Around the time the whole cookie banner thing started, Forbes had this particular one that acted like turning off nonessential cookies was this whole convoluted process that required waiting and processing something. There'd be a progress bar stating "please wait, processing your request".
Looking at the JavaScript, it was a setTimeout() for quite a long time.
I knew exactly what kind of company Forbes was after that.
Alright, but was it any better when for example NYT employed the 'click-to-subscribe-call-to-cancel' model?
I remember that relatively well, because 13 years ago I used to trust them and was literally shocked when I had to spend 85 minutes and ~130 EUR on a 2009 international call.
what about jimmy over there ... he did this thing last year, it was so terrible you would not believe. really puts things into perspective, makes you think.
> Forbes had this particular one that acted like turning off nonessential cookies was this whole convoluted process that required waiting and processing something. There'd be a progress bar stating "please wait, processing your request".
Weather Underground, formerly an indie weather service that IIRC goes back to a telnet interface before the web existed, does something similar. A window from trustarc.com appears showing a progress meter counting up the percentage 'processed', alongside "We are processing your request, this could take up to a few minutes to process." Haha. I flipped 2 bits.
Now owned by The Weather Company (who also owns The Weather Channel), who are owned by IBM, who proudly say it uses the IBM Cloud, which apparently needs a few minutes to process this. Shameful deception of end-users.
I had used wunderground for my entire life on the Internet until I saw that. The National Weather Service is pretty good - and no dark patterns.
Glad I'm not the only one that has noticed this scam going on. I've seen a number of sites doing it. One site I saw this on you had to wait an entire minute. Guess it's time for a new set of laws...
It’s already illegal- this is the exact kind of nonsense Google and Facebook were fined for at the end of last year.
Strangely the Irish data protection agency seems less enthusiastic.
Sometimes users find a loader reassuring that the operation is working. I can think of many instances where, as a web developer, I've been asked to implement a loader because an important process finishes too quickly.
Now this is anecdotal and may not be why the publisher did it but it can see why it would be implemented.
That's fair, but it isn't just a few seconds to give the impression that something is working, it's multiple minutes of watching a percentage slooowly climb from 0% to 100%. It's obviously just a cheap trick to annoy people who turn off their spyware.
No, sorry, opting out of cookies is an instantaneous thing that 1) warrants no waiting time, and 2) is something that can happen in the background while using the site.
There is absolutely zero reason to artifically force the user to wait 30 seconds other than to coerce them into enabling predatory advertising cookies, which Forbes did (does?) and they know it.
If anyone remembers Daniel Lyons' numerous anti-Linux articles on Forbes [0] from back when Linux was seriously threatened by the SCO lawsuit... I'm still a bit salty about that. The articles were mean-spirited, sarcastic and overblown, well written (if one ignores the numerous factual inaccuracies and ad hominem attacks), and featured attention-getting titles like "Linux's Hit Men" [1]. The sad part is they were quite believable for anyone with no knowledge of the situation. If you followed any of the relevant tech news, not so much.
> Lyons was a senior editor at Forbes magazine, covering enterprise computing and consumer electronics. He was also the author of the Forbes cover article, "Attack of the Blogs", where he wrote that blogs "are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective," claiming that Groklaw was primarily created "to bash software maker SCO Group in its Linux patent lawsuit against IBM, producing laughably biased, pro-IBM coverage."[11]
> Between 2003 and 2007 Lyons covered the SCO cases against IBM and against Linux. He published articles such as "What SCO Wants, SCO Gets," where he stated that "like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree. They should wake up."[12][13][14]
"When she's not reverse-engineering black markets to think of better ways to combat fraud and cybercrime, she enjoys rapping and designing streetwear fashion."
In case it helps anyone else, I didn't understand this comment and I looked it up and found the person referenced is one of the couple who have just been charged with (stealing) correction, laundering ~4 Bn in bitcoin
Went through some of the articles. How are they worse than most of what you see on similar news sites? And why would they have to take any of those down?
This reminds me of Gordon Kelly, a senior contributor, whose every articles that pointed Chrome's weakness would often headlined "Google Just Gave Millions Of Users A Reason To Quit Chrome". Sure enough, the headlines will be edited after awhile, but I consider this kind of original headline a clickbait. I eventually have to delist Forbes from my reading feed. It's that terrible.
I have been wondering for a while now, how does Forbes still maintain its brand?
It has now been at least two decades that it has had close to zero credibility, but somehow in general population it is maintaining its brand as a legit publication
People always have been misled by branding. For example, AT&T today actually has (almost?) nothing to do with the original AT&T; the name was effectively purchased.
These days, I find very few people will even engage in evaluating the credibility of what they read - they seem to scorn the issue. Look at all the links to Wikipedia here on HN, for example - something I didn't see until maybe a year or two ago: Wikipedia was always seen as a bit dubious and uncertain. I haven't seen anyone argue otherwise, but again they seem to scorn or resent even raising the question.
> For example, AT&T today actually has (almost?) nothing to do with the original AT&T
Of all valid examples available, you picked AT&T, which is definitely out of set? Seriously?
Okay, they do not control the Northeast (that's Verizon), but other than that it'll be the equivalent of asking if Russia can trace back through the pre-1919 Russian Empire or the current Germany from Prussia.
P.S. Please look at this merger chart: https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BZ033_LIONDO_9.... Although it's unlikely that AT&T and Verizon will merge again (unless the US FTC lost all anti-trust enforcement), your statement can at least be proven wrong in this context. Maybe use Polaroid as an example next time?
Ignorance most likely? I've noticed things getting worse, but everything in this article is new information to me. I also didn't know Huffington Post was written by contributors.
I think it’s all about placement and reach. They are good at SEO and article promotion on social media. Since people see it all the time they just assume it can’t be that bad.
My early 2000s girlfriend worked for forbes.com and told stories of the shitheads she worked with. I don't doubt you needed to know someone to get your name in the pages, but chances were they'd be clueless braggarts.
I remember just a couple of weeks ago a tweet from Forbes Spain saying unemployment in Spain was going down (https://twitter.com/Forbes_es/status/1486640126071480320). It felt outrageous as Spain currently has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1115276/unemployment-in-...). We are currently living under a totalitarian government and it saddened me that Forbes was yet another media paid by our totalitarian government covering their shit.
I don´t know why, but for some reason Forbes was in my mind as an economic-freedom newspaper like. But as the title says, it´s just another platform for for scams, grift, and bad journalism as the other media payed y the government like El País.
The tweet isn't wrong in that Spain's unemployment rate has indeed been lower in the fourth quarter of 2021 than in a long time. [0] I'd be curious to understand why you would call the current spanish government totalitarian, they seem to be overall rather moderate, and won a solid majority in the last parliamentary elections.
To be fair to Forbes, the media was all over her as a female Steve Jobs and declaring it the beginning of the girl boss era. A lot of people who criticized her were shut down as being sexist.
To be fair to Forbes, it is also how basic maths works. Her share of the company was worth $4.5bn at the time.
There are genuine criticisms to be dished out, but reporting the current valuation of a company as the current valuation of the company doesnt really rank up there.
Readit News
Looking at the JavaScript, it was a setTimeout() for quite a long time.
I knew exactly what kind of company Forbes was after that.
'Real Rich' people can usually see past scams and similar bullshit.
If they couldn't, they wouldn't remain rich for long. :)
Weather Underground, formerly an indie weather service that IIRC goes back to a telnet interface before the web existed, does something similar. A window from trustarc.com appears showing a progress meter counting up the percentage 'processed', alongside "We are processing your request, this could take up to a few minutes to process." Haha. I flipped 2 bits.
Now owned by The Weather Company (who also owns The Weather Channel), who are owned by IBM, who proudly say it uses the IBM Cloud, which apparently needs a few minutes to process this. Shameful deception of end-users.
I had used wunderground for my entire life on the Internet until I saw that. The National Weather Service is pretty good - and no dark patterns.
There is absolutely zero reason to artifically force the user to wait 30 seconds other than to coerce them into enabling predatory advertising cookies, which Forbes did (does?) and they know it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28500092 (which links to https://twitter.com/pixelscript/status/1436664488913215490 )
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Lyons
> Lyons was a senior editor at Forbes magazine, covering enterprise computing and consumer electronics. He was also the author of the Forbes cover article, "Attack of the Blogs", where he wrote that blogs "are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective," claiming that Groklaw was primarily created "to bash software maker SCO Group in its Linux patent lawsuit against IBM, producing laughably biased, pro-IBM coverage."[11]
> Between 2003 and 2007 Lyons covered the SCO cases against IBM and against Linux. He published articles such as "What SCO Wants, SCO Gets," where he stated that "like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree. They should wake up."[12][13][14]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/2003/10/14/cz_dl_1014linksys.html?sh=...
His later work on Fake Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley was hilarious.
I can't grok whether his hatred of Linux was genuine or was it simply motivated by some external motivation from SCO or related organisation.
He should have known better.
I would posit that when you write hit pieces (either for your own convictions or money), you are not a good writer.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/heathermorgan/?sh=3f3120737f7d
"When she's not reverse-engineering black markets to think of better ways to combat fraud and cybercrime, she enjoys rapping and designing streetwear fashion."
(Edited based on information in a reply)
The lyrics are pretty prophetic, and I've no doubt she made this particular song private to avoid more self-incrimination.
NSFW
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGkz_lQhpyM&t=1s
https://vimeo.com/348396244
Because there is significant evidence that the author is untrustworthy?
It has now been at least two decades that it has had close to zero credibility, but somehow in general population it is maintaining its brand as a legit publication
These days, I find very few people will even engage in evaluating the credibility of what they read - they seem to scorn the issue. Look at all the links to Wikipedia here on HN, for example - something I didn't see until maybe a year or two ago: Wikipedia was always seen as a bit dubious and uncertain. I haven't seen anyone argue otherwise, but again they seem to scorn or resent even raising the question.
Of all valid examples available, you picked AT&T, which is definitely out of set? Seriously?
Okay, they do not control the Northeast (that's Verizon), but other than that it'll be the equivalent of asking if Russia can trace back through the pre-1919 Russian Empire or the current Germany from Prussia.
P.S. Please look at this merger chart: https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BZ033_LIONDO_9.... Although it's unlikely that AT&T and Verizon will merge again (unless the US FTC lost all anti-trust enforcement), your statement can at least be proven wrong in this context. Maybe use Polaroid as an example next time?
[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/spain/unemployment-rate
https://www.forbes.com/profile/elizabeth-holmes/?sh=4a110eff...
Yep, this, sadly... $current_year, everything is *-ism.
But, a good book was written on Holmes and her company: "Bad Blood" - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37976541-bad-blood (not affiliated, just a fun read)
There are genuine criticisms to be dished out, but reporting the current valuation of a company as the current valuation of the company doesnt really rank up there.