"We care about your privacy!"

Us and our ONE THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FOUR "partners". Hah ha!

Also fuck off!

Also I just switched off JS and read your fucking article anyway. What you and your partners gonna do about that? 🤪

In the real world still, if a person says to you, "This is my partner", that basically means something like, "If you trust me, you can trust them" and/or "this person can speak on my behalf because they know me really well".

But online "partner" apparently now just means "a collection of companies whose names I could not even recount without looking them up in a database or spreadsheet I have somewhere".

Velocipede Rider

@ruari@velocipederider.com

I only share my economy with one person and my highest level of trust is with that same person. It's my wife. She is the one person in this world I would give the label "partner".

Apparently I am holding myself back. I need to collect a few more thousand partners.

March 13, 2026 at 2:27:37 PM

Here is a fun thing. I work for Vivaldi Browser. Load any of our websites and you see no cookie banner and no mention of partners.

vivaldi.com

"But wait" you say, "didn't those terrible Europeans mandate the cookie banner!?"

No, no they did not. We do not need a cookie banner because we are not selling all your shit to every company under the sun.

Also those sites with cookie banners are just doing malicious compliance. This was never about the EU requiring cookie banners!

Vivaldi Browser | Powerful, Personal and Private web browser - Vivaldi Browser | Powerful, Personal and Private web browser

Vivaldi Browser

Vivaldi Browser | Powerful, Personal and Private web browser

It’s a web browser. But fun. It comes with a bunch of clever features built-in. It’s super flexible and does not track you. Get the Vivaldi browser for desktop, mobile, and your car!

The one wierd trick to not having a cookie banner is… wait for it… Do not sell out your users!

Who knew!?

Apparently the Fediverse actually did know because guess what, whenever I visit an instance I am also not asked to click through a cookie banner. Again, SO WEIRD!

You should maybe okay that with your current partner first

Do you really think she will mind? 🤔

Elk Logo

Elk is in Preview!

Thanks for your interest in trying out Elk, our work-in-progress Mastodon web client!

Expect some bugs and missing features here and there. we are working hard on the development and improving it over time.

Elk is Open Source. If you'd like to help with testing, giving feedback, or contributing, reach out to us on GitHub and get involved.

To boost development, you can sponsor the Team through GitHub Sponsors. We hope you enjoy Elk!

Anthony FuPatakDaniel Roe三咲智子 Kevin Deng

The Elk Team