Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Browsers always send the accept language you configured.

It drives me nuts, most sites are geolocating me instead and serving me Spanish content. My browser is always sending accept language, and it's most often ignored than not, even frommthe big old web players (Google and Wikipedia to name a few)



This used to work back in the old days, but more and more sites decides to ignore this a few years ago. The reasoning is that the percentage of users with misconfigured browsers (who don't know how to fix this and also don't know how to click a "change language" button on the website) is bigger than the percentage of users who intentionally use a language that's different from their geolocated one. So the ad-revenue maximizing choice is to ignore the user's configuration.


That’s why I like travelling: I’ll get all my web content in English (the language I do know) and the ads in a language I don’t know (perfect).


It used to work on Facebook to just change your location to a weird country and you would get their advertisements. Or none if there weren't any like for North Korea. Then I got banned on Airbnb (where I used Facebook login) because they thought I'm from North Korea and they would break sanctions by renting me a bnb...




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: