I tried to read this article on digital privacy but after five minutes spent unticking boxes allowing my usage data to be sent to an augean list of data collectors I gave up and left.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
Yes, it's tangential in the sense that we're using the word there: it veers in a different direction from the article.
If an article is truly inaccessible or illegible, then it shouldn't be on HN. But if it's readable-albeit-with-annoyances, then it belongs here if (and only if) the content is sufficiently interesting, irrespective of annoyances.
In that case we want the comments to focus on the interesting content.
Not that annoyances aren't annoying—they are, and they annoy us too. But the cost of having comments about them is much higher than the benefit, especially because they're so repetitive. Annoyance comments also tend to get stuck at the top of the thread, accumulating upvotes and choking out more interesting discussion.
That might be true but it's been done to death because it's applicable basically every time commercial coverage of a privacy-related topic. It has the vibe of "we should improve society somewhat. yet you participate in it. curious!". Not to mention in publications with proper editorial independence, the "business side" (ie. the side that's responsible for adding the ads/trackers) is firewalled from the side writing the articles, so there isn't even really a contradiction.
It's more like, "you complain that people throw sand in your eyes, yet you also throw sand in people's eyes, curious." This is not "yet you participate in society." Unlike participating in society, these behaviors are entirely optional and they can stop any time they want, they just prefer not to. Editorial independency doesn't absolve them. It just means that they're doing the right thing in one area but not another.
OP shouldn't have to use private browsing, that's the entire point of the regulation, and that does not prevent cookies from being used during a session anyway.
Potential behavioral fingerprinting via cross-analysis of sessions. The more important point is that OP should not have to change their habits if a company is maliciously complying with regulation; the regulation should be tightened.
