We value your privacy

For me, this is one of the most irritating and broken things about the internet. And in the long run, night be one of the best things.

Let's consider what's going on here.

Any site that declares that they value my privacy are, without exception, do not. They are legally obliged to ask my permission to store cookies and are doing so grudgingly by shoving a full-screen modal dialog in my face. There are all kinds of dark patterns at work here.

Pattern 1

There's the basic "we're collecting this information... you can refuse consent by doing x". No user feedback when you do x.

Pattern 2

"Legitimate interest". Actually what this means is they have a whole stack of 3rd parties who would to track you, even if you don't want the site operators to do it themselves. There may be *hundreds* of these. It's a separate opt-out to the first pattern.

Pattern 3

Saving "opt out" preferences takes several seconds. I mean, it just doesn't. There's a timer running to block you from their content for a while simply to punish you for not accepting their tracking cookies.

Pattern 4

We would like to send you notifications. I bet you would.

Self-defeating

So how could this ultimately be a good thing?

I already know that in a spare moment I'll instinctively whip out my phone and start scrolling through news. It's an addiction. But now when I find a modal cookie dialog before I see any content, I'll just close the site rather than fight my way through the cookie preferences. Hopefully this eventually will lead to healthier behaviour; looking around, taking in the world, talking to people.

Gemini, of course, doesn't suffer from the same privacy problem. It also doesn't have the vast ocean of attention-grabbing rubbish that is taking over the web. There's plenty of content to read but right now, it's enough to look through favourite aggregators and authors a couple of times a day.