Why there is no cookie banner
Because there is nothing to consent to.
The Wire sets no advertising cookies, no tracking cookies and no analytics cookies. It carries no advertising network, no social-media pixel and no third-party tracker. Our analytics runs in a cookieless mode that stores nothing on your device.
What the Wire does store on your device is the small set of things it needs in order to work at all — whether you are signed in, which theme you chose, and the copy of the payload it reads from so that the terminal opens instantly and still works when your connection drops. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations these are strictly necessary or are storage you have asked for by using the feature, and neither requires consent.
We would rather tell you exactly what is stored than ask you to click a box about it. Here it is.
1. What is stored on your device
The Wire uses your browser's localStorage and IndexedDB rather than cookies. Both are readable only by globalentertainmentwire.com, are never sent to us automatically the way a cookie is, and can be cleared by you at any time.
| Name | What it is | Purpose | Lasts | Consent needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
axw_session (or equivalent) | Your session token, after you sign in | Keeps you signed in so you do not need a new link on every visit | Up to 90 days, or until you sign out | No — strictly necessary |
axw_opKey | An operator key | Administrative access. Not used by readers | Until cleared | No — strictly necessary |
axw_theme | Light or dark | Remembers the appearance you chose | Until cleared | No — a preference you set |
taste | Your upvotes, hides and reading preferences | Orders the wire the way you prefer. This stays in your browser. It is not sent to us, unless you are an editorial collaborator who has chosen to contribute votes, which is explained at the time | Until cleared | No — the feature you asked for |
| View and layout preferences | Which view of the universe, ledger or calendar you last used | So the page opens where you left it | Until cleared | No — a preference you set |
Cached payload (IndexedDB) | The last good copy of the wire's data | So the terminal opens immediately, and still shows you something when the network fails or your session has lapsed | Replaced on each refresh; cleared on sign-out or on a 401 | No — strictly necessary |
Clearing them. Signing out removes the session and clears the cached payload. Clearing site data in your browser removes everything in the table. Nothing in it is recoverable by us afterwards, and nothing in it identifies you to anyone else.
2. Analytics
We use Google Analytics 4 with Consent Mode v2, with consent defaulting to denied. In that configuration Google Analytics:
- sets no cookies and stores no identifier on your device;
- sends aggregated, cookieless measurements — a page was viewed, roughly where from;
- receives your IP address transiently in order to derive approximate geography, and does not retain it.
We use it to know whether the Wire is being read, at the level of "how many people, on which pages". It cannot tell us who you are and we do not try to make it.
Analytics is switched off entirely on anything that is not the live site — local development, preview hosts and forks report nothing.
If this ever changes and we want cookie-based measurement, we will ask you first, with a banner, before any cookie is set. Until you say yes, the current behaviour continues.
Google's own description of how it handles data: policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
3. Third parties that may set something
The Wire deliberately embeds almost nothing from elsewhere. The exceptions:
| Where | When | What |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | Only on the checkout and customer-portal pages | Stripe sets cookies necessary for payment and for fraud prevention. These are strictly necessary to take a payment and are governed by Stripe's own privacy policy (stripe.com/privacy). |
| beehiiv | Only if you use the newsletter signup, and only on its hosted fallback page | Cookies necessary to run the signup |
| Images and icons | On story cards and company cards | Publisher artwork and favicons are loaded from their own hosts. Those hosts see a request from your browser. They are not permitted to run script on our pages by our content security policy. |
We do not embed video players, comment systems, chat widgets, font trackers, session recorders, heatmaps or A/B testing tools.
4. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control
We do not track you across other websites, so there is nothing for a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal to switch off. We honour them in the only way that is meaningful: by not doing the thing in the first place.
5. Questions
hello@axiom.vc. See also Privacy Policy.
End of Cookie and Local Storage Policy.