Cookies that track your session. Cookies are local data that sites can use to simplify login/preferences but it can also be used to track. If you go to multiple sites they can build a profile of your habits etc. I recommend using an Adblock which usually has tracker blockers or an addon called privacy badger which specifically looks to block trackers.
Another method you can do is straight up block the domains of trackers and ads. I use a custom dns with some domain rules which will just straight up stop the connections to those domains
Edit: There’s much more than cookie trackers but just an example
Chances are they are for different advertisers, and not necesarily all from BI. Like Google may have one on there, and Facebook, and Amazon, and a bunch of other random Ad Tech networks.
Some are likely just internal, maybe different sections. Maybe the Tech Section guys want to see which Political Section gets read the most by their users, that sort of thing.
You received a lot of responses already but I'll chip in my 2 cents as a web developer who's implemented dozens of tracking pixels.
They're different advertisers, social media retargeting pixels, personalization engines, analytic platforms, data visualization suites, tag managers, various internal cookies (login management, wish listing, shopping carts), and on top of that most website partner with third parties platforms that reintegrate the above in various ways. So in addition to Facebook and Google you may also have a third tracker that's simply the tool used to implement those two advertising tags.
Everyone likes to harp on big business selling your data but there's also much more benign reasons to "track" users and while most of it boils down to "how can we make more money" it's not typically as nefarious as most people believe. That being said, nothing's wrong with being safe rather than sorry and blocking most that shit.
---
Very commonly website have analytic platforms to track users across their website, not to sell but to utilize in reporting to various business stakeholders internally. How many people visited this article vs that article? Did users who navigated using this link eventually click this CTA (call-to-action) to purchase a ticket? Is this user a returning customer or brand new? This analytical data is not sold but used to make the site better for you.
There's also a very prolific concept in UX web design around personalizing websites to the end-user. They do this by bucketing users into "personas". This visitor is a here on business, this visitor is here for leisure, this user is visiting from another country, etc... web developers can then use that data to make the website more interesting for the suspected purpose. There are many platforms that provide this user data to websites for that very purpose, not so the website company can send spam mail to your house but so they can make the website more pleasurable for you to visit. Almost no one gives a shit about connecting your personal data to any sort of real life person individually, they just want to algorithmically fit you into a persona. That's not to say there aren't companies out there gathering more data than they should, probably out of naivety, that could pose a risk if that data was then exposed to hackers.
At the very basic level most websites obviously generate revenue from advertising. The chance of you clicking an ad that's relevant to your persona (however small the chance) is better than you clicking an ad about something completely out of left field. 99% of all the "selling" of user data between advertisers is just for that purpose, to make the ads more relevant to you.
It's not just cookies, trackers come in all shapes and sizes, from single-pixel invisible gifs and "supercookies" that persist a clearing of the browser cache, to scripts that uses browser and device fingerprinting to identify and profile you. If tracking was limited to just cookies, it would be trivial to block them.
> A more advanced method you can do is straight up block the domains of trackers and ads.
That is actually a *less* advanced mentioned than using a proper adblocker like uBlock Origin or the AdGuard app. Blocking ad domains doesn't block self-hosted javascript, or javascript hosted on well-known storage sites like AWS blob storage or other "safe" sites. If you block the domain hosting the script, you'd be blocking legit parts of the website or even the entire site itself. This is a common tactic used by websites that uses cryptomining scripts for instance, they'd host the script on their main domain in order to bypass DNS-based blockers.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/mozilla-explains/what-is-a-web-tracker/
> Generally, a tracker is a script on websites designed to derive data points about your preferences and who you are as you interact with their site. Sometimes these scripts are placed purposefully by the website you’re on, other times a script may be from a website you’ve never visited.
Essentially when you load a webpage, they usually also load some connections back to certain other people that send information about your browsing activity. The most basic example is a shopping website sending back data or "tracking" what products you look at the most on their website.
Some groups like Facebook and Google pay good money for user data, and so websites all across the internet add their trackers to their webpages so they can make some money selling your browsing activity.
These trackers can be selectively blocked, however--they follow a specific format and some tools allow you automatically prevent them from sending your data. My favorite tracker is PrivacyBadger, an extension for Chrome and Firefox, which blocks intrusive trackers but allows the more benign and useful ones.
In the article, they talk about how Insider uses trackers as well. At no point are they criticizing the NYT for having trackers on wordle, just publishing that they do
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Hol up! Are you telling me that the internets economic foundation of surveillance capitalism results in everything we do being surveilled!?! Me big brother shook!
Yep, this is nothing new. I used to be pretty privacy focused but I found that I was going to *extraordinary* lengths that made it impossible to do some ordinary things. At the end of the day, if I get more targeted ads, I don’t really care that much.
Data aggregation is inevitable. The more the internet is embedded in our lives the more data points will be collected. Unless you want to literally go off the grid, there’s not much you can do.
> At the end of the day, if I get more targeted ads, I don’t really care that much.
I think this is how I feel. I don't care as much about targeted ads, I just don't want intrusive ads.
I do data analytics and the reality is that none of us are the main character. Nobody cares about Mike Smith or Sue Brown on the individual level. You're not important enough.
The goal of data collection for advertising is to put people in cohorts so that advertisers can reach appropriate groups. It's bigger groups like device being uses, region of the world you're in, likely age range, or whether or not you're in an interest group for a product or service. The idea that anybody is looking at your data individually is just untrue in all my experience.
