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Joe Gardner

Strummer said:
You want us to ban all external links?
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I mean if your reasoning for banning X is what you say - you surely would wouldn't you?

We all know it's because you think Musk is a massive bellend, to which I agree completely but this forum is changing nothing, isn't a political tool & all it is doing is making it more difficult to share things about Forest on this forum.
 
Strummer said:
No, we won‘t.

And although Musk is a frankly colossal bell-end, that isn‘t the reason.

Ever since he bought (the platform formerly known as) Twitter, he’s deliberately messed with its algorithm to promote what are extremist opinions, whilst filtering more moderate ones. He has used his unofficial, unelected, position to interfere in the democratic process of more than one country, attempting to shape its political agenda.

But, that still isn‘t the reason.

What’s the reason then? Well, I‘ll tell you.

One of the things he’s done, which hasn‘t been widely reported other than in the technical press (which, I guess, 99% of you don‘t read) is made significant changes to the underlying way in which Twitter allows access to its links via its API, which then allows third-party sites - like this one - to show direct Twitter links: a process known as „deep-linking“.

What happens now, is that in addition to demanding you log in to Twitter to even view many links (which means you then have to sign up for that absolute cesspit) is that they implemented an additional level of extremely aggressive browser-based user-tracking.

If you now even load a Twitter link in an external webpage, your browser will then connect to Twitter (without as much as your say-so) and Twitter in turn will place aggressive tracking cookies in your browser‘s cache, which will merrily follow you around the internet, wherever you go, cataloguing and detailing your browsing habits. The idea is to fingerprint your identity uniquely, so that they can track your behaviour and sell your information to advertisers.

This is exactly the same behaviour that Facebook and Instagram do, and it is a gross invasion of your privacy. It’s also mostly illegal under European Law, but Twitter (and the aforementioned Facebook and Instagram, as well as others like Reddit and Pinterest) ignore this, and claim you’ve given your consent (hence the multitude of confusing cookie messages you get, when you browse a website nowadays. You read all that info? No, thought not).

I suspect that many folk, simply by loading up a page on LTLF, absolutely don‘t want Twitter to track their internet browsing, simply by exposure to a page where there is an embedded Twitter link.

„But I‘ve never ever used Twitter!“ you cry. Cool, go look in your browser cache, and see if you have cookies from twitter.com or x.com - you may well do so. You may also see googletagmanager.com in there too (Twitter uses Google to serve adverts, just like this Forum does).

You can limit this invasive behaviour - if you must use Twitter - by installing an adblocker and using it on their website, or (if you have an Apple device) enabling iCloud Private Relay if it is available. If you’re on Android, well yeah, good luck, you‘ll need it. And don‘t use the „X“ App, as that is even worse. There are some privacy-focussed browsers too, if you search for them. Just don‘t use Google Chrome.

Now, many of you may well think „well, I don‘t care who tracks me, I have nothing to hide and I quite frankly admire Elon Musk“ (I may have added that last bit): if so, fair enough, but you’re in a minority I believe, and we don‘t want to encourage the misuse of user data by predatory platforms such as Twitter/X whose business plan exists to merely milk user data and then sell it to advertisers.

We aren’t doing this for our benefit, we are trying to do this for yours.

And if anyone posts a Twitter link, you can easily just copy the text-path of the actual link, then open a new tab in your browser, type „www.x.com“ and then just paste the text of the link, if you absolutely must. Takes about two seconds.

But it’ll save those of you who haven’t any interest in Twitter‘s owner getting any richer, from being tracked, traced, and profiled whilst you browse the internet.

As I have posted before, we make decisions on the running of this Forum by consensus, we’ve made this decision after lengthy and careful debate, and we aren’t going back on it.
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I started reading and thought it was Statto 🤣
 
Strummer said:
If you now even load a Twitter link in an external webpage, your browser will then connect to Twitter (without as much as your say-so) and Twitter in turn will place aggressive tracking cookies in your browser‘s cache, which will merrily follow you around the internet, wherever you go, cataloguing and detailing your browsing habits. The idea is to fingerprint your identity uniquely, so that they can track your behaviour and sell your information to advertisers.
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I have no feelings on the X link ban either way and my knowledge the dark arts of the internet isn't great but can those that are concerned about tracking cookies not just delete their cookies and cache after browsing? Or use private mode?

Genuine question
 
So why break the links to X then as opposed to allowing people to just select the text and right-click/open? Also why just X and not Meta sites and others who do the same thing?
 
You need a Twatter account to see Twatter content.

Many and more people daily don't have one.

What's the point of posting something that more and more people simply can't see.

Post a screenshot instead. Very simple.
 
You can click a Twitter link and view the video etc without an account, the video posted earlier loaded fine for me and I don’t have Twitter anymore.

You can’t browse the site but you can load a link and watch a video.
 
Flaggers said:
You need a Twatter account to see Twatter content.

Many and more people daily don't have one.

What's the point of posting something that more and more people simply can't see.

Post a screenshot instead. Very simple.
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Screenshots isn't the issue, it's videos

And you don't need an account to see it
 
Carlos said:
I remember when this forum was mainly fun with football sprinkled on top. Now there's an argument of some sort in every thread [emoji38]
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No there isn't
 
witneyred said:
Joseph Charles Gardner now trending on LTLF for the wrong reasons
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Beats him trending for being a toff posh chavvy (see also: Bamford).
 
GOBIAS said:
I’m not trying to be a class swot, but the mods do all the hard graft on here to keep this forum going for all of us. So happy with whatever they say. Especially as I know nothing about the inner workings of cookies etc..
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We all post on here for free and without having to do any work toward running things

I think the mods and the people that fund this forum are well within their rights to impose whatever rules they want, to be honest
 
I'd have had more respect for the Twitter ban if the mods had come out and said "we hate Elon Musk and refuse to facilitate access to his platform" rather than try and hide under this aggressive cookie nonsense, anyone can delete their cookies or stop them being saved permanently in the first place but it's their forum and if we don't like it we can always go somewhere else

We pay nothing to post on here and the mods put just as much time in to make sure everything runs OK, they give up their time to do it so they call the tune
 
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