to worse results than laboriously denying to be auctioned off.

[mpalmer]

To be extremely pedantic, it's great satire precisely because it mirrors that shift. Owes a lot to the OG, A Modest Proposal.

[photonthug]

> aggressively and adversarially defend the freedom to use your computer the way you choose to use it

Sadly even if you’re inclined to do this, it’s always a war of attrition, and corporations seem to realize they can just up the cost of your resistance in terms of time/frustration, and that’s enough for them to win in the long term. The history and trajectory of platforms, from browsers to AppStore’s to SaaS-all-the-things, is just tragic, with the amount of user control on a downward slide at each stage. The big question now is whether / how / to what extent AI is going to be corporate or democratized, but it’s hard to be optimistic.

Or, you know, if Clicking do-not-stab for 60 more years sounds like it sucks, you can try to become a shepherd or something. Works great for ~10 years, and then you can’t use cars, dishwashers or light switches without clicking do-not-stab, at which point they finally win and you say, you know what? I should be grateful they asked before they stabbed me, I practically owe it to them anyway, and I can’t wait to see all the love/cash rolling in after I’m a big shot shepherd influencer. Like and subscribe y’all and as always, hail corporate

[mcdeltat]

Worth noting the times where you have the choice to engage or not with a company with bad practices. Make it unprofitable for them to provide horrible service. Particularly applicable to tech, because most of it is useless rubbish we don't really need anyway!

[fsflover]

Reminds me of Graphene OS, which forces you to directly give money to Google to buy a Pixel, if you care about privacy and security.

[travisgriggs]

Is this a case where monopoly actually benefits the cause? The last great uprising in the public interest, imo, was Microsoft against the open source movements at the turn of the century. It was a heady time to be involved in software. I miss it frankly.

But perhaps it really only succeeded, because that Microsoft was like the Boeing of today, a company where Pournelles second type (the institutionalists) had taken over and was just riding out the momentum, allowing the upstart unfunded open source hippies to actually have success.

[aaronbrethorst]

Best time to do that would've been 19 days ago, but here we are. Buckle up.

[thrtythreeforty]

I'm registering my elderly relatives for dmachoice.org, to prevent them from getting junk mail. These clowns create the problem and then have the audacity to charge you to be added to the opt out list. I was really skeptical about the GDPR when it was passed and I am now fully on board for an American version.

[shadowgovt]

I'm still extremely skeptical of it because in practice it basically added a cookie banner to every every website I visit infrequently with no particular benefit to me.

I'm just going to click "yes," stop asking.

[Aeolun]

The cookie banner is only there because the website in question uses non-functional cookies (e.g. targeted advertising)

[KennyBlanken]

The cookie banner is there to punish people who have cookies turned off or set to be deleted upon browser/tab close - and generally annoy everyone else.

Think about how obsessive companies are about "UX" and how disruptive the banner is. Bitch-slapping people for fighting against tracking is more important to them than the user being able to access or use the site at all.

[TeMPOraL]

Obviously, because in our digital economy, users are cattle. Companies are obsessive about UX so the users shut up and eat grass and allow themselves to be milked or sheared. Refusing to participate? A cow that eats grass but doesn't let itself be milked gets shot, so in some sense maybe we should be grateful for the bitch-slapping...

[Aloisius]

It's gotten entirely out of hand.

Most EU national government websites have cookie banners. Even the European Commission website has a cookie banner!

This should have been implemented at the browser level. Let the browser generate a nice consistent UI to nag EU users when visiting websites about accepting cookies and let the rest of us opt out.

[almostnormal]

The standard for cookies should be updated with a way to include or retrieve a description of each cookie separately. Then, require sites to provide that description, and let users choose per cookie in the browser.

[Sander_Marechal]

That's nonsense. It's not about the cookies, it's about the data collection. You can use cookies without having to use a cookie banner by simply not gathering data you don't need. And if you do gather that data without using cookies you still need to ask for consent.

[Arch-TK]

That would be horrendous and would play right into the advertiser's hands which want you to "just click accept".

Cookies should be categorised as essential and non-essential and the website should specify which laws it is considering when it categorises them as such. The GDPR definition of "legitimate interest" (which is a bit vague but it's not that hard to understand it) should be explicitly clarified so that companies can't claim that a whole swathe of shit they opted you into automatically is "legitimate interest" if they also give you the option to opt out.

