Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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YSK: Reddit webpage has unblockable trackers, even with Ublock Origin installed (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by CodenameDarlen@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37402366

This is the main reason I completely ditched Reddit, if you use the new Reddit interface instead of the old one (old.reddit.com), you'll see a constant request being made to "https://www.reddit.com/svc/shreddit/events" (open your DevTools > Network tab, can't see on Firefox idk why).

The problem is, if you add this to your Ublock Origin filters the website won't load properly, that's why uBO team didn't block it already.

You'll notice this request isn't only being made from a interval but also when you do basically any action in the site, like pausing or resuming a video (send timestamps of when did you pause or resumed).

It sends other kind of data like what subjects you're seeing when closed a tab or the related subjects of a post you click, this all can be used to trace a perfect profile of you and things you like.

You can avoid that using the old.reddit but it still has the same kind of tracker, even tho you can block it here without major issues.

By my analysis, old Reddit interface does the same but to a random URL path that always starts with "reddit.com/api/something". Ex.: reddit.com/api/friends So you can block anything that starts with "www.reddit.com/api" in your custom filters (after all you're using old.reddit.com), then you're mostly free from Reddit trackers (more or less). Side effect is, you won't be able to use the chat in the old interface.

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[–] SirMaple__@lemmy.ca 59 points 2 days ago (6 children)

[–] massi1008@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

They have content that Lemmy doesn't.

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yeah Lemmy is great but Reddit seems to easily have 1000x the content.

[–] mukt@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 days ago

990x is garbage. The 10x that matters, is difficult to find because of the noise and ads.

[–] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

They steal a lot. We need to yoink more content too.

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

that content comes from niches that the people of fediverse try to avoid.

[–] sibachian@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

so, the fediverse wants to avoid all hobbies?

[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 days ago

I need to use it to look stuff up once in a while, but I try to avoid it whenever possible because of the ridiculous amount of fucking about it takes just to make that site usable. It used to need reddit enhancement suite, then they brought in the new reddit so then it was RES and a thing to force it to use old reddit, now they're blocking VPNs and most of the old apps so now if I have to go there I try to just use a random Redlib instance.

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 19 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Esoteric questions that’ve been answered on exactly one search-indexed website on the “public” internet (e.g. not Discord or forums requiring login)

(This doesn’t happen for y’all essentially every single week?)

Edit: shoutout to adding farside.link/ before the reddit URL

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Porn

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

FR. The (actually user ran) NSFW subreddits are so much better than any other aggregator

[–] MarriedCavelady50@lemmy.ml 12 points 2 days ago

Their network effect is pretty strong. Plenty of community information silos built up. They have paid admins mass banning bots. Their new AI search summarizes answers for your questions and sources reddit comments.

Best way forward is to ask questions outside of the walled garden

[–] lattrommi@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

My city subreddit doesn't have a lemmy and since i don't have any other social media, it's the only place i can learn about local happenings that aren't catered towards the elderly or children.