4 ms·

It should literally be a setting in the browser - auto decline. That would make everyone's life a lot easier.

Nextgrid 5y ago
We had something like that called DNT, and not only did nobody honor it, but it was used as an extra fingerprinting vector, totally defeating its purpose. According to the GDPR, all non-essential tracking should be off by default, so "decline" is already the default if companies were compliant with the regulation (which is a big "if").
- Beltiras 5y ago
  You should rewrite that ending in "since companies aren't"
- renewiltord 5y ago
  I was in ad tech once. We obeyed it. Lots of traffic went through us. No one cared that we obeyed it and our competitors didn’t. Left the code in anyway but that’s the thing about these things: consumer behavior reveals that they don’t actually give a fuck about whether anyone obeys this or not except for the time when they want to be outraged.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    And the customer is always right.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    The thing is that from a user's perspective there's no way to tell whether someone obeys it or not because lying is not punished, so the safe thing to do is to assume the worst in all cases.
    - renewiltord 5y ago
      Right. It's rational for the user not to care. The point is that it was designed to fail since there's no closed loop verification. i.e. DNT was a bad design.
reportgunner 5y ago
Everybody would just leave that enabled and advertisers would find a different way to make money from tracking our browsing.
- feanaro 5y ago
  The twist is that this time around they legally are not allowed to do so.
akie 5y ago
I wonder what the advertising company in charge of the world's most popular browser would have to say about that.
judge2020 5y ago
I think the point is that you already can decline by default - by turning off cookies. IMO an API for cookie consent would be most useful if you could always accept functional cookies any none of the rest, but even that likely wouldn’t pass the test of being informed consent for every website that might use functional cookies a bit differently.

We had something like that called DNT, and not only did nobody honor it, but it was used as an extra fingerprinting vector, totally defeating its purpose. According to the GDPR, all non-essential tracking should be off by default, so "decline" is already the default if companies were compliant with the regulation (which is a big "if").

Beltiras 5y ago
You should rewrite that ending in "since companies aren't"
renewiltord 5y ago
I was in ad tech once. We obeyed it. Lots of traffic went through us. No one cared that we obeyed it and our competitors didn’t. Left the code in anyway but that’s the thing about these things: consumer behavior reveals that they don’t actually give a fuck about whether anyone obeys this or not except for the time when they want to be outraged.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  And the customer is always right.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  The thing is that from a user's perspective there's no way to tell whether someone obeys it or not because lying is not punished, so the safe thing to do is to assume the worst in all cases.
  - renewiltord 5y ago
    Right. It's rational for the user not to care. The point is that it was designed to fail since there's no closed loop verification. i.e. DNT was a bad design.

reportgunner 5y ago

Everybody would just leave that enabled and advertisers would find a different way to make money from tracking our browsing.

feanaro 5y ago
The twist is that this time around they legally are not allowed to do so.

akie 5y ago

I wonder what the advertising company in charge of the world's most popular browser would have to say about that.

judge2020 5y ago

I think the point is that you already can decline by default - by turning off cookies. IMO an API for cookie consent would be most useful if you could always accept functional cookies any none of the rest, but even that likely wouldn’t pass the test of being informed consent for every website that might use functional cookies a bit differently.