True. Same goes for "ad free" streaming platform subscriptions. These days literally almost every streaming platform has introduced additional charges for advert removal even for the top tier plans

Yeahhh that sucks that we've reached this point. I would actually consider paying some sites for my privacy. If they offer something that I value, then it's fair for them to be compensated somehow. However, if they offered that option, I still probably wouldn't trust it.

Even if the site itself fully intends to stand by their offer, can I trust the payment processor(s), bank(s), etc. involved in the transaction?

I'm not really a crypto guy, but I wish something like Monero (or whatever privacy-protecting alternative that might be "better" these days) could become more mainstream.

Entirely depends on the group. I've been in meetings with developers where we agreed it was creepy and pushed back. I've also been in meetings with marketing where they said it was normal, and meetings with others who said it was the cost the user paid to use our website. Ignoring of course that we sold stuff on the website, and that part of it was a management system that the users actually paid us money to use.

They stopped giving me those projects, which was a win for me but arguably a loss for the users.

I did though for a bit convince people that it was worthwhile to fix the accept/reject not working right, but that it wasn't a top priority to fix the reject button disabling tracking for all users of the site for the duration of the cookie. (Cookie stored "be creepy" flag. When the user clicked the button it stored a flag in the session so we could statistics, and then read the flag to set the cookie. Someone used the wrong session value and stuck it in the global store used to cache sitewide data, so when it went to see if they opted out it would see if anyone had in the last month. They fixed it after the data was all fucky for a few months and they realized my argument of "who would opt out? It's just the way the Internet works" was extremely wrong and no one will ever complain about being opted out of tracking)

Yes, I agree. Still not spying...

Eh, "did you ask to download something" is about the line where I would draw acceptability. You cannot use a website without them knowing if you made a download request for the content so I'm not bothered by them paying attention to the data to see what I downloaded.
It's when you start sharing the data with others, or using that data from others, or adding things to collect information and send it back that I mind.

If someone did everything on the up and up, they would see my browser request, information that says what it can do that the browser opts to send, and a cookie that identifies the browsing session.
I'm fine with that because I can clear it or change it at will, and without sharing anything the capability information is less useful than the session cookie.

This is pretty much never done server-side. It would unnecessarily increase server load by requiring callbacks and/or polling. It's always done in JavaScript or, for really simple setups, CSS.

Nobody running ads is considering users who block JavaScript wholesale. Not only is it a trivially small percentage of users, but it's also a waste of time: those users aren't going to stop blocking JavaScript to display ads anyway. Instead, they'll just make it so the site fails to render at all if JavaScript is disabled.

You've presented a solution looking for a problem.

As for anti theft gizmos, they're talking about the alarm tags and ink packs that get attached to merchandise so it sets of an alarm when you try to leave with it, or the item is covered in ink when you forcibly remove the security tag. These are passive anti-theft security and do not constitute spying.

Even if we were talking about video cameras, it's unreasonable to call that "spying". In order for something to be spying you need an expectation of privacy, which is not present when you're inside a private business. It would be like calling a security who observes customers a spy. It's absurd.

2/10, should have used jQuery

or maybe not honestly I don't know I just wanted everyone to know I'm old enough to remember classic stackoverflow

Yes, what could stop this fingerprinting, I know firefox has a vpn built in now, not quite sure how much that helps.

When I use Tor cloudflare hassles me incessantly back on firefox.

Update your filters, and/or couple it with uMatrix for extra fuckery.

Can't bitch about my use of an adblocker if I also block your fuckin' scripts.

Huh, really? Idk. I don't see any, like at all. I am on firefox, it works better with that browser I read tell.