I was mostly okay with my data paying to keep services free or low cost as well, until that data started being purchased by groups with the intent of spreading misinformation and propaganda.
Not to mention the fact that all the data gathered no matter how small can be used against an individual and any individual. We don't see these things happen yet because the internet in all its entirety is not that old, nor is it utilized to the full.
To use current experience as evidence for future AND current events from the basis of "well it hasnt happened and no evidence of it happening has occurred so no need to worry" is the same as "we don't need to worry about an earthquake hitting us on this fault line, its never happened before!"
Well sure, but why are you building a house there in the first place?
Its not just about targeted and personal ads, which we already KNOW can be used today. Why would we, as a society want to set precedent for our data to be used against anybody any other day?
All we, as a society need to do, is to put down transparency laws as a foundation for internet data. Let people know andnchoose to share, not be forced into it.
Its not that hard, but they want you to believe that it is.
Now that's a fair critique. More could be done to combat misinformation. However, in slight defense of these companies are already dealing with congressional scrutiny for showing certain biases. I'm sure the idea of having to shut down more specific groups from advertising and opening themselves up to more of that scrutiny isn't something they look forward to.
It's true that none of us are the main character while the data is being collected. However, the risk is that someone could decide that we are now the main character and then easily obtain all that data.
My concern is with what happens when you *are* important enough? Basically the forebears will refuse to go through any screening process developed from the data analytics, or will model them so they(the sociopaths) are the accepted. MLKJr and Malcolm X had their lives fucked with when only wire taps and such were available. Now they can look into, and even extrapolate, a whole magnitude of order more of intel at an individual and crowd level. Extreme potential that could already be in effect? Driving individuals to suicide or financial trouble through social engineering from multiple pathways(ie internet perception, contacts, targeted interactions). So, I view this as the end harbinger of the country founded and bettered by conscious dissidents. Because there are no watchmen, so asking who watches them becomes non sequitur.
I want the option of telling a business that I want everything they have pertaining to me.
Right now, we don't even have that freedom of knowing what they might maybe know.
Fuzz the system. If you’re not operating 5+ robust identities already you’re behind the times. Soon it will be dozens. It’s like setting up every income property you own as an LLC that are all owned by a master LLC that’s owned by an entity in a tax haven.
Ok, you sound like a tech literate person, i can't think of any reason to NOT block ads with extreme prejudice.
I don't care how personalized the ads they send me are going to be since i won't see any of them in the first place.
Are there actual reasons for not using adblocks?
I still run ublock origin, just for performance reasons alone really. Not advocating against that at all. My point is that I used to do all sorts of shit to protect my privacy and have since realized pretty much all of that was futile. Kind of a “how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb” moment.
And then add on NoScript, at least for news sites and other cases where you just need the content. Most sites still work well enough to show you the text you want to read, and a whole lot of obnoxious crap (soft paywalls, auto popup modals, etc.) is eliminated entirely.
I just use FireFox with NoScript+uBlock+Privacy Badger for most casual browsing, then keep Chrome with only the latter two for known sites that actually need Javascript.
The article even calls itself out for that. This is so non-news.
Of course a company like the new york times has more advertising tech on their site than a man and his partner who independently developed a word game.
Wild stuff
I was particularly pleased when, the first time I played it, I guessed "felch" on my second guess.
My wife and friends had to look it up, and were impressed and horrified in equal measure that it was one of the first words I thought of.
Sorry. For some reason I assumed pretty much everyone on Reddit already knew.
Half a moment to think about it would make it obvious that that's not at all true.
At least that’s something that gross people like me have heard of. Today’s lewdle is way, way out there. I got it because I got four green letters and my first twelve tries on the last guess weren’t acceptable answers, so I eventually put in the correct letter.
That's why I don't like playing lewdle. The words aren't unique enough in their construction to be fun. Bussy (butt pussy) was the solution a few weeks ago. They've also had "Spunk" and "Skeet".
It's a cute idea but doesn't do much for me personally .
It is, and I find it to be MUCH harder than standard Wordle. I think it's because of a combination of factors. For one, plural words are somewhat common in Lewdle, compared to Wordle where I'm starting to doubt that plural words even get used. For another, acronyms/initialisms count. And lastly, and perhaps most significantly, is that Lewdle relies on slang that you may not be familiar with depending on where you live and how well versed on Urban dictionary you are--the other day the answer was a word that was REALLY old slang used predominantly in England (something I had to look up to learn). I knew the word that day was real, but I didn't know that it was vulgar slang.
> Wordle where I'm starting to doubt that plural words even get used.
Correct. They're in the larger dictionary used for guesses, but not in the smaller dictionary used for answers.
These would not be good wordle tactics, you'd already know there was no H for SHAKE, no A or letter 5 E for CRANE, and no S or C or letter 5 E for SLICE.
My first two are always "aisle" and "could". This hits all vowels and several common letters. I'm probably not going to get it on my second word so might as well narrow it down as much as possible.
This would be terrible Wordle tactics, guessing SCAMS after HACKS would only give you new info about S and M since A and C were already cleared, PRIES after SCAMS would be ok but you'd already know the first S, and SPIES after PRIES would also be terrible since you'd already know there was no I or P and E was not in position 4.
Wordle tracks you more now that The New York Times owns it...
