Comments on: Cookies for Kiddies

By: reviewsive

reviewsive — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:11:32 +0000

Hey, thanks for clarifying.

Even I sent you an email about this but I guess you didn’t get it and then it slipped off my mind.

There is some mangled HTML in the first block quote, right after the sentence: ‘ Its operator described the site as a “hobby” and said the tracking tools come from advertisers.’

By: Doc Searls

Doc Searls — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 02:26:38 +0000

KD, this has taken hours to figure out. What you see in the source for the page didn’t appear in the HTML view in the WordPress dashboard editor. The WYSIWYG view looked fine, but not like the published version. When I copied the source and went into a real text editor to take out the Wall Street Journal’s HTML cruft, and pasted the cleaned up text into the site editor, it looked fine, but still had the same problem in the published version. I finally took out the whole paragraph that had Starfall in it, and now it works.

In any case, what we had here was HTML that appeared in source but not in the editor. Strange.

Again, thanks for the flag, and the advice. Much appreciated.

By: KD

KD — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:48:50 +0000

This might be a little more help in fixing the problem.

When I look at the HTML for the post via View Source, it appears to me things go south at the apparently unclosed quote in the anchor tag for Starfall that contains:

title=”http://Starfall.

I hope that makes it into the comment post without, itself, getting mangled. There seems to be no preview here, so I cannot check it.

There seems to be an inappropriate br tag there, too, and some other stuff that looks weird to me, but since I’m no HTML expert, I cannot say whether it is wrong or not.

From your comment, you aren’t editing the HTML directly yourself, so I have no idea what went wrong at the level where you are composing/editing, but maybe you will be able to figure it out given this description (if I’m actually right about where the problem starts).

By: Doc Searls

Doc Searls — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 12:24:25 +0000

Thanks, KD. You’re right that I missed the email.

I can’t figure the problem. The HTML looks fine. I’ll need to go over it later today. Meanwhile, apologies.

Sometimes I wish it were easier to edit this stuff in pure HTML, but alas…

By: KD

KD — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:27:56 +0000

I sent you an email about this on the 19th, but I guess it did not reach you.

There is some mangled HTML in the first block quote, right after the sentence:

‘ Its operator described the site as a “hobby” and said the tracking tools come from advertisers.’

As a result, it seems that some of the text you wrote does not display, and it appears to me that more is included in that block quote than you intended.

I’m not sure exactly what went wrong, but I’m sure you don’t need my help to fix whatever it is.

By: Jeff Chester

Jeff Chester — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:38:42 +0000

In order to protect privacy, it’s also critical to understand the role of the interactive ad applications designed to encourage users to provide data. The problem isn’t only about cookies and other tracking apps. It’s about the use of pervasive and sophisticated interactive ad techniques–”immersive” rich media, neuromarketing, and social media marketing, for example–deployed to persuade a consumer or young person to interact and share information. We have filed complaints with the FTC on this; but for a good overview on how the online ad system really works, see the reports at digitalads.org