At this point they can still attach descriptions to each cookie (hopefully using some standardised interface so you don't have to literally send these with every cookie, localized) and then your browser can still present you with the idiotic: "here's what we would like you to use" interface, but streamline the process with the ability to just opt out of anything which won't outright break the website.

Although this still opens it up for abuse by companies putting things like: "your preference for us not popping up an annoying full-page message every time you visit a new page" into a "non-essential" cookie to incentivise you to just accept them all.

Honestly I think we should just have Joe "Sensible Person" judge company's websites for whether they're being actively malicious in any way and force the closure of any company which is considered actively malicious along with the destruction of all company IP and liquidation of non-IP assets. All the company owners should also be banned from owning/running any other company for 10 years. (only half kidding)

[GoblinSlayer]

They already provide description: "improve user experience", lol.

[devjab]

As someone who has worked on the Danish public sector I have a slightly different take on the public websites. They should never have been using things like 3rd party analytics to begin with.

I understand it’s was media and communication departments do, and that it’s natural that the people working within them would want to do so regardless of where they work. It’s their trade after all, unfortunately they bring the exact same “user engagement” mindset with them into the public sector. Well, at least in my anecdotal experience with a handful of these departments in 7-8 different cities around here. You can of course make good points on user metrics on a public website, but they should frankly work very different than they would on most web sites. On a public website it should be the goal to get to user to leave the site as quickly as possible, because the longer they hang around the more time they are spending finding what they need. That’s not what happens with these metrics in my experience, however, instead they are used to do what you might do on a news site.

That’s just one side of it, however, because the privacy concerns are their own issue. If you absolutely want metrics on a public website at least have the courtesy to build your own. It should be illegal for public web sites to use 3rd party tracking. I know why they use it, it’s for the same reason they spend a ridiculous amount of money on custom designs systems build on top of what is usually SharePoint or Umbraco. They refuse to hire the Django (insert any other extremely low maintenance system) expertise because it’s expensive on the “long term budget”, even though it would be much cheaper than 3rd party tools and consultants on the actual long term budget. Anyway, that is another point. But it really pisses me off when public websites need you to allow 3rd party tracking because they aren’t using it in any way which serves the public.

Worst of all is that cookie banners are explicitly a private industry way of dealing with their refusal to respect “do-not-stab”. Public websites could simply put their bullshit into their privacy page. Of course nobody would go there and turn on 3rd party cookies, but why should the public care?

[brookst]

Or if the legal department is concerned that someone could claim a cookie is non-functional, so to save the uncertainty and expense they advise always showing the banner. Especially since everyone else does.

It seems like there should be a parallel to “tragedy of the commons” that talks about how a good idea coupled with extreme penalties can lead to a bad outcome by making any risk calculation result in “jesus we just can’t take any chances here”.

[mola]

No,.all the companies running the sites chose to add a cookie banner. And you choose to keep going there

[shadowgovt]

Yes, and my life world be more convenient if this banner would go away or I could declare a universal preference.

I miss the old Internet where nobody cared about their privacy.

[williamdclt]

nobody cared about their privacy because there was no widespread systematic effort to invade it.

I don't care about my privacy in the street despite it being public because there's no-one following my every step taking note of where I go, how fast, what music I'm listening to, what I'm looking at... (although the astute reader will argue that this is less and less true, there's more and more tech tracking our activity in real life too)

[samtheprogram]

I click no to all of them, but it would be really nice if the Do-Not-Track header essentially let you pick in advance — for you (0) or for me (1)

[rurban]

Not just "really nice". It must be mandatory to respect it.

[d3VwsX]

The only hope I still have is for some kind of fully local LLM-driven "agent" browser that does the browsing for me, navigating search engines, cookie banners and showing me what it found, nothing else.

Unfortunately entire businesses are built around preventing people from using bots, for obvious reasons, so the only obvious way forward to make browsing the web a better experience will also mean ending up on the wrong side of that battle.

[blooalien]

> ... "it basically added a cookie banner to every every website I visit" ...