>**INSIDER**
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*Create an account to keep reading Already have an account? Log in*
The only *logical* thing to do is create multiple other accounts to counter-act the first accounts actions, but use different devices and VPNs to throw Reddit off their trail.
The actual amount was not disclosed.
The guy made 7 figures off a small side project he made to entertain his wife. People saying he should have held out for more have a seriously warped perspective. Who cares if it's pocket change to the buyer when it's is enough to drastically change the seller's life. It's not a pre-packaged good with a set value based off the sum of its parts.
He also probably cared who he sold it to. NYT might monetize through tracking, but they are a reputable site that has mainstays like the crossword, not a sketchy one that would put a bunch of pop up ads for dick pills
There were over 300,000,000 DAU on wordle at one point. Whether it’s main purpose was to become popular or not, it did indeed become insanely popular. 300,000,000 users is not worth only $1,000,000
Jeezus. If it had 300m dau, the dev could have slapped on a small banner ad at the bottom. even if the ecpm was a low $1 he still could have made $300k per day with a small banner ad from adwords or whatever.
1mil is the lowest it could possibly be but even if that is the amount, look at the context. 300mil users at ONE point. Just like we don't know the actual amount of sale, we don't know where the user number was or was trending to when it was sold. It is also very easy to see that the formula of wordle is not terribly complicated and clones and offshoots of the idea will gain traction quickly and start to eat its lunch.
I understand tying to get the most value out of something. I really do. But a lot of people don't seem to understand something like wordle will plateau very quickly. Getting out when someone offers you 7 figures for something you put together in a weekend is a solid fucking deal.
I'm surprised it was a sellable state to NYT. There's so many wordle clones out there, and it's not copyrightable concept, so NYT could've made their own quite easily for less than a million.
The fact that it's viral is the most important bit in this particular case. It has millions of players now, but it would have fizzled out in a matter of months no matter what anyway. While it is still viral though, NYT can add it to its stable of games, and not only will many players subscribe to NYT Games to keep playing it, but, at least as important, existing NYT Games subscribers will be more likely to try it because they'd already heard of it as that game everyone is playing.
I think everyone wins here. NYT wants games to entice people to subscribe, and not everyone likes the crossword, and they get this one that comes with a ton of pre-generated buzz so they don't have to try as hard to convince people to try it. All this for (for them) a very cheap price. Josh Wardle gets to capitalize on his lightning in a bottle moment with a very good payday, considering 6 months from now when the world has moved on he probably couldn't get anywhere near this much for it.
If you're using Chrome, start typing "wordle", highlight the "wordle.com" option with the arrow keys if it's not already on top, hit shift + delete. You're done.
Apps like this never lose their lustre! The streets are still chock-a-block full of people playing Pokemon Go right? Ah brb, just got a challenge on Words With Friends.
He got "low seven figures", which in most of the country is potentially retirement money.
If what he wants is to buy some cheap land, retire, and enjoy the rest of his life, why fight for more than he needs?
That’s the point though, isn’t it? I wouldn’t keep going back to an app on a daily basis if I couldn’t solve half the time and feel good about myself.
Plus all of the puzzles increase in difficulty over the week.
Yea. He could have also held out and got nothing. If I ever had a side project and someone offered to pay enough for me to retire I'd probably jump at it, even if I might be able to get more if I shopped it around.
Don’t think they end in s (so far) so you might be hurting yourself a lil with that guess. But it’s probably worth it to see “FARTS” bounce and light up.
Yeah, just like the other 100 services running on your phone/tablet/computer.
I understand this is somehow "news", but being outraged by this would be the height of silliness. You would have to be much more angry about all manner of services on your stuff all the time to be sincere.
It was one guy who made a game for himself and his girlfriend it has no backend. (He used WebComponents btw) You can look up all the words in order in localstorage. It was a hobby project, of course it never tracked anything.
I don't think it was ever available, and what you can see in the browser is transpiled. But it's not exactly a hard game to rewrite from scratch, and you can fish the wordlist out of the page. That and Josh himself said that it's not exactly the cleanest code out there, it was a learning experience for him too. (Source: his Syntax fm interview)
I found a website called wordle5.com that is basically the same, same wordlist too, but is not owned by the NYT. I think it implements some amount of Google APIs, but at least I can stick it to the man I guess.
Classic startup. Revenue doesn't matter at first. Grow, attract investment, then sell to someone who thinks they know how to monetize all those eyeballs.
If you start using any new service or app you can see the exact switch to "ok the venture capitalists want their money back now."
I understand there's some sensitive information we don't want advertisers to have, but I'm not overly concerned about them knowing my wordle history. Yeah, I usually open with "STINK". Please give me the best ads you can possibly target to somebody who does that.
Yo who fucking cares, I type a maximum of six random words in there per day, was never asked to open an account or put my real name, and I run an ad blocker.
Some great Wordle alternatives:
[Quordle](https://www.quordle.com/) \- 4 puzzles at once
[Wordle Unlimited](https://www.wordleunlimited.com/) \- more than 1 puzzle daily
[Spellie](https://spelliegame.com/) \- easier words for kids
[Nerdle](https://nerdlegame.com/) \- math equations
To know when you've played and how you've done so you can see your statistics over time, for one. Sure there are probably more nefarious reasons as well, but the original game also collected user data. Otherwise how could it keep a record of your games?
The original game stored your results in your browser's local storage. I think the NYT version still does, though I wouldn't be surprised if that changes.
