this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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The way they talk about it makes it sound like they invented the written word, but that notwithstanding the fonts actually look really nice in my opinion.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"WHY IS THIS ALLOWED?" is the question I have asked for many years now.

Because people want to have features in their web browsers and originally no one really designed the web with security in mind.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Some of it is incredibly difficult to imagine how to do in a private way, too.

For example, my browser can display AVIF images. If my browser announces in the Accept "hey, I'm able to display AVIF images. Please send me AVIF images if you have them rather than JPEG", that helps to identify me, since most browser don't display AVIF, which sucks. But I really want to get AVIF images: they're efficient. So how do I announce that I want AVIF images without announcing that I want AVIF images?

Some of the other web features were well-intentioned but have just ended up being useless. Like your browser also announces what language you prefer. Like "hey if you a German version of this text, please send it to me in German, thanks". But for some reason EVERY WEBSITE IGNORES THIS and just says "oh you speak Spanish and English but you're travelling in Russian right now? HOPE YOU LIKE READING RUSSIAN FUCKER". So it's 100% only used for invading privacy now.

Some of the tracking mechanisms never should have been allowed in the first place (like timezone and which fonts I have installed), but some of them (like Accept) I can't think of how to do in a secure way.