Yeah, no. Hostile advertising companies added that cookie banner as a form of "malicious compliance" with the law purely to annoy everyone like a buncha spoil't little brats who didn't get their way, so now they're gonna make everyone suffer... If we get a similar law in the USA, you can expect to see annoyances just like it (and probably worse) on sites hosted here, too.

[chrismorgan]

The worst part is that it wasn’t even malicious compliance: the cookie banners they added seldom even satisfied law, in ways completely obvious if you just read the law (which is pretty easy reading, only a few thousand words for the relevant parts). I don’t understand why relevant commissions didn’t make more noise about that, because it was obvious that major players were deliberately poisoning public perception.

[shadowgovt]

That heavily incentivizes me to advocate against any such law.

[thfuran]

Not if we ban third-party ads.

[brookst]

Can you source your claim? Because it seems like it would create a competitive advantage for a non-hostile advertising company. Websites aren’t any happier about cookie banners than users are. If it’s just an emotional, spiteful reaction, the grownups should be able to make a fortune.

[blooalien]

You'd think there'd be some "competitive advantage" to be had, but when their entire industry is built upon tracking and profiling everyone they possibly can, they'll do anything they can, fighting tooth-and-nail to the very end against any legislation that somehow interferes with their tracking, even if it means resorting to childish and petty temper tantrums that further enshittify the web. What little "competition" exists in that industry all fully believe that building massive profiles on everyone is the only way to make any money at advertising. They've been allowed to get away with it for so long that they can't even remember there was a time when tracking everyone all the time everywhere wasn't even a thing (and yet advertisers still managed to advertise back then, somehow)...

[wahnfrieden]

Other replier believes that competition is a system that works toward consumer needs and betterments. Advertising is extractive

[shadowgovt]

And if the regulators didn't predict such compliance they should be replaced with competent actors in their jobs.

That was the obvious outcome. What did people predict: site owners leaving money on the table? Who pays for operating the sites then?

[schmidtleonard]

When GDPR was first going through the public circuit I remember reading the proposed laws and being pleasantly surprised to find that they specifically called out and forbade the likely workarounds, including the obnoxious banners we now see everywhere.

I would love to know what happened. Did the laws get "revised" to re-open the loophole? Was superseding legislation passed? Did the courts reject it? Are there enforcement issues?

[roenxi]

That sounds like a legal minefield - I would point out that GDPR-style legislation exists because the legislators don't trust the industry to assess what is reasonable. So the industry would be in a position where:

1) They aren't trusted to be reasonable about user consent.

2) They are only to take action when they judge it is reasonable to check user consent.

It'd probably be a very rocky process to nail down what those words like "loophole" and "workaround" mean as the advertisers start abusing prescribed no-banner situations.

[p_l]

TL;DR the enforcement simply lacks manpower, and the most egregious cases go to court which also takes time.

[Aeolun]

All the sites that need advertising like that can just die off and leave the internet a better place.

[shadowgovt]

Did we ever think that would be the end result of all this?

[account42]

Good job rewarding those companies for adding the nag screen. I'm sure that will get them to stop.

[shadowgovt]

If by 'companies' you mean https://commission.europa.eu/ then sure.

[badgersnake]

Cookie banners are malicious compliance and the failure to do anything about them is indicative as to how much the EU cares about privacy vs how much they want to be seen to be caring about privacy.

[adra]

Clearly you don't have a browser plugin that simply opts out of all cookie banners. Ultimately, the webs ites have a financial interest in malicious compliance, so you either work within the system as given or throw your hands in the air and let every and all sites rape your data.

[shadowgovt]

Yes, the second one. I don't really care; it's not "my" data. It's data about me.

When I walk down the street and sometime sees me go by, those aren't my photons they caught. By analogy, same with my browsing history.

[Zak]

It is, however worth at least considering restrictions on continuously following a person in public places and reporting all their observed activities to a third party.

Of course there are practical limitations on that kind of physical surveillance. It's expensive, tends to attract attention, and even nation states can only do it to a few people at a time. Information technology allows it to scale to almost everyone, almost all the time, for a small fraction of a corporate budget.

Perhaps it's worth at least considering restrictions on that.