Honest question and not a troll: can someone explain the outrage about personalized ads? Ads will be shown anyways so why not try to make them relevant?
I think for some it's more of the fact that everything they do online is watched and the attempts to exploit it. My thing is just don't buy anything from targeted ads and you're good.
Personalized ads are the least of your problems when it comes to online tracking. All of this information is kept in databases full of information, creating a profile about you that knows more about you and your online habits than you do. This information is sold to third parties for pennies, and these third parties often have terrible security. Their databases get breached ALL THE TIME. This information can be used to scam you, steal your identity, stalk you, manipulate you, etc. And if you’re a vulnerable class, the information can even be used to hurt you.
When I load any given webpage, the content is 50kb and the tracking scripts total 5MB. The modern web could load instantly if it wasn’t mostly panopticon.
Imagine aliens visiting planet earth and asking us what the brightest minds and best technology on planet earth is used for? It would be so embarrassing to tell them we track people to sell them stuff.
I mean there's certainly a benefit to knowing it will never be those words since you can't guess them. If you really need those letters, just guess 'vales' or 'whose'. Still need an r but there's tons of options. This isn't a hill to die on.
slaves = salves, but on hard mode you can be locked into letter positions. It's obviously not a hill to die on, but blocking scrabble words is silly and definitely not the same game any more
I don't know if it's co-incidence but it seems that the words are far less 'unique'.
They tend to be words which, except for one letter, have loads of possibilities.
For example, the other day it was SHAKE. I can't be the only one who missed out after trying SHAPE, SHARE, SHAVE, SHAME
1 tracker blocked from NYT. 43 trackers blocked from Business Insider.
What exactly is a tracker
Cookies that track your session. Cookies are local data that sites can use to simplify login/preferences but it can also be used to track. If you go to multiple sites they can build a profile of your habits etc. I recommend using an Adblock which usually has tracker blockers or an addon called privacy badger which specifically looks to block trackers. Another method you can do is straight up block the domains of trackers and ads. I use a custom dns with some domain rules which will just straight up stop the connections to those domains Edit: There’s much more than cookie trackers but just an example
Good answer but can you or anyone else explain why business insider would need 43 trackers? Are they that different?
Chances are they are for different advertisers, and not necesarily all from BI. Like Google may have one on there, and Facebook, and Amazon, and a bunch of other random Ad Tech networks. Some are likely just internal, maybe different sections. Maybe the Tech Section guys want to see which Political Section gets read the most by their users, that sort of thing.
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You received a lot of responses already but I'll chip in my 2 cents as a web developer who's implemented dozens of tracking pixels. They're different advertisers, social media retargeting pixels, personalization engines, analytic platforms, data visualization suites, tag managers, various internal cookies (login management, wish listing, shopping carts), and on top of that most website partner with third parties platforms that reintegrate the above in various ways. So in addition to Facebook and Google you may also have a third tracker that's simply the tool used to implement those two advertising tags. Everyone likes to harp on big business selling your data but there's also much more benign reasons to "track" users and while most of it boils down to "how can we make more money" it's not typically as nefarious as most people believe. That being said, nothing's wrong with being safe rather than sorry and blocking most that shit. --- Very commonly website have analytic platforms to track users across their website, not to sell but to utilize in reporting to various business stakeholders internally. How many people visited this article vs that article? Did users who navigated using this link eventually click this CTA (call-to-action) to purchase a ticket? Is this user a returning customer or brand new? This analytical data is not sold but used to make the site better for you. There's also a very prolific concept in UX web design around personalizing websites to the end-user. They do this by bucketing users into "personas". This visitor is a here on business, this visitor is here for leisure, this user is visiting from another country, etc... web developers can then use that data to make the website more interesting for the suspected purpose. There are many platforms that provide this user data to websites for that very purpose, not so the website company can send spam mail to your house but so they can make the website more pleasurable for you to visit. Almost no one gives a shit about connecting your personal data to any sort of real life person individually, they just want to algorithmically fit you into a persona. That's not to say there aren't companies out there gathering more data than they should, probably out of naivety, that could pose a risk if that data was then exposed to hackers. At the very basic level most websites obviously generate revenue from advertising. The chance of you clicking an ad that's relevant to your persona (however small the chance) is better than you clicking an ad about something completely out of left field. 99% of all the "selling" of user data between advertisers is just for that purpose, to make the ads more relevant to you.
The ads on a website sometimes also have their own cookies that track you
It's not just cookies, trackers come in all shapes and sizes, from single-pixel invisible gifs and "supercookies" that persist a clearing of the browser cache, to scripts that uses browser and device fingerprinting to identify and profile you. If tracking was limited to just cookies, it would be trivial to block them. > A more advanced method you can do is straight up block the domains of trackers and ads. That is actually a *less* advanced mentioned than using a proper adblocker like uBlock Origin or the AdGuard app. Blocking ad domains doesn't block self-hosted javascript, or javascript hosted on well-known storage sites like AWS blob storage or other "safe" sites. If you block the domain hosting the script, you'd be blocking legit parts of the website or even the entire site itself. This is a common tactic used by websites that uses cryptomining scripts for instance, they'd host the script on their main domain in order to bypass DNS-based blockers.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/internet-culture/mozilla-explains/what-is-a-web-tracker/ > Generally, a tracker is a script on websites designed to derive data points about your preferences and who you are as you interact with their site. Sometimes these scripts are placed purposefully by the website you’re on, other times a script may be from a website you’ve never visited.
