Not Giving Them Money

New Statesman blogger Steven Baxter, or as he’s also known, Anton Vowl, recently published a post called “Don’t Click on the Daily Mail!”. The crux of the argument is that the Daily Mail (and they are by no means alone in this) encourage millions of webpage views using a utility-belt of tactics, and we should avoid them at all cost. Some of these tactics are:

• Flamebaitery – Offensive columnists such as Richard Littlejohn, Melanie Phillips and Jan Moir attack homosexuals for being in public, dead and homosexual. Outrage drives page views.
  
• Lots of pictures – Oh my this is offensive! Let’s post lots of pictures to show you how offensive this is from every angle! Oh yeah, the offensive thing might be underage, too. Or it might be an upskirt shot that was kicking about on our image database.
  
• Celebrity Drivel – Whether they dye their hair, or you have an image of a thin woman who you want to call fat – all of it builds up into traffic-heavy non-stories.
  
• Insult Muslims – Unfortunately, these stories are far too common, far too contrived and far too easily believed by bigots. Idiots shout the loudest, and it all contributes to their traffic.
  
• Insult Facebook – At least 10% of the Mail’s traffic comes from Facebook. It is a massive revenue stream, but it’s something their older readership won’t necessarily use or understand, so it makes perfect sense to say it gives you cancer (like a lot of things, apparently). That’s one way to get a news article to virally spread across a social network!

I hate to say it, but they know what they’re doing and it’s paying for them big-style. But can we fight back? I’d like to summarise some of the tools out there that you can employ to starve their revenue streams, have a laugh at them, and avoid them altogether.

Journalism Warning Labels

Tom Scott created a set of warning labels that can be printed and stuck onto newspapers. The Newscrud tool lets you add these to websites! You can even attach a rebuking blog post or information source, which is awesome. This then gives you a newscrud link which you can send to peers, rather than the plain old Daily Mail link. However, I think this still links to the Daily Mail within an iframe, but there’s a way around that too.

Istyotsy

Istyotsy lets you view the Daily Mail, Daily Express etc by proxy. Istyotsy stores a copy (a cache) of their articles on their own servers, and provide an istyotsy web link you can use. When this link is accessed, the cached version of the article is displayed, rather than going off to the original source every time. This reduces the number of page views to one! Huzzah!

When an istyotsy link is combined with newscrud link (give the istyotsy link to newscrud; the other way around won’t work) – you attack the weak point for massive damage.

Furthermore, Istyotsy strips adverts, doesn’t perform tracking, doesn’t index to search engines like Google and Bing; so cuts off as many page view streams as possible.

AdBlock and Tracking Cookies

The AdBlock extension for Firefox and Chrome is amazing. It pre-filters web pages to reduce the amount of adverts you see online. The built-in filters work well and are regularly updated. You can create custom filters, and even make exceptions. It’s worth getting for general internet browsing.

Advert revenue can be generated in several ways:

• Revenue is paid on a per-click basis.
  
• Revenue is paid per page view.
  
• Both of the above.

AdBlock reliably denies click revenue, but won’t stop page revenue unless the adverts perform some clever trickery to check if they’re not being displayed; which is why I’ve previously suggested istyotsy .

Next up are tracking cookies. Cookies are essentially text files which store information that websites can use. Cookies are the basis of how your shopping basket is stored, or how you can automatically login to websites. They’re not evil, but can be exploited to perform tracking of your web browsing sessions. Tracking isn’t always malicious either, a website may want to track which products you’re viewing to suggest recommendations. Tracking cookies can also go and look across web sites, or even across multiple uses of your web browser. Some search engines do this to improve their search listings.

Your web browser’s options has cookie-related preferences so you can tweak how cookies are handled. If you have the option to clear all data when you close your web browser, do it. You can turn off cookies altogether, but it becomes annoying as you then have to log in to every website manually. It’s a trade-off that can take a bit of tweaking to get right, or you can get extensions to help you .

Google has released advertising opt-out cookie extensions (here and here), and the Disconnect extension for Chrome automatically blocks the big players. This can go a long way to stop websites gaining information from you which can be used to their advantage.

When In Doubt, Laugh

Comedian Chris Coltrane launched the Polljack twitter account, which suggested to its legion of followers various Daily Mail polls to hijack, for the sheer fun of it. This often produced hillarious consequences; but be warned, the Polljack account was retired after Chris realised this was driving ad revenue to them.

Abstinence

For times when someone gives you a plain old Daily Mail link, you have the choice to click or not click. I always advise not clicking, but what if you do? Don’t worry, I have your back.

Chrome users can get the Istyotsy Chrome extension, which automatically displays the article through their proxy. Handy.

Firefox users can get the Tea and Kittens extension, which automatically redirects you to teaandkittens.co.uk if you try and visit the Daily Mail or Daily Express. I hope more newspapers are added soon!

Conclusion

If you’ve made it this far, I hereby declare you King / Queen / Non-Gender-Aligned Monarch of the Internet. You can avoid giving as much money to unregulated, racist, homophobic, ableist, sexist, ill-informed, manipulative scumbags as much as possible, like a boss.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this (rather long) post as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it – even with the immense chest pains I’m having right now. I better see to that.

Top Gear’s Racism is Endemic

On the 30th January 2011 edition of Top Gear, Richard Hammond decided it would be funny to stereotype Mexicans as:

“lazy, feckless, flatulent and overweight.”

Clarkson and May then went on to say Mexican food is sick with cheese on it, they stand about doing nothing; and a whole load of other offensive stuff. Complaints were received over the remarks.

An apology was quickly fired off, after threats of legal action by some. Steve Coogan said that stereotyping had gone too far on the show:

"With Top Gear it is three rich, middle-aged men laughing at poor Mexicans. Brave, groundbreaking stuff, eh?”

He’s right, of course. Stereotyping is a quick gag that mercilessly divides a wide range of people into a degraded group based on uninformed nonsense. To say that Mexicans are lazy sticks two fingers up at the fact that in America they are more than prepared to work jobs that others class as “below them”.

What concerns me most about the entire episode is the line of defence the BBC took:

"Our own comedians make jokes about the British being terrible cooks and terrible romantics, and we in turn make jokes about the Italians being disorganised and overdramatic, the French being arrogant and the Germans being overorganised," it said.

"Whilst it may appear offensive to those who have not watched the programme or who are unfamiliar with its humour, the executive producer has made it clear to the ambassador that that was absolutely not the show's intention."

The BBC said stereotype-based comedy was allowed within its guidelines in programmes during which the audience knew it could be expected.

Whilst this may appear as reasonable as some, it does not to me. The argument being deployed here is a time-travel paradox, which I have blogged about before. Would a new viewer to Top Gear, expecting a light entertainment program about cars, expect the presenters to stereotype to the point of sheer racism? Highly doubt it. Only through the show constantly broadcasting these views does it become “expected”, but this is only reliably held by regular viewers.

I like Top Gear

Here’s the admission part. I like Top Gear,even though it revolves around the following format:

• Review of a car nobody can afford.
  
• A short film featuring repeated set-ups.
  
• Sucking up to a celebrity who is plugging their latest book/film/tv show.

Now I don’t care if it is scripted - you can still admire the music and visuals which are consistently outstanding. Top Gear is also a program that can be easily watched with friends. It knows its demographic and never strays outside of it.

How this is Endemic

The issue I take with Top Gear is that these stereotypical, offensive remarks don’t add anything to the program other than a cheap laugh from the audience. I wouldn’t miss them if they disappeared overnight, and I doubt anyone would in fact notice.

What most concerns me is that I am reminded of ‘Sachsgate’ – the content is very similar – offensive remarks get broadcast. Rather than form an angry lynch mob against the presenters, I ask why this was not left on the editing room floor? All of this content would presumably have been signed off by a superior. We know after the Ross/Brand outrage the BBC had tightened up – why is this stuff still getting through?

That’s the problem that needs to be addressed, rather than using a logical paradox to reinforce the current status quo. It isn’t just a couple of motormouths (like what I did there? ), it’s an institutional failure.

A Bit Of Fun

Because Stewart Lee is awesome, I present to you himself ripping Top Gear to shreds: