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   Mike Taylor 🦕 (mike@sauropods.win)'s status on Saturday, 14-Feb-2026 21:46:14 JST Mike Taylor 🦕

   Over the last few weeks I have noticed a behaviour in myself.

   If I follow a link and I get a "We care about your privacy" popup, I click the "Reject all" button and read the article.

   But if there is no "Reject all" button, just a link to a complicated set of preferences, I simply close the window and never see what the article had to say.

   I wonder how many others do this.

   And how many web-sites are losing A LOT of their traffic for this reason.

   —
   UPDATE: see replies, lots of people do this!

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Saturday, 14-Feb-2026 21:47:58 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     @mike The worst slimy pattern is doing this with a complicated preferences panel that, when you finally click "save preferences", puts up a box saying there was an error saving preferences and kicks you back to the start. Instant nope. Breaking law, attempting plausible deniability, exploiting sunk cost fallacy.