6 ms·

For me personally - all these popup banners and modal walls for websites about cookies and stuff just really make the internet a worse place. I suspect that em

For me personally - all these popup banners and modal walls for websites about cookies and stuff just really make the internet a worse place. I suspect that empirically, they don't accomplish what the GDPR intended to - and they make the internet less enjoyable. Thanks GDPR.

sefrost 6y ago
Same here. I would be interested to know from people outside the GDPR area - do you ever see cookie banners? Do you know what they are? Sometimes I hit a USA based news website which simply denies access, because I'm in the UK, on GDPR grounds. Which seems an overreaction.
- bombcar 6y ago
  EVERY WEBSITE I visit from my location in the USA seems to have these stupid cookie popups. We added one to OUR WEBSITE even though nothing is hosted in the EU - simple cargo-culting "everyone is doing it so we must do it also". I doubt it actually does a @#$@$ darn thing.
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    We've had them up long enough for somebody to have generated some hard numbers by now. I wonder what the numbers look like on percentage of users that modify the settings from the default?
  - layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
    I don’t have a cookie banner on my website. You know why? Because I don’t track my users with (or without) cookies. Maybe you should stop doing it on your website, and then the cookie banner can be removed.
  - josefx 6y ago
    > We added one to OUR WEBSITE even though nothing is hosted in the EU Location of the host is irrelevant, it depends on the target audience. Serve pages to the EU? You get to follow it. > simple cargo-culting "everyone is doing it so we must do it also". If your site is cargo culting everything it probably also has a ton of third party trackers for the same reason.
    - Zak 6y ago
      > Serve pages to the EU? You get to follow it. What can the EU do about it if the company has no physical or legal presence in the EU? Have there been any serious attempts at such enforcement?
      - bombcar 6y ago
        I have decreed that anyone who serves pages into my machines owes me $billion.
      - strictnein 6y ago
        It's weird how people keep claiming this. No one says that all sites should honor China's laws for visitors from China. No one claims that all sites should honor Saudi Arabia's laws for visitors from Saudi Arabia. But magically the GDPR must be followed by the entire world if a visitor shows up from France.
        josefx 6y ago
        China has the great firewall, the EU tried something similar under the "think of the children" excuse, which promptly failed. Also a lot of people speaking out against China had to find out the hard way what some western companies will do when you speak out against a cash cow that will happily kick them out if its rules are enforced.
        makapuf 6y ago
        A firewall is not the only way to enforce this I'd guess. If I open a shop in China and do business here I might have to comply with local laws.
        iso1210 6y ago
        USA set the precedent when the FBI arrested Dmitry Sklyarov (a Russian Citizen) for working for a Russian company that apparently, while in Russia, broke US law. It would be like Wendys slagging off the Thai king on a billboard in Dakota, then an employee of Wendys went on holiday to Bangkok and was arrested.
- celestialcheese 6y ago
  US companies started implementing it as a result of CCPA. So it's everywhere now
wuliwong 6y ago
I was just thinking about that the other day. The billions of extra clicks and taps and wasted seconds. And for what gain? I think that this can be discussed outside of the basic "should we regulate" or not. Specifically looking at these modals that have spread all over, what actual protection does the average user get from this modal?
- ratww 6y ago
  The modals don't exist to protect the user. Their goal is merely to annoy users to the point they just give up and blindly click "Accept". They only exist for the benefit of companies, and most of them violate GDPR.
  - rwcarlsen 6y ago
    Right. I'm not saying the intent of GDPR was to provoke them. But empirically, they are an effect of the GDPR. An undesirable one - that does not fulfill its intent. I'd say we are in agreement here.
    - ratww 6y ago
      I'm not in agreement with that. The banners are an effect of shitty companies being shitty to their customers. They already put as many annoyances and dark patterns on their website as they can, with or without GDPR: newsletter subscriptions, opt-in as default, multiple trackers. Those banners are merely the effect of shitty companies trying to cover their asses and being non-compliant to a law that's actually sane.
    - iso1210 6y ago
      The banners tell me what websites are shitty and that I shouldn't visit them. That's a tangible benefit.
yohannparis 6y ago
You mean developer or website manager who do not apply the law properly. All those deceptive patterns are not part of the GDPR, they should clearly label accept and refuse. I think it will take time for people to stop gathering so much information from users. Once a competitors start to figure it out, users might start using them (i.e. New York Times & GitHub.)