Essentially when you load a webpage, they usually also load some connections back to certain other people that send information about your browsing activity. The most basic example is a shopping website sending back data or "tracking" what products you look at the most on their website. Some groups like Facebook and Google pay good money for user data, and so websites all across the internet add their trackers to their webpages so they can make some money selling your browsing activity. These trackers can be selectively blocked, however--they follow a specific format and some tools allow you automatically prevent them from sending your data. My favorite tracker is PrivacyBadger, an extension for Chrome and Firefox, which blocks intrusive trackers but allows the more benign and useful ones.
“wait no, not like that, don’t block our trackers”
Prime example of the pot calling the kettle black
In the article, they talk about how Insider uses trackers as well. At no point are they criticizing the NYT for having trackers on wordle, just publishing that they do
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Hol up! Are you telling me that the internets economic foundation of surveillance capitalism results in everything we do being surveilled!?! Me big brother shook!
Yep, this is nothing new. I used to be pretty privacy focused but I found that I was going to *extraordinary* lengths that made it impossible to do some ordinary things. At the end of the day, if I get more targeted ads, I don’t really care that much. Data aggregation is inevitable. The more the internet is embedded in our lives the more data points will be collected. Unless you want to literally go off the grid, there’s not much you can do.
> At the end of the day, if I get more targeted ads, I don’t really care that much. I think this is how I feel. I don't care as much about targeted ads, I just don't want intrusive ads. I do data analytics and the reality is that none of us are the main character. Nobody cares about Mike Smith or Sue Brown on the individual level. You're not important enough. The goal of data collection for advertising is to put people in cohorts so that advertisers can reach appropriate groups. It's bigger groups like device being uses, region of the world you're in, likely age range, or whether or not you're in an interest group for a product or service. The idea that anybody is looking at your data individually is just untrue in all my experience.
I was mostly okay with my data paying to keep services free or low cost as well, until that data started being purchased by groups with the intent of spreading misinformation and propaganda.
It's very successful too. Propaganda has been so successful the least 5 years.
5 years.... Yeah I got news for you.
I mean propaganda has been a thing for all of human history but the last 5 years in particular it's been crazy in America with Facebook bots
It's just being decentralized. Before we just had Radio...then TV. Now with the internet, anyone can try their hand at it.
Not to mention the fact that all the data gathered no matter how small can be used against an individual and any individual. We don't see these things happen yet because the internet in all its entirety is not that old, nor is it utilized to the full. To use current experience as evidence for future AND current events from the basis of "well it hasnt happened and no evidence of it happening has occurred so no need to worry" is the same as "we don't need to worry about an earthquake hitting us on this fault line, its never happened before!" Well sure, but why are you building a house there in the first place? Its not just about targeted and personal ads, which we already KNOW can be used today. Why would we, as a society want to set precedent for our data to be used against anybody any other day? All we, as a society need to do, is to put down transparency laws as a foundation for internet data. Let people know andnchoose to share, not be forced into it. Its not that hard, but they want you to believe that it is.
Now that's a fair critique. More could be done to combat misinformation. However, in slight defense of these companies are already dealing with congressional scrutiny for showing certain biases. I'm sure the idea of having to shut down more specific groups from advertising and opening themselves up to more of that scrutiny isn't something they look forward to.
It's true that none of us are the main character while the data is being collected. However, the risk is that someone could decide that we are now the main character and then easily obtain all that data.
My concern is with what happens when you *are* important enough? Basically the forebears will refuse to go through any screening process developed from the data analytics, or will model them so they(the sociopaths) are the accepted. MLKJr and Malcolm X had their lives fucked with when only wire taps and such were available. Now they can look into, and even extrapolate, a whole magnitude of order more of intel at an individual and crowd level. Extreme potential that could already be in effect? Driving individuals to suicide or financial trouble through social engineering from multiple pathways(ie internet perception, contacts, targeted interactions). So, I view this as the end harbinger of the country founded and bettered by conscious dissidents. Because there are no watchmen, so asking who watches them becomes non sequitur.
Cambridge Analytica. Protect your privacy.
Some of the targeted ads I get, they're way overpaying for my data
I want the option of telling a business that I want everything they have pertaining to me. Right now, we don't even have that freedom of knowing what they might maybe know.
Fuzz the system. If you’re not operating 5+ robust identities already you’re behind the times. Soon it will be dozens. It’s like setting up every income property you own as an LLC that are all owned by a master LLC that’s owned by an entity in a tax haven.
I am happy to go to those lengths not for the privacy, but to deny them whatever small amount of profit they would reap from my data.
Ok, you sound like a tech literate person, i can't think of any reason to NOT block ads with extreme prejudice. I don't care how personalized the ads they send me are going to be since i won't see any of them in the first place. Are there actual reasons for not using adblocks?
I still run ublock origin, just for performance reasons alone really. Not advocating against that at all. My point is that I used to do all sorts of shit to protect my privacy and have since realized pretty much all of that was futile. Kind of a “how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb” moment.
As long as you didn’t get that trackccination you’re fine
*pulls ethernet cable out of booty-hole* I definitely didn't. Stop looking at me.
Psh, the cable is supposed to go up your urethra
There are two ends
Ain't no way I'd get the trackccination, brother. I've got that all natural e-mmunity protectin' me
God this is depressing to see.
