Tabbykatze
Someone in the meeting finally admitted the totally vast scope of what they were trying to do and how unachievable it realistically was without massive controversy!
It was daft. It is not the responsibility of the state to protect everyone's children (although some think it is), it is the responsibility of the parent to decide what is right and what is wrong. There are plenty of different ways to restrict your internet connection, your child's devices, etc. If you don't know how, that's not the government's problem. It has never been as easy to research stuff like this.
Governments full of people who do not understand an industry are too happy to regulate said industry. When they get told it's technically impossible by the industry and a whole raft of other people, they just think “oh, they're just saying that because they don't like that we're taking away X”. Well, maybe you shouldn't be trampling over people's freedom and then you wouldn't have this kind of problem?
I think it was Canada who was trying to shove totally ridiculous regulations on online advertising and were being told by the industry it just couldn't be done. They went ahead anyway and were shocked and “disappointed” that an entire industry disappeared. Because they think computers are run by magic and pixies and that the nerd can do anything with enough energy drinks and Doritos.
Something similar happened in Spain with (?)Google News. Stupid regulation which was technically impossible (or financially unviable) meant that the company pulled out of news in Spain.
Same with GDPR and the EU - there are US websites which can not afford the cost of compliance and just refuse access to anyone from the EU.
If they push on blindly with these stupid kinds of regs, two things will happen. One, the pr0n industry will just pull out if the risk of fines makes it unprofitable / the cost of compliance makes it unprofitable. Two, kids will become immediately more familiar with TOR and the ‘dark web’, exposing them to way more than a few naked ladies. After they've finished with the pr0n (which won't be the regulated kind), they'll be tempted by curiosity to look at the drugs, guns and other stuff on there. A generation growing up familiar with the black market. This can only go well.
So basically the government has finally realised what any tech savvy person could have told them in 5 mins, the porn pass was a privacy nightmare and stupidly hard to enforce in the first place. Got to love the way they can spend money and still end up with nothing at the end of it….
BBC… so instead of a tv license, they just want to rename to it a subscription instead. Time for the bbc to be like every other tv station, lets make them actually work for their money and put ads between the shows (the gap is already big enough) and have them make some new content that's actually worth watching.
Tried to watch or listen to a clip on the f1 race at the weekend via the bbc site and it wanted me to login so they could basically track what I'm watching etc… supposedly it's so they can monitor and improve what they serve to the viewers …. :shocked2:
philehidiot
Same with GDPR and the EU - there are US websites which can not afford the cost of compliance and just refuse access to anyone from the EU.
Nah that's just US companies not being willing to give up the advertising revenue they get from selling user data…. I've been on a few US sites and between ublock and privacy badger it's blocked over 100 things.
The GDPR was brought in to basically try and help solve the reason why many of us are running adblockers, we're sick of being tracked and/or having websites filled with adverts that more space than the actual article we're trying to access.
LSG501
….
Nah that's just US companies not being willing to give up the advertising revenue they get from selling user data…. I've been on a few US sites and between ublock and privacy badger it's blocked over 100 things.
The GDPR was brought in to basically try and help solve the reason why many of us are running adblockers, we're sick of being tracked and/or having websites filled with adverts that more space than the actual article we're trying to access.
It's not the prolific ads I really resent. I mean, I detest them and block any and all ads I possibly can.
BUT …. I accept that sites need revenue to run. Either a site is good enough that I'd pay for ad-free access or, if the adverts get too intrusive, I'd just not use that site.
What I really,
really don't like is the invasion of privacy involved in tracking. I mean, at least with schemes like a suoermarket reward card you have the option of just not getting one. I, personally, fully support the ethos of the GDPR in requiring truly informed explicit consent. That's all it needs. Then, we each have a choice of losing privacy but gaining rewards, or not losing privacy and not getting the rewards. I would pick the latter every single time and there isn't a realistic, practical reward scheme generous enough to change that and I doubt there ever will be.
spacein_vader
It's not impossible though. I run a forum and it has a single non tracking static advert, an Amazon referral banner, which only tracks you if you click it.
We host it so you can't block it unless you block the whole domain but my pi+hole leaves it alone anyway due to the reasons above.
I don't have any real problem with that, and I understand why it's there. And, if I used your forum, I have the
choice to ignore or click.
It's sort-of the digital world equivalent of a printed ad in a magazine. That, I don't much mind, but I do object to junk mail through my letter box (I get very little these days, probably because it's relatively inefficient and much more expensive) and I detest pestering unsolicited telesales phone calls (and I get even fewer of those, largely due to a call blocker). To be fair, most pestering phone calls these days are scammets anyway, and the blocker almost entirely eliminates them.
But ads of the type you describe are pretty inoffensive, even to me.
@ Millenium
I have in the past, but here's it briefly.
It's a small contraption that you plug your phone line into then plug the device into your wall socket.
Then, when any incoming call arrives, the blocker picks up the call silently and handles it in one of several ways, according to how you configured it.
First, it looks for caller-ID info. Anybody you've white-listed gets put straight through and any delay is so small they'll never know the blocker handled the call.
Anyone blacklisted gets a message saying you don't want their calls, and the blocker then disconnects. Your phone will not have rung, and unless ypu check the logs, you'll never know it happened.
Where it gets more clever is that there are a series of call types for which you can degine actions. So, you might choose to handle international calls differently from ‘number withheld’, which is different to ‘switchboard’ calls, etc.
But the basic call handling is :-
1) Blocker picjs up call, and doesn't ring your phone,
2) Blocker plays a pre-recorded (by you, or use the default) message saying a call handler is filtering calls, please announce who you are and it will attempt to connect
3) If no voice is detected, blocker tries again, twice IIRC, and if still no voice message, plays a ‘disconnect’ message and, well, hangs up.
4) Your phone STILL hasn't yet rung.
5) Once a voice message is detected, only then does your phone ring, and you hear the message and can
a) whitelist permanently, which puts the caller through.
b) whitelist this time, which puts caller through but they'll still get call-handled next time they call.
c) blacklist once only. Caller gets a message saying “unable to connect”, which is what they'll also get if you're out or don't pick up the call.
d) Blacklist petmanently. Caller added to blacklist and future calls are rejected without your phone even ringing
There's more, but that's the basics.
Oh, and you can give selected people a pass-code. When the call-blocker picks up the call, they type that in and get put through.
That's useful if family or close friends are calling from an unusual and unknown number. I use it to pass foreign family, bypassing an overall block on international calls.
Oh, and at no point can a caller hear you, or talk to you, until they are put through, either by virtue of whitelisting, or because you heard the caller announcement and you opted to put them through. Until that point, a caller has no way to know if you are even in.
I first got one for my elderly and recentky bereaved mum-in-law, who was pestered incessantly by nuisance calls. They dropped to irtually zero (getting through) immediately, and she no longer gets more than even a rare attempt, which is blocked by the blocker anyway, so she doesn't know they tried. I suspect her number gets marked as having a blocker on those lists and they don't even waste their time.
The blocker? There are several, at varying costs. This one is Truecall, which is around the £100 mark (many others range from £20-£50, but I hear varying reports of thei r efectiveness.
It is also Truecall technology that BT include in some of their phones but as I understand it, they are pretty much preconfigured, so you lose most/all of the versatility.
Also, there are several versions, one for disabled (IIRC) one for smal, business, and one that in addition to the above, has a call-recording (to SD card) feature so if you talk to insurance companies, buy goods by phone, etc, you csn keep evidence (transfer to PC) of exactly what you and they did or didn't say, and when.