Komonews now apparently does this crap where it needs to “process” your cookie opt-out, at least on mobile.
Any alternative news sources you’d recommend to follow? Just for stuff like weather or big events.
If you’re unfamiliar with this tactic, when you click “opt-out” the webpage basically displays this widget with a loading bar saying it needs to “process” your request. When in reality you’re asking them to simply not use cookies, so it’s saving the web browser time by not installing any cookies.
Note the logo on the status window there: TrustArc.
A little searching for that company shows that this dark pattern is effectively a feature of their service. Twitter user “pixelscript” dug into their javascript a bit to find the cause of the delay. It turns out that, as you may have guessed, this isn’t any kind of asynchronous callback pause waiting on the remote server to do something. It’s just a self-imposed client side delay; because they feel like making you wait.
Original post: https://twitter.com/pixelscript/status/1436664488913215490/photo/1
Screenshot (from Starbucks’ implementation)
Moral of the story: do not patronize businesses with hostile relationships with their customers.
TrustArc is website cancer.
Accept and they’re gone in an instant, reject and they make it fucking annoying…
I reviewed them as part of an RFP exercise to implement a cookie tool, and was shocked at their practices.