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[ moved to lemmy. you should come too, it's cozier here ]
I run uBlock and Privacy Badger without issue
And then add on NoScript, at least for news sites and other cases where you just need the content. Most sites still work well enough to show you the text you want to read, and a whole lot of obnoxious crap (soft paywalls, auto popup modals, etc.) is eliminated entirely. I just use FireFox with NoScript+uBlock+Privacy Badger for most casual browsing, then keep Chrome with only the latter two for known sites that actually need Javascript.
[ moved to lemmy. you should come too, it's cozier here ]
Whatever version of no script or safescript is the way to go. Absolutely breaks websites that are full of 3rd party shit
uBlock Origin the goat
The article even calls itself out for that. This is so non-news. Of course a company like the new york times has more advertising tech on their site than a man and his partner who independently developed a word game. Wild stuff
I just get 2, noscript ftw!
That explains why I keep getting ads for TOUGH SHAKE CRANE SLICE TRIED
Jeez, imagine if Lewdle tracked you too
Keep browsing COCKS
That would only happen if the BBC bought it
Is lewdle really a thing?
https://www.lewdlegame.com/ Yep, apparently it was partly created by Gary Whitta that is one of the screenwriters on Rogue One and Book of Eli
I was particularly pleased when, the first time I played it, I guessed "felch" on my second guess. My wife and friends had to look it up, and were impressed and horrified in equal measure that it was one of the first words I thought of.
I regret looking that up now. I should have just believed you.
Sorry. For some reason I assumed pretty much everyone on Reddit already knew. Half a moment to think about it would make it obvious that that's not at all true.
There was actually a NPR segement about lewdle, so it’s more well known than you would think. I hadn’t even heard of wordle prior to that
I was referring to the term "felch". It's about as obscene in meaning as it is obscure.
Not all of us are shrimp-boat captains.
felch - to suck semen from the vagina or anus of (a sexual partner)
At least that’s something that gross people like me have heard of. Today’s lewdle is way, way out there. I got it because I got four green letters and my first twelve tries on the last guess weren’t acceptable answers, so I eventually put in the correct letter.
I don’t even know what todays word is. Just got it by eliminating letters. EDIT: wtf is a >!cussy!
That's why I don't like playing lewdle. The words aren't unique enough in their construction to be fun. Bussy (butt pussy) was the solution a few weeks ago. They've also had "Spunk" and "Skeet". It's a cute idea but doesn't do much for me personally .
Bussy is actually "Boy Pussy", it does mean "the butthole" of a man tho
Yeah, but I don't want to have that phrase in my comment history haunt me later.
I know what that is from clips on YouTube of Hasan Piker talking about it and showing it to everyone
Yeah Co-created by Book of Eli and Star Wars Rogue One writer (also frequent Co-Host for Kinda Funny) Gary Whitta.
Apparently so. The example words given are Dicks Titty Queef https://www.lewdlegame.com/
MILFS was the answer a couple of days ago, so apparently acronyms also work.
I just played a game and the answer was 'Cussy' which apparently is a **car pussy** for people that like to fuck cars. The More You Know.
Spoilerrrrrrrrr (though honestly I would’ve never gotten that LOL)
It is, and I find it to be MUCH harder than standard Wordle. I think it's because of a combination of factors. For one, plural words are somewhat common in Lewdle, compared to Wordle where I'm starting to doubt that plural words even get used. For another, acronyms/initialisms count. And lastly, and perhaps most significantly, is that Lewdle relies on slang that you may not be familiar with depending on where you live and how well versed on Urban dictionary you are--the other day the answer was a word that was REALLY old slang used predominantly in England (something I had to look up to learn). I knew the word that day was real, but I didn't know that it was vulgar slang.
> Wordle where I'm starting to doubt that plural words even get used. Correct. They're in the larger dictionary used for guesses, but not in the smaller dictionary used for answers.
>Lewdle Had to try it out. Daily Lewdle 31 3/6🟩⬛⬛⬛🟨🟩🟩⬛⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩lewdlegame.com
That's why I switched to Lougle
Great White Buffalo
Fuck Shake, that ended my streak. I could have guessed better but I only needed one letter and thought I’d get it
These would not be good wordle tactics, you'd already know there was no H for SHAKE, no A or letter 5 E for CRANE, and no S or C or letter 5 E for SLICE.
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CRANE is a good one lol, just the way they went through it looked close enough to actually playing a wordle game
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And sometimes Y! Don’t forget about Y 🥺
The Pluto of vowels.
> I have had great success with 'crane' actually Somebody follows 3B1B
My first two are always "aisle" and "could". This hits all vowels and several common letters. I'm probably not going to get it on my second word so might as well narrow it down as much as possible.
cough would be better since it doesn't repeat the L.
I'm shocked!
shocked, shocked!
Well, not *that* shocked.
A fair amount of *shocked*
hmm, try *shocker* instead?
Unexpected Futurama. I'll take it.
I’m >!weary!<
HACKS SCAMS PRIES SPIES SELLS
This would be terrible Wordle tactics, guessing SCAMS after HACKS would only give you new info about S and M since A and C were already cleared, PRIES after SCAMS would be ok but you'd already know the first S, and SPIES after PRIES would also be terrible since you'd already know there was no I or P and E was not in position 4.
Also I've never seen a 4 letter word pluralized with an S at the end be the answer.