- dominotw 6y ago
  > . All those deceptive patterns are not part of the GDPR GP isn't talking about deceptive patterns. Point is that no one really understand what these popups are for and everyone just blindly clicks ok. I don't think i've ever declined a cookie popup. have you?
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    pretty much every time. If I can't find it or it's too much work, I load the page in chrome or just close it
  - yohannparis 6y ago
    Every time I see one I go to the options to refuse all, if they do not allow me this option, I leave the page and add their domain name to my no cookie blacklist. It's strenuous, but I prefer to do so.
  - icod 6y ago
    I ALWAYS go through them. Either reject, tediously try to find the hidden settings like legitimate interest. Lately I open some sites in incognito window, accept all, then close the window when I'm done. Some science mag I recently visited set 143!! cookies and that's before even showing the consent screen. I've also started to write scrapers for news sites I visit on a daily basis who go over the top with all the tracking and ads. So I "just" scrape their content and have written a frontend to read the content. Most of the time that content is just blown up but if there's something really interesting I have a link to the original article there and again open it in an incognito window. It has become such a chore, when ever I visit a new site on my phone and see a cookie screen, I navigate back and/or open an incognito window. What the EU should do is disallow those cookie full page modal consent windows. Many use overflow: hidden when showing it so you can't just adblock it without having to modify the markup. It has all gone out of hand.
Nextgrid 6y ago
The problem is that the GDPR is not being enforced properly. The GDPR explicitly bans annoying/misleading consent prompts, so this shouldn't be an issue if the law was enforced. It explicitly learned from the earlier "cookie law" which merely enforced disclosure and led to stupid & useless cookie banners with no easy way for the user to actually act on them.
- harrybr 6y ago
  Exactly. It’s amazing that this is not widely known. The deceptive GDPR pop-ups we all hate are not GDPR compliant!
  - icod 6y ago
    But you can't do anything about it, legally. You can complain to your country's data protection expert, and they will tell you this or that company blah blah but not act. Nothing ever happened. I filed 3 complaints in 2 countries. 2/3 took over a year to receive a response. 1 took about 6 months and nothing changed.
Bakary 6y ago
That's like accusing the flashlight of making rats scurry under the floorboard
- robgibbons 6y ago
  You keep using this when people complain about GDPR consent banners. We get it, cookies are bad and privacy needs to be protected. It's just a really disingenuous and dismissive comparison. Nobody is complaining about flashlights. GDPR may have been necessary, but the complete garbage heap of an experience the popups have turned the web into is worth lamenting.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    >It's just a really disingenuous and dismissive comparison. Nobody is complaining about flashlights. I don't make that comparison lightly. I'm not dismissing the issue: it is a serious problem that is widespread over the internet. It's not disingenuous: it describes a series of institutionalized behaviors that are directly parasitic on the user. Now the reaction is to be angry at GDPR because of the pop-ups, which aren't even GDPR compliant in the majority of cases as directly evidenced by the OP link. This reaction is comically absurd, hence the comparison. This garbage heap is the result of shitty implementation by the websites, and ironically a lack of enforcement of the law.
    - robgibbons 6y ago
      First, thank you for explaining your point. But, nobody here is complaining about GDPR. They are complaining about the terrible UX, and wasted time, and attention, which the non-compliant implementations have caused. That is not an absurd reaction, it's perfectly reasonable. That's why your comment comes off as dismissive. If anything, it's more akin to complaining about the shitty, half-rate pest control person your landlord calls to get rid of the rats. They do a bad job, poison your house, waste your time, and the rats never go away.
      - mrweasel 6y ago
anfogoat 6y ago
Imagine that, an EU regulation resulted in nothing but unintended consequences and close to zero benefit to anyone -- unless you count consulting gigs of course. Who could have possibly foreseen this! All this talk about how the problem is lack enforcement is an absolute riot. Hey, I've got an idea! Let's write another law to address the lack of enforcement. Uh, even better, a third one to address the dark patterns! (I'm very sorry for the low value comment but I've apparently got a condition where I am physically unable to resist the urge when the topic is rage inducing enough.)

