Technology

I've noticed that just as the most aggressive ad blocker blockers are news media websites, the most aggressive tor-exit-node blockers are retail sites such as lowes.com. My working hypothesis is that they view anonymous transactions (or perhaps even anonymous window shopping) as stealing. When it comes to actionable data for market research, data about actual finalized transactions where actual money changed hands is the holy grail. It's the data that has skin in the game. As for window shopping online, you know the drill, you do that, you hear about it on Fecebook. Until recently I searched retail sites with the site: filter of a search engine (the one that works on Tor, of course), but until recently, most site searches were even more enshittified than most of the two search engines. Now search engines are out and Tor is out. Perhaps offline shopping is in. BTW, just for shits and giggles, try carrying a clipboard next time you visit a brick and mortar retail establishment and see what happens, or better yet, whip out your cell phone and start photographing not merchandise but shelf tags. Information is power, my friends.