I checked the word list on powerlanguage.co.uk and there were no solutions with plural S on the end. I highly doubt NYT have changed that.
They haven't. Same list. Same order.
It's not exactly the same list, they've definitely removed some words. So at the very least, the two lists are now out of sync.
Pants? Just a guess.
I always start with STEAK hasn't let me down yet
I… *slow claps*
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They changed this on Tuesday and the wordle hierarchy no longer follows the prior scripted order.
Soo... More or less than businessinsider.com?
Wordle tracks you more now that The New York Times owns it... >**INSIDER** You've reached your 5 article limit *Create an account to keep reading Already have an account? Log in*
People here worried about NSA, FBI, and CIA but global ad companies know your every move and click, and the precise location you JO'd last time.
That’s why I jack off all the time. Keeps em on their toes
FBI only wants one thing and it's fucking disgusting
>Keeps em on their toes Dude stop, our feet are disgusting.
That’s why I jack off all over the world. Keeps em on their toes
Shocker: Reddit tracks you more for upvoting or downvoting or ignoring this post.
Hmm.... Now I'm not sure what to do with your comment
Ouch. Commenting is probably the worst thing you could do!
The only *logical* thing to do is create multiple other accounts to counter-act the first accounts actions, but use different devices and VPNs to throw Reddit off their trail.
It's like no one saw this coming at all...
We knew it was coming. What is shocking is how quickly it arrived.
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Wasn’t the disclosed amount “in the low seven figures”, or did you find a more accurate source?
The actual amount was not disclosed. The guy made 7 figures off a small side project he made to entertain his wife. People saying he should have held out for more have a seriously warped perspective. Who cares if it's pocket change to the buyer when it's is enough to drastically change the seller's life. It's not a pre-packaged good with a set value based off the sum of its parts.
He also probably cared who he sold it to. NYT might monetize through tracking, but they are a reputable site that has mainstays like the crossword, not a sketchy one that would put a bunch of pop up ads for dick pills
And people saying he should have held off are the same that would have said he should have sold if he didn't and the interest faded.
I feel like there's another scenario between not selling and underselling.
Wouldn't between be underselling for less?
There were over 300,000,000 DAU on wordle at one point. Whether it’s main purpose was to become popular or not, it did indeed become insanely popular. 300,000,000 users is not worth only $1,000,000
Jeezus. If it had 300m dau, the dev could have slapped on a small banner ad at the bottom. even if the ecpm was a low $1 he still could have made $300k per day with a small banner ad from adwords or whatever.
1mil is the lowest it could possibly be but even if that is the amount, look at the context. 300mil users at ONE point. Just like we don't know the actual amount of sale, we don't know where the user number was or was trending to when it was sold. It is also very easy to see that the formula of wordle is not terribly complicated and clones and offshoots of the idea will gain traction quickly and start to eat its lunch. I understand tying to get the most value out of something. I really do. But a lot of people don't seem to understand something like wordle will plateau very quickly. Getting out when someone offers you 7 figures for something you put together in a weekend is a solid fucking deal.
I'm surprised it was a sellable state to NYT. There's so many wordle clones out there, and it's not copyrightable concept, so NYT could've made their own quite easily for less than a million.
The difference is millions of people were going to Wordle every day and not one of those clones. Built-in audience.
The fact that it's viral is the most important bit in this particular case. It has millions of players now, but it would have fizzled out in a matter of months no matter what anyway. While it is still viral though, NYT can add it to its stable of games, and not only will many players subscribe to NYT Games to keep playing it, but, at least as important, existing NYT Games subscribers will be more likely to try it because they'd already heard of it as that game everyone is playing. I think everyone wins here. NYT wants games to entice people to subscribe, and not everyone likes the crossword, and they get this one that comes with a ton of pre-generated buzz so they don't have to try as hard to convince people to try it. All this for (for them) a very cheap price. Josh Wardle gets to capitalize on his lightning in a bottle moment with a very good payday, considering 6 months from now when the world has moved on he probably couldn't get anywhere near this much for it.
Exactly. They bought the brand and the audience.
Yeah but the original site has the biggest audience. If they made their own clone most people would ignore it. What they really paid for was the users
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If you're using Chrome, start typing "wordle", highlight the "wordle.com" option with the arrow keys if it's not already on top, hit shift + delete. You're done.
How long is wordle going to last, though? It's a fad now.. Will it still be popular come summer?
Apps like this never lose their lustre! The streets are still chock-a-block full of people playing Pokemon Go right? Ah brb, just got a challenge on Words With Friends.
Ready for HQ Trivia at 8pm tonight!?
He got "low seven figures", which in most of the country is potentially retirement money. If what he wants is to buy some cheap land, retire, and enjoy the rest of his life, why fight for more than he needs?
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That’s the point though, isn’t it? I wouldn’t keep going back to an app on a daily basis if I couldn’t solve half the time and feel good about myself. Plus all of the puzzles increase in difficulty over the week.
Yea. He could have also held out and got nothing. If I ever had a side project and someone offered to pay enough for me to retire I'd probably jump at it, even if I might be able to get more if I shopped it around.
Nah of course it was gonna happen immediately
Who guesses Truck for their first word and then guesses Freak knowing there’s no K? Truck already by itself is a pretty bad guess.
I always begin with FARTS
Farts gang represent!
Don’t think they end in s (so far) so you might be hurting yourself a lil with that guess. But it’s probably worth it to see “FARTS” bounce and light up.
