[hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Holy shit

[remotelove@lemmy.ca]

But FREE browsing! How revolutionary.

[kspatlas@sopuli.xyz]

I've seen this more and more, it's fucked up and probably illegal

[hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Think I've seen this twice now in the past couple years, but yeah it's likely not compliant with the cookie law in EU

[misk@sopuli.xyz]

Just enable reader view in your browser.

[iamthetot@sh.itjust.works]

Illegal where? What law does it break?

[magic_lobster_party@fedia.io]

In EU with their GDPR/cookie laws. I’m pretty sure hiding the declining of tracking or cookies behind a paywall is not supported under those laws.

[vzq@lemmy.world]

The informed consent provision of the GDPR.

[itpaw@discuss.tchncs.de]

It’s not but I guess they know that nothing really happens to them doing this.

[hubobes@sh.itjust.works]

This is perfectly legal, the law only says that the user must freely choose to allow the website to save said data. You can opt out here and not use that website.

[fl42v@lemmy.ml]

Idk what's the big deal, honestly. Remember the memes about yt premium, "I either give you my money, or my data, but not both"? Well, it's kinda like that. The caveat is, their payment provider likely still collects data, and some info is saved on the backend anyways, but that's another can of worms.

[flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz]

This is very common in the EU. The majority of news sites do it. I believe it's technically legal because they aren't under obligation to provide a free access at all

[brsrklf@jlai.lu]

I wish. In the end it all depend on how individual countries interpret the EU law. In France it was decided that "either let us shit all over your privacy or pay a subscription" was okay and in the spirit of the law.

It's bullshit IMO, but lots of sites ran with it. So those I refuse to interact with now.

[hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com]

Asshole design is asshole design. They're essentially saying here that they'll sell your data whatever you choose, opting out is not an option.

Obviously there's easy ways to bypass this but it's not an excuse for them

[fl42v@lemmy.ml]

To me it looks more like they're saying they'll monetize their work no matter what, tho. One way is through direct payments by those who consider their articles worth paying for, then they don't need to sell userdata or show ads; the other way is selling userdata. Well, there's also non-targeted advertising, but mb it doesn't worth as much or something (and targeted ads already pay close to nothing from a single viewer, afaik).

Where I personally draw the line is when such subscriptions still include ads (looking at you, "ad-free" disney+) or have unnecessarily large costs and so on. I mean, if they charge close to what they're making with ads and selling data, we could get most websites ~tracker-free for probably a couple of bucks a month each. This, in turn, lessens the power of ad network owners, which again makes the web better. Although, mb I'm idealizing too much, idk.

[powermaker450@discuss.tchncs.de]

and this is why uBlock origin is the be all end all of extensions.

[heavydust@sh.itjust.works]

It is very legal and common in France too. You're free to decline as long as you're a customer. You're free to accept or not see the web site.

[brsrklf@jlai.lu]

We need search engines that hide those from results by default. Basically "walled garden-blocking".

They want to keep the door shut until you surrender your data? Fine. Then they don't get to pollute your web if you refuse then.