4 ms·

As a European citizen, I'm tired of having to close hundreds of popups a day which purposefully use dark patterns to make it harder to unselect everything and j

As a European citizen, I'm tired of having to close hundreds of popups a day which purposefully use dark patterns to make it harder to unselect everything and just close and make it easy to accept everything in one click. This is what happens when you get incompetent non technical people to regulate on things. Most people still just accept everything and we get terrible, government mandated ui. Oh and let's not forget all the foreign websites I can't access anymore because they're not compliant and required to block traffic from EU. Why can't I read anymore local USA newspapers? Is this freedom? It's the EU that it's getting too powerful (unless we look at the economy)

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
It's the newspaper's choice to exclude you. Nothing in the law requires it. Proof: the website you're currently using. The New York Times. Really anything except the Backwater End Times and The Suburbian Dystopia Monthly
- vixen99 6y ago
  As you well know, using 'Backwater End Times and The Suburbian Dystopia Monthly' as examples is disingenuous. Mildly amusing but deliberately misses the point. For the newspaper it's the law of diminishing returns as regards far-flung readers.
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  > It's the newspaper's choice to exclude you. Nothing in the law requires it. The EU makes a law, and suddenly a bunch of newspapers choose to exclude europeans. > Really anything except the Backwater End Times and The Suburbian Dystopia Monthly Sour grapes thinking. If that were really the case people wouldn't notice it at all. You click on a link because it interests you, then see that as a european you can't access it and then tell yourself that it didn't actually interest you.
maest 6y ago
> I'm tired of having to... Weird, I manually opt out of everything on most websites I visit and I find it pretty straightforward. There's only a handful of flows that most websites use, so it's not that difficult. There are some egregious exceptions (Yahoo being a particularly annoying one), but that's a small number of cases and, in most cases, it makes me realise I didn't actually care that much about reading their content, so I just move on. Also, the dark patterns are not a result of the law, but a result of insufficient law enforcement. If the EU comissions starts going after a few websites that employ particularly dark patterns for consent, you'll see everyone fall in line. > Is this freedom? Yup, it's that website's freedom to block EU traffic.
- stale2002 6y ago
  > it's that website's freedom to block EU traffic. But the point is that a bunch of people don't want to be blocked from using that website, and it is because of the problems with the GDPR. The OP was talking about "their" freedom to access that website. GDPR claims to support his freedom, but all it has done is resulting in him being unable to access local american news websites. Which does not seem like it helps his freedom much at all.
tpxl 6y ago
This comment always comes up and the answer is always the same. The dark patterns are straight up non-compliant with the law. The GDPR mandates about 0 of those popups, it's the shitty companies that "comply" because they want to abuse your data that make those popups. Same with the foreign newspapers, they're _not_ required to block anything. They just chose to because it's somehow easier to block traffic than to not track them.
ploika 6y ago
I'm going to take this comment at face value even though the username is "jokethrowaway". Yes. It is freedom. I'll take a few popups over the worst excesses of big tech privacy invasion, rent-seeking and monopolistic practices.
tpush 6y ago
> As a European citizen, I'm tired of having to close hundreds of popups a day which purposefully use dark patterns to make it harder to unselect everything and just close and make it easy to accept everything in one click. Well, this is exactly the thing that's illegal under GDPR. Don't blame the regulator if websites are blatantly not complying with the law.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Yeah, and it seems to me that it slowly has been getting better (as websites keep being fined?), so looks like the law is working? (I would have preferred this to be handled in the browser itself though...)
croes 6y ago
You know they are tricking you? The websites make it annoying as possible so you think it's the EUs fault. How about just stop the tracking and give me an option to turn it on if I want?
alkonaut 6y ago
> As a European citizen, I'm tired of having to close hundreds of popups a day which purposefully use dark patterns to make it harder to unselect everything and just close and make it easy to accept everything in one click. The popups is the tiny, visible part of the GDPR. The rest of the iceberg that is the GDPR is that those sites already had to think about how they handle your data. I hope the popups thing will be resolved by clarification and some stiff example-making fines. Hopefully those examples make it clear that no kind of "optional" tracking can be included via a prominent "Accept and continue" button and that all such default actions must lead to zero tracking/third party ad cookies being used. Once sites realize that almost no one will make an effort and actively enable tracking, these things will disapppear (as will a lot of the sites that can't find alternative revenue - this is a good thing)