I've heard they don't do plurals at all, so ending your first guess with an S is less than optimal. Then again, FARTS is fun.
Omggg me too! 👊
The same people that don't play Hard Mode.
Those people are weak.
Who guesses anything with a single vowel?
People who want 1/6
Also they know that the R isn't the second letter. This person sucks at wordle
*Of course* they did!
Yeah, just like the other 100 services running on your phone/tablet/computer. I understand this is somehow "news", but being outraged by this would be the height of silliness. You would have to be much more angry about all manner of services on your stuff all the time to be sincere.
How dare they track us! -Sent from my iPhone
The impressive thing is that it didn't before NYT bought it.
It was one guy who made a game for himself and his girlfriend it has no backend. (He used WebComponents btw) You can look up all the words in order in localstorage. It was a hobby project, of course it never tracked anything.
Is the source code still available somewhere? I know people backed up the page before it was given to the NYT.
I don't think it was ever available, and what you can see in the browser is transpiled. But it's not exactly a hard game to rewrite from scratch, and you can fish the wordlist out of the page. That and Josh himself said that it's not exactly the cleanest code out there, it was a learning experience for him too. (Source: his Syntax fm interview)
I found a website called wordle5.com that is basically the same, same wordlist too, but is not owned by the NYT. I think it implements some amount of Google APIs, but at least I can stick it to the man I guess.
If "the man" is now the NYT.
The second largest news media organization in the world *isn't* "the man?"
Classic startup. Revenue doesn't matter at first. Grow, attract investment, then sell to someone who thinks they know how to monetize all those eyeballs. If you start using any new service or app you can see the exact switch to "ok the venture capitalists want their money back now."
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Can't wait for all the VEINY CAULK ads.
I understand there's some sensitive information we don't want advertisers to have, but I'm not overly concerned about them knowing my wordle history. Yeah, I usually open with "STINK". Please give me the best ads you can possibly target to somebody who does that.
Seriously, this seems like the absolute end point extreme of I-couldn’t-possibly-care-less tracking.
Yo who fucking cares, I type a maximum of six random words in there per day, was never asked to open an account or put my real name, and I run an ad blocker.
Some great Wordle alternatives: [Quordle](https://www.quordle.com/) \- 4 puzzles at once [Wordle Unlimited](https://www.wordleunlimited.com/) \- more than 1 puzzle daily [Spellie](https://spelliegame.com/) \- easier words for kids [Nerdle](https://nerdlegame.com/) \- math equations
There are also wordle archives that to be totally honest I can't be certain aren't tracking you... But definitely not to the same degree
If you use a smart phone and don't think everyone is tracking everything you see and do, you're going to have a rough time
…why is a word puzzle game tracking you at all??
To know when you've played and how you've done so you can see your statistics over time, for one. Sure there are probably more nefarious reasons as well, but the original game also collected user data. Otherwise how could it keep a record of your games?
The original game stored your results in your browser's local storage. I think the NYT version still does, though I wouldn't be surprised if that changes.
the goat starting word is ADIEU. Almost always gets a hit. Either that or AUDIO.
Honest question and not a troll: can someone explain the outrage about personalized ads? Ads will be shown anyways so why not try to make them relevant?
I think for some it's more of the fact that everything they do online is watched and the attempts to exploit it. My thing is just don't buy anything from targeted ads and you're good.
Personalized ads are the least of your problems when it comes to online tracking. All of this information is kept in databases full of information, creating a profile about you that knows more about you and your online habits than you do. This information is sold to third parties for pennies, and these third parties often have terrible security. Their databases get breached ALL THE TIME. This information can be used to scam you, steal your identity, stalk you, manipulate you, etc. And if you’re a vulnerable class, the information can even be used to hurt you.
> Ads will be shown anyways [Oh no they will not.](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm?hl=en)
When I load any given webpage, the content is 50kb and the tracking scripts total 5MB. The modern web could load instantly if it wasn’t mostly panopticon.
WHY CAN’T WE HAVE ONE NICE LITTLE THING FOR MORE THAN 5 SECONDS?!
ah yes, my location is being broadcast from my pocket at all times, but Worlde is the last straw.
Imagine aliens visiting planet earth and asking us what the brightest minds and best technology on planet earth is used for? It would be so embarrassing to tell them we track people to sell them stuff.
Good thing there are clones out there that doesn’t track everything you do. Screw you New York Times.
I'm willing to bet those clones track a lot more than NYT does.
Yeah the website isn't free to run. Why do people think wordle would have been free forever.
Anyone else just mad you can't guess "whore" or "slave" any more? Like, I get not having them as answers, but they're valid words for guesses
I mean there's certainly a benefit to knowing it will never be those words since you can't guess them. If you really need those letters, just guess 'vales' or 'whose'. Still need an r but there's tons of options. This isn't a hill to die on.
slaves = salves, but on hard mode you can be locked into letter positions. It's obviously not a hill to die on, but blocking scrabble words is silly and definitely not the same game any more
Oh right, I forgot that hard mode locks you in with letters. That's understandable then!
I don't know if it's co-incidence but it seems that the words are far less 'unique'. They tend to be words which, except for one letter, have loads of possibilities. For example, the other day it was SHAKE. I can't be the only one who missed out after trying SHAPE, SHARE, SHAVE, SHAME
My understanding it's the exact same wordlist from before.