Cory Doctorow used his July 21 Pluralistic newsletter to make a practical argument about a familiar annoyance: users do not have to accept every cookie wall, app-install prompt, newsletter curtain or registration nag that blocks a webpage before they can read it.
The irritant now has a vulgar label. John Gruber of Daring Fireball coined “dickover” for a modal, popover or curtain that a site or app places over its own material to force an unwanted interaction. Doctorow applies the term to cookie-consent prompts, mobile-app upsells, newsletter demands and similar interruptions.
Doctorow’s larger point is that the open web still gives users tools to alter what their own browsers display. Apps, in his view, are much harder to fix because mobile operating systems and intellectual-property rules restrict user modification. He says the same problem is worse on phones and tablets, especially iOS, and that desktop Firefox is the best place to fight back.
Consent theater, one click at a time
Doctorow argues that many sites in the UK and EU have turned GDPR compliance into a hostile user interface. The law requires affirmative consent for some data processing, but he says sites often respond by forcing repeated cookie dialogs instead of collecting less data.
He points to Mozilla’s documentation for Global Privacy Control, a browser signal that tells websites a user does not consent to certain tracking. Some sites, he says, still display a prompt acknowledging the signal and demanding another click. Doctorow also says website operators are wrong when they claim privacy laws require them to ask again on every visit, because those laws allow storage for legitimate interests, including remembering a refusal.
Doctorow cites a Clifford Chance brief on a European Court of Justice Facebook ruling while criticizing Facebook’s argument that its terms of service created a contractual basis for surveillance. His reading is blunt: companies stretch “legitimate interest” when it helps data collection, then pretend it cannot cover a cookie that says “do not track this user.”
The tools Doctorow recommends
The first tool is already in Firefox: Reader Mode. It strips many pages down to a plain reading view and can be opened from the browser’s address bar or with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Alt-R, according to Doctorow. He says users can force Firefox to offer Reader Mode more often by changing the about:config setting “reader.parse-on-load.force-enabled” to true.
For overlays that stay fixed on the screen, Doctorow recommends Kill Sticky, a bookmarklet originally created by Alisdair McDiarmid. He says a later fork by gala8y catches additional cases and has worked reliably for him.
For sites people visit often, Doctorow suggests Adblock Plus’s “Block Element” function. The mechanism is straightforward: right-click or Ctrl-click the unwanted overlay, choose “Block Element,” preview the highlighted page element, and create a rule so the browser stops rendering it. He notes that some overlays are layered, so users may have to block several page elements before reaching the actual content.
Doctorow also names Remove Paywall, a website and browser plug-in that attempts to reload pages without interrupters, registration walls and paywalls. He says the same Reader Mode, Kill Sticky and element-blocking tactics can then be used on the reloaded version.
Why he says Chrome is the bad bet
Doctorow tells readers to switch from Chrome to Firefox, citing a Proton Privacy post that says Google’s browser changes will break popular blockers. His argument is not that Firefox is magic. It is that a browser users can customize is still a lever, while a locked-down app is mostly a funnel with push notifications.
He closes by comparing today’s overlays with the pop-up ad mess of an earlier web. Pop-ups faded after users installed blockers and browser makers, starting with Opera and then Mozilla, blocked them by default. Doctorow’s bet is that if enough users stop rendering the new layer of web sludge, publishers and advertisers will find less invasive ways to operate.
This story draws on original reporting from Pluralistic.