chriswarbo 6y ago
> This is what happens when you get incompetent non technical people to regulate on things. I think GDPR, and the so-called "cookie law" before it, was done pretty competently. The principles are pretty clear: data policies/controllers/etc. have to be explicit and limited; personal data collection requires consent of the people involved; opting into a service implies consent for data required by that service (e.g. cookies for shopping carts, local storage for highscores, etc.); if consent isn't implied, it must be requested explicitly. Explicit consent is a last resort, and only required when collecting personal data which (a) isn't directly required to provide a service or (b) comes from people who aren't users of your service (i.e. who haven't opted in). Advertising is a good example, since the "users" of an ad network (those opting to use it) are the people buying and selling ad space; people viewing those ads aren't users (they haven't opted in); and advertising isn't required to provide a service (e.g. a news site; it might be indirectly required, for raising revenue, but the site would work just the same with any revenue source). The fact you're tired of popups shows that GDPR is working; the extent of data collection, surveillance, etc. has been brought to the surface. Your anger is misdirected though: it's not GDPR's fault that so many surveillance organisations are trying to track and target you; quite the opposite! > make it easy to accept everything in one click > Is this freedom? Do you think it would be "freedom" to waive all of your waivable rights, to anyone and everyone who asks, without even knowing they asked? That's what an automated banner-clicker would be doing, since consent popups are not restricted to talking about cookies (just like GDPR isn't about cookies); they can ask for pretty much anything. In fact, I imagine many of them ask for more than they're legally allowed (this happens all the time, e.g. many privacy policies do this, many "warranty void if removed" stickers are not legally enforcable, etc.). If you'd instead rather tell your browser to accept certain pre-selected terms which you're comfortable with, then you're in luck! There's a standard for that called P3P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P It's not supported by Chrome, but you can enable it in Firefox, as long as you're using version 2 (it was removed in Firefox 3). Then you just need to convince every Web site you visit to implement it. Good luck!
- stale2002 6y ago
  > it's not GDPR's fault It absolutely is the fault of GDPR that now a bunch of websites in the US are blocking him. There was a new law, and now a bunch of newspapers responded to that law. As predicted. It was entirely predicted that this was going to be the result of GDPR. It should be obvious that some companies would simply block people from the EU, and those people could be worse off for being blocked. > The fact you're tired of popups shows that GDPR is working But the person does not want those popups. They simply don't care that much about data tracking. And instead, they are more annoyed by the popups. This is a negative consequence that you have to recognize. > Do you think it would be "freedom" to waive all of your waivable rights Well here is a better solution. The people who want the popups to show up, all the time, with the horrible UI, could have that. But what if, for everyone else, we had a single click button that said "ignore all this GDPR stuff, and go back to how it was before". That way, people for prefer the frequent popups can have them, and the people who don't want that, can just agree to all of it, at once, and not have to worry about it anymore, if we choose do so. That would be a choice, right? Thats freedom.
mpweiher 6y ago
I click "reject all" (+dark pattern "object" to "legitimate interest"). If a site wants me to do that all individually, I close the window. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Oh, and I probably should report them, because it's almost certainly illegal. And yes, this is freedom. The freedom for me to choose. I can still click "accept all" if I want to. I couldn't before, and I didn't even know how much there was. What you meant is "convenience". Freedom is not always convenient.
Bayart 6y ago
>As a European citizen, I'm tired of having to close hundreds of popups a day which purposefully use dark patterns to make it harder to unselect everything and just close and make it easy to accept everything in one click. There's a terrific browser extension called Consent Manager [1] that automatizes it. [1] https://github.com/privacycloud/consent-manager-web-ext https://github.com/privacycloud/consent-manager-web-ext As for freedom, well, you're free to just consent and get your identity traded and become a digital slave. By and large the law works just as it was meant to : showing in broad daylight the extent of what the data market has become.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

It's the newspaper's choice to exclude you. Nothing in the law requires it. Proof: the website you're currently using. The New York Times. Really anything except the Backwater End Times and The Suburbian Dystopia Monthly

vixen99 6y ago
As you well know, using 'Backwater End Times and The Suburbian Dystopia Monthly' as examples is disingenuous. Mildly amusing but deliberately misses the point. For the newspaper it's the law of diminishing returns as regards far-flung readers.
amadeuspagel 6y ago
> It's the newspaper's choice to exclude you. Nothing in the law requires it. The EU makes a law, and suddenly a bunch of newspapers choose to exclude europeans. > Really anything except the Backwater End Times and The Suburbian Dystopia Monthly Sour grapes thinking. If that were really the case people wouldn't notice it at all. You click on a link because it interests you, then see that as a european you can't access it and then tell yourself that it didn't actually interest you.

maest 6y ago

> I'm tired of having to... Weird, I manually opt out of everything on most websites I visit and I find it pretty straightforward. There's only a handful of flows that most websites use, so it's not that difficult. There are some egregious exceptions (Yahoo being a particularly annoying one), but that's a small number of cases and, in most cases, it makes me realise I didn't actually care that much about reading their content, so I just move on. Also, the dark patterns are not a result of the law, but a result of insufficient law enforcement. If the EU comissions starts going after a few websites that employ particularly dark patterns for consent, you'll see everyone fall in line. > Is this freedom? Yup, it's that website's freedom to block EU traffic.

stale2002 6y ago
> it's that website's freedom to block EU traffic. But the point is that a bunch of people don't want to be blocked from using that website, and it is because of the problems with the GDPR. The OP was talking about "their" freedom to access that website. GDPR claims to support his freedom, but all it has done is resulting in him being unable to access local american news websites. Which does not seem like it helps his freedom much at all.

tpxl 6y ago

This comment always comes up and the answer is always the same. The dark patterns are straight up non-compliant with the law. The GDPR mandates about 0 of those popups, it's the shitty companies that "comply" because they want to abuse your data that make those popups. Same with the foreign newspapers, they're _not_ required to block anything. They just chose to because it's somehow easier to block traffic than to not track them.

ploika 6y ago

I'm going to take this comment at face value even though the username is "jokethrowaway". Yes. It is freedom. I'll take a few popups over the worst excesses of big tech privacy invasion, rent-seeking and monopolistic practices.

tpush 6y ago

> As a European citizen, I'm tired of having to close hundreds of popups a day which purposefully use dark patterns to make it harder to unselect everything and just close and make it easy to accept everything in one click. Well, this is exactly the thing that's illegal under GDPR. Don't blame the regulator if websites are blatantly not complying with the law.

BlueTemplar 6y ago
Yeah, and it seems to me that it slowly has been getting better (as websites keep being fined?), so looks like the law is working? (I would have preferred this to be handled in the browser itself though...)

croes 6y ago

You know they are tricking you? The websites make it annoying as possible so you think it's the EUs fault. How about just stop the tracking and give me an option to turn it on if I want?

alkonaut 6y ago

> As a European citizen, I'm tired of having to close hundreds of popups a day which purposefully use dark patterns to make it harder to unselect everything and just close and make it easy to accept everything in one click. The popups is the tiny, visible part of the GDPR. The rest of the iceberg that is the GDPR is that those sites already had to think about how they handle your data. I hope the popups thing will be resolved by clarification and some stiff example-making fines. Hopefully those examples make it clear that no kind of "optional" tracking can be included via a prominent "Accept and continue" button and that all such default actions must lead to zero tracking/third party ad cookies being used. Once sites realize that almost no one will make an effort and actively enable tracking, these things will disapppear (as will a lot of the sites that can't find alternative revenue - this is a good thing)