sefrost 6y ago

Same here. I would be interested to know from people outside the GDPR area - do you ever see cookie banners? Do you know what they are? Sometimes I hit a USA based news website which simply denies access, because I'm in the UK, on GDPR grounds. Which seems an overreaction.

bombcar 6y ago
EVERY WEBSITE I visit from my location in the USA seems to have these stupid cookie popups. We added one to OUR WEBSITE even though nothing is hosted in the EU - simple cargo-culting "everyone is doing it so we must do it also". I doubt it actually does a @#$@$ darn thing.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  We've had them up long enough for somebody to have generated some hard numbers by now. I wonder what the numbers look like on percentage of users that modify the settings from the default?
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
  I don’t have a cookie banner on my website. You know why? Because I don’t track my users with (or without) cookies. Maybe you should stop doing it on your website, and then the cookie banner can be removed.
- josefx 6y ago
  > We added one to OUR WEBSITE even though nothing is hosted in the EU Location of the host is irrelevant, it depends on the target audience. Serve pages to the EU? You get to follow it. > simple cargo-culting "everyone is doing it so we must do it also". If your site is cargo culting everything it probably also has a ton of third party trackers for the same reason.
  - Zak 6y ago
    > Serve pages to the EU? You get to follow it. What can the EU do about it if the company has no physical or legal presence in the EU? Have there been any serious attempts at such enforcement?
    - bombcar 6y ago
      I have decreed that anyone who serves pages into my machines owes me $billion.
    - strictnein 6y ago
      It's weird how people keep claiming this. No one says that all sites should honor China's laws for visitors from China. No one claims that all sites should honor Saudi Arabia's laws for visitors from Saudi Arabia. But magically the GDPR must be followed by the entire world if a visitor shows up from France.
      - josefx 6y ago
        China has the great firewall, the EU tried something similar under the "think of the children" excuse, which promptly failed. Also a lot of people speaking out against China had to find out the hard way what some western companies will do when you speak out against a cash cow that will happily kick them out if its rules are enforced.
        makapuf 6y ago
        A firewall is not the only way to enforce this I'd guess. If I open a shop in China and do business here I might have to comply with local laws.
      - iso1210 6y ago
        USA set the precedent when the FBI arrested Dmitry Sklyarov (a Russian Citizen) for working for a Russian company that apparently, while in Russia, broke US law. It would be like Wendys slagging off the Thai king on a billboard in Dakota, then an employee of Wendys went on holiday to Bangkok and was arrested.
celestialcheese 6y ago
US companies started implementing it as a result of CCPA. So it's everywhere now

wuliwong 6y ago

I was just thinking about that the other day. The billions of extra clicks and taps and wasted seconds. And for what gain? I think that this can be discussed outside of the basic "should we regulate" or not. Specifically looking at these modals that have spread all over, what actual protection does the average user get from this modal?

ratww 6y ago
The modals don't exist to protect the user. Their goal is merely to annoy users to the point they just give up and blindly click "Accept". They only exist for the benefit of companies, and most of them violate GDPR.
- rwcarlsen 6y ago
  Right. I'm not saying the intent of GDPR was to provoke them. But empirically, they are an effect of the GDPR. An undesirable one - that does not fulfill its intent. I'd say we are in agreement here.
  - ratww 6y ago
    I'm not in agreement with that. The banners are an effect of shitty companies being shitty to their customers. They already put as many annoyances and dark patterns on their website as they can, with or without GDPR: newsletter subscriptions, opt-in as default, multiple trackers. Those banners are merely the effect of shitty companies trying to cover their asses and being non-compliant to a law that's actually sane.
  - iso1210 6y ago
    The banners tell me what websites are shitty and that I shouldn't visit them. That's a tangible benefit.

yohannparis 6y ago

You mean developer or website manager who do not apply the law properly. All those deceptive patterns are not part of the GDPR, they should clearly label accept and refuse. I think it will take time for people to stop gathering so much information from users. Once a competitors start to figure it out, users might start using them (i.e. New York Times & GitHub.)

dominotw 6y ago
> . All those deceptive patterns are not part of the GDPR GP isn't talking about deceptive patterns. Point is that no one really understand what these popups are for and everyone just blindly clicks ok. I don't think i've ever declined a cookie popup. have you?
- Semaphor 6y ago
  pretty much every time. If I can't find it or it's too much work, I load the page in chrome or just close it
- yohannparis 6y ago
  Every time I see one I go to the options to refuse all, if they do not allow me this option, I leave the page and add their domain name to my no cookie blacklist. It's strenuous, but I prefer to do so.
- icod 6y ago
  I ALWAYS go through them. Either reject, tediously try to find the hidden settings like legitimate interest. Lately I open some sites in incognito window, accept all, then close the window when I'm done. Some science mag I recently visited set 143!! cookies and that's before even showing the consent screen. I've also started to write scrapers for news sites I visit on a daily basis who go over the top with all the tracking and ads. So I "just" scrape their content and have written a frontend to read the content. Most of the time that content is just blown up but if there's something really interesting I have a link to the original article there and again open it in an incognito window. It has become such a chore, when ever I visit a new site on my phone and see a cookie screen, I navigate back and/or open an incognito window. What the EU should do is disallow those cookie full page modal consent windows. Many use overflow: hidden when showing it so you can't just adblock it without having to modify the markup. It has all gone out of hand.

Nextgrid 6y ago

The problem is that the GDPR is not being enforced properly. The GDPR explicitly bans annoying/misleading consent prompts, so this shouldn't be an issue if the law was enforced. It explicitly learned from the earlier "cookie law" which merely enforced disclosure and led to stupid & useless cookie banners with no easy way for the user to actually act on them.

harrybr 6y ago
Exactly. It’s amazing that this is not widely known. The deceptive GDPR pop-ups we all hate are not GDPR compliant!
- icod 6y ago
  But you can't do anything about it, legally. You can complain to your country's data protection expert, and they will tell you this or that company blah blah but not act. Nothing ever happened. I filed 3 complaints in 2 countries. 2/3 took over a year to receive a response. 1 took about 6 months and nothing changed.

Bakary 6y ago

That's like accusing the flashlight of making rats scurry under the floorboard

robgibbons 6y ago
You keep using this when people complain about GDPR consent banners. We get it, cookies are bad and privacy needs to be protected. It's just a really disingenuous and dismissive comparison. Nobody is complaining about flashlights. GDPR may have been necessary, but the complete garbage heap of an experience the popups have turned the web into is worth lamenting.
- Bakary 6y ago
  >It's just a really disingenuous and dismissive comparison. Nobody is complaining about flashlights. I don't make that comparison lightly. I'm not dismissing the issue: it is a serious problem that is widespread over the internet. It's not disingenuous: it describes a series of institutionalized behaviors that are directly parasitic on the user. Now the reaction is to be angry at GDPR because of the pop-ups, which aren't even GDPR compliant in the majority of cases as directly evidenced by the OP link. This reaction is comically absurd, hence the comparison. This garbage heap is the result of shitty implementation by the websites, and ironically a lack of enforcement of the law.
  - robgibbons 6y ago
    First, thank you for explaining your point. But, nobody here is complaining about GDPR. They are complaining about the terrible UX, and wasted time, and attention, which the non-compliant implementations have caused. That is not an absurd reaction, it's perfectly reasonable. That's why your comment comes off as dismissive. If anything, it's more akin to complaining about the shitty, half-rate pest control person your landlord calls to get rid of the rats. They do a bad job, poison your house, waste your time, and the rats never go away.
    - mrweasel 6y ago

anfogoat 6y ago

Imagine that, an EU regulation resulted in nothing but unintended consequences and close to zero benefit to anyone -- unless you count consulting gigs of course. Who could have possibly foreseen this! All this talk about how the problem is lack enforcement is an absolute riot. Hey, I've got an idea! Let's write another law to address the lack of enforcement. Uh, even better, a third one to address the dark patterns! (I'm very sorry for the low value comment but I've apparently got a condition where I am physically unable to resist the urge when the topic is rage inducing enough.)