[dylan604]

> It is, however worth at least considering restrictions on continuously following a person in public places and reporting all their observed activities to a third party.

I don’t see any difference between online “tracking” and real world stalking. If some one was following you every where you went taking notes on everything you did, interrupting you and preventing you from actually doing what your were actually wanting to do, you’d be able to have the police intercede in your behalf. Only now we think it is different because “on a computer”.???

[rockskon]

You are the culmination of your life's experiences. Going by your definition, one could infer an individual has zero intrinsic ownership of any non-health data. Which I categorically object to.

[Aloisius]

You have ownership over your own memories and records.

Other people also own their own memories and records - some of which may be about you.

At least, this is how it was for most of human history.

Now some people think they should be able to demand everyone destroy records about them. If it was possible, no doubt they'd also demand people destroy any memories about them as well.

[dcsommer]

ePD in 2002 mandated cookie banners well before GDPR in 2018. But yes, point taken that well intentioned regulation can be poorly implemented and have negative repercussions.

[lolc]

I know of no regulation that mandated cookie banners. I just know a lot of sites who chose to use banners because the operators are somewhere between weasely and malicous.

[pjc50]

The problem is GDPR isn't prescriptive enough. That makes it ripe for "technically correct but really annoying" solutions.

It also failed to actually ban ad tracking.

[moritonal]

Key to note that the cookie banner fiasco wasn't GDPR, it was a separate policy that should be changed.

[IgorPartola]

I wonder if there is some way to DoS the tracking services by basically accepting third party cookies but then immediately discarding them so every page load generates a new cookie and presumably state stored on the other end to match it. Or are these tracking cookies typically self-contained so that no state is stored server-side?

[tliltocatl]

Given that web industry uses no-server-state for *authentication* (with all the issues it implies), i would expect tracking also be no-server-state.

[rixed]

Isn't that the reason cookies were invented in the first place? To keep servers stateless?

[afiori]

If the server can recognize you then it is not stateless, cookies make http stateless

[shadowgovt]

On the internet, it started as the user's responsibility.

For netizens, the idea that the use should be able to opt out of logs about their interaction with the service the operator owns is novel (because they always had the option of not using the service if they found the pattern distasteful).

[blooalien]

There's a bit of a difference between normal logging of access to services to protect your devices / network (and to understand your users' access to your services), and using every nasty trick in the book to build extensive detailed profiles of everyone's browsing footprint across the entire web, often without their knowledge or consent (hence the laws, because it's the only way to convince some folks to not do bad things). The first should be expected behavior, whereas the second should be considered unacceptable and abusive, but has somehow been "normalized" in modern society.

[shadowgovt]

It's a difference of degree, not kind, which is how it became normalized.

[hedora]

The internet started with decentralized protocols like NNTP, so you could just choose a different news server if the one you were using started tracking + selling your download logs.

Centralizing the serving of third party (or even first party) content is already way outside the original norms of the internet.

Heck, back in the day, HTTP caching would be enough to block tracking. (No javascript, and only the ISP sees which users pulled the document from cache.)

[Aloisius]

The internet/arpanet started largely with centralized protocols like various file transfer protocols, telnet, finger, various networked filesystem protocols, network printer protocols, network graphics protocols, echo, QOTD, etc.

[wkat4242]

Yeah and the fuss about it being enabled by default is not really relevant. In the EU tracking must be opt-in anyway. So this is expected behaviour.

However the EU dropped the ball by not making it mandatory to respect this flag. If they had we wouldn't have had the huge cookiewall mess we have now.

[Deukhoofd]

The annoying thing is that they have regulations in trilogue that would actually make the DNT header obligatory to follow, the ePrivacy Regulation. That was supposed to drop alongside GDPR, but has instead been delayed for 6 years now. It's apparently supposed to be finally finalized somewhere in 2024, so I hope to see it sometime soon.

[wkat4242]

Oh that's good news, that would be great, then I can just set that flag and will never have to bother with cookie banners again <3

[tbrownaw]

> larger societal shift where the burden of safeguarding personal autonomy has shifted from institutions/regulators to individual users.

If anything the shift is going the other way, with some of the more busy-body jurisdictions trying to take things that are properly enforced by the user's user-agent and instead making them officially the responsibility of the other party.