chriswarbo 6y ago

> This is what happens when you get incompetent non technical people to regulate on things. I think GDPR, and the so-called "cookie law" before it, was done pretty competently. The principles are pretty clear: data policies/controllers/etc. have to be explicit and limited; personal data collection requires consent of the people involved; opting into a service implies consent for data required by that service (e.g. cookies for shopping carts, local storage for highscores, etc.); if consent isn't implied, it must be requested explicitly. Explicit consent is a last resort, and only required when collecting personal data which (a) isn't directly required to provide a service or (b) comes from people who aren't users of your service (i.e. who haven't opted in). Advertising is a good example, since the "users" of an ad network (those opting to use it) are the people buying and selling ad space; people viewing those ads aren't users (they haven't opted in); and advertising isn't required to provide a service (e.g. a news site; it might be indirectly required, for raising revenue, but the site would work just the same with any revenue source). The fact you're tired of popups shows that GDPR is working; the extent of data collection, surveillance, etc. has been brought to the surface. Your anger is misdirected though: it's not GDPR's fault that so many surveillance organisations are trying to track and target you; quite the opposite! > make it easy to accept everything in one click > Is this freedom? Do you think it would be "freedom" to waive all of your waivable rights, to anyone and everyone who asks, without even knowing they asked? That's what an automated banner-clicker would be doing, since consent popups are not restricted to talking about cookies (just like GDPR isn't about cookies); they can ask for pretty much anything. In fact, I imagine many of them ask for more than they're legally allowed (this happens all the time, e.g. many privacy policies do this, many "warranty void if removed" stickers are not legally enforcable, etc.). If you'd instead rather tell your browser to accept certain pre-selected terms which you're comfortable with, then you're in luck! There's a standard for that called P3P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P It's not supported by Chrome, but you can enable it in Firefox, as long as you're using version 2 (it was removed in Firefox 3). Then you just need to convince every Web site you visit to implement it. Good luck!

stale2002 6y ago
> it's not GDPR's fault It absolutely is the fault of GDPR that now a bunch of websites in the US are blocking him. There was a new law, and now a bunch of newspapers responded to that law. As predicted. It was entirely predicted that this was going to be the result of GDPR. It should be obvious that some companies would simply block people from the EU, and those people could be worse off for being blocked. > The fact you're tired of popups shows that GDPR is working But the person does not want those popups. They simply don't care that much about data tracking. And instead, they are more annoyed by the popups. This is a negative consequence that you have to recognize. > Do you think it would be "freedom" to waive all of your waivable rights Well here is a better solution. The people who want the popups to show up, all the time, with the horrible UI, could have that. But what if, for everyone else, we had a single click button that said "ignore all this GDPR stuff, and go back to how it was before". That way, people for prefer the frequent popups can have them, and the people who don't want that, can just agree to all of it, at once, and not have to worry about it anymore, if we choose do so. That would be a choice, right? Thats freedom.

mpweiher 6y ago

I click "reject all" (+dark pattern "object" to "legitimate interest"). If a site wants me to do that all individually, I close the window. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Oh, and I probably should report them, because it's almost certainly illegal. And yes, this is freedom. The freedom for me to choose. I can still click "accept all" if I want to. I couldn't before, and I didn't even know how much there was. What you meant is "convenience". Freedom is not always convenient.

Bayart 6y ago

>As a European citizen, I'm tired of having to close hundreds of popups a day which purposefully use dark patterns to make it harder to unselect everything and just close and make it easy to accept everything in one click. There's a terrific browser extension called Consent Manager [1] that automatizes it. [1] https://github.com/privacycloud/consent-manager-web-ext https://github.com/privacycloud/consent-manager-web-ext As for freedom, well, you're free to just consent and get your identity traded and become a digital slave. By and large the law works just as it was meant to : showing in broad daylight the extent of what the data market has become.