4 ms·

Waste of time. Cookie consent is dumb. Cookies are not bad, and in fact are required for basically any website. What is the point of agreeing to them over and

Waste of time. Cookie consent is dumb. Cookies are not bad, and in fact are required for basically any website. What is the point of agreeing to them over and over again, when your only alternative is to not use the internet, or at least not to use that site? Some companies might do bad things with cookies, but how does it help to condition us to agree to cookies on every website we visit. The fix is to repeal this dumb law.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago
Congratulations, you got taken in by the advertisers. One should take care when writing a law aimed at advertisers, because they will find ways to make the greatest laws look stupid; no matter how sane they were on paper. (and this law was very sane indeed, but sadly still far too nice) I don't want to outright force them out of business, since we do still need advertisers occasionally. But laws will definitely need to be yet even more strict.
simulate-me 4y ago
If you look more closely at the dialog, they usually break the cookies down into "necessary" and "optional" cookies. Necessary cookies are used for things like maintaining you login state. Optional cookies are used for things like advertising tracking. When you decline cookies access, you're only declining the optional cookies.
yardstick 4y ago
The cookie law never required a prompt for cookies necessary for the website to function. Ie session cookies are fine. What does require consent is advertising/tracking/metrics cookies.
- jimmaswell 4y ago
  Paying the bills is necessary for a website to function, but nobody seems to care about that.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Advertising doesn't require cookies. Transactions (for data) require consent.
  - MathMonkeyMan 4y ago
    Ask for money and see what happens. Maybe go into another business.
    - jimmaswell 4y ago
      We had a great thing going when websites ran on tracking. Nobody was actually harmed in any tangible way. Now every news site wants me to pay $20/month to read it.
      - yardstick 4y ago
        You can still run ads on your site without requiring user consent. It’s the personalisation of those ads that requires consent. TV, Radio, Magazines, Newspapers etc have worked for years just fine with generic, non-personalised ads. Or in the case of cable/sat, non-personalised ads + subscription fees.
        AlotOfReading 4y ago
        Radio, and print media worked for years, but the Internet absolutely eviscerated their funding models. It's a bit late to imagine closing the Pandora's box of personalized advertising without the mother of all temper tantrums and PR campaigns from the ad industry.
        salawat 4y ago
        Tantrum away. They have been measured and found wanting.
      - rebuilder 4y ago
        To me it seems that the more the web has become monetised the less useful it has become. Low-effort blogspam that only exists to draw ad revenue increasingly drowns out “real” content. So I’m not so sure we “had a great thing going”. If cookie consent forms reduce privacy violations, lower ad revenue and push these “content creators” off the web, that seems like a win-win to me.
- alfiedotwtf 4y ago
  Passively rather than actively agreeing (i.e "continuing to use this site means you agree to our terms" vs "click here to agree to our terms" doesn't pass the sniff test when it comes to contract law... at least in my jurisdiction. tl:dr; making the user click "I agree" would work more for you in a court setting
wintermutestwin 4y ago
>The fix is to repeal this dumb law. The fix is to have the law recognize that data is extremely valuable personal property, that stealing it is a criminal act and that the predatory "buying" of it (such as offering a $ service in exchange for $$$$$$ worth of data) should be highly regulated.
- Minor49er 4y ago
  Trying to legislate it in the way that you propose opens up a lot of problems. For example, using cookies to track users based on information that their browsers willingly provide. If this is considered "theft", then copying anything without removing the original would be theft, which would be a huge problem for anyone advocating for free file sharing or "piracy". Secondly, not all data can be treated as equally valuable, let alone "extremely" valuable. That depends on factors such as what the data is, who is using it, and how. A dump of user activity on a cosmetics site might be useless to a layman, moderately valuable to an academic researcher, and highly valuable to a fashion marketer. Finally, if all data is extremely valuable, then anyone entering bogus data should be persecuted for fraud. The solution is to educate the population on how these technologies work so that they understand the risks involved with surfing the web. These consent boxes are beyond useless because consent should be implicit when simply using the Internet. Ad block technology takes care of a lot of this already
  - salawat 4y ago
    >using cookies to track users based on information that their browsers willingly provide. Browsers do not "willingly provide" anything. Code is written to trigger functionality. You're ascribing motivation where there is none. Developers willingly write that code. >If this is considered "theft", then copying anything without removing the original would be theft, which would be a huge problem for anyone advocating for free file sharing or "piracy". Non-sequitur. Just because the API is there, does not mandate it's use. Free file sharing or even "piracy" can still happen without cognitive dissonance. It isn't the copying that is the problem, but rather the storing, caching, processing and monetization that taken together create a surveillance apparatus that is the problem. The connection to piracy, while undoubtedly seductive, fails to pass muster, because ultimately, entertainment wants to reach audience, and reap value, even if only in brand recognition. Everyone else does not. Advertising fails to realize, the world is not full of brands looking to be recognized.
tjoff 4y ago
> Waste of time. - Yes! > Cookie consent is dumb. - Yes! > Cookies are not bad - Correct! > Some companies might do bad things with cookies, but how does it help to condition us to agree to cookies on every website we visit. What? Every site that has a cookie-banner does bad things with cookies. That is the very reason that they have to show it.
- tempestn 4y ago
  If you use tracking to understand how users are using your website and thereby improve its UX, is that doing a bad thing?
  - tjoff 4y ago
    Yes I'd say that is a bad thing. It also normalizes tracking. For one you don't have to track users to understand how they are using your website. Also, it is extremely hard to imagine any beneficial outcomes that tracking would enable to outweigh the UX improvement of removing the consent-banner.
  - salawat 4y ago
    How about you try using your own website? QA departments suffer through this crap all the time.
    - tempestn 4y ago
      Of course you would use your own website, but you understand it in a way your users don't. From experience I can say you won't anticipate many of the ways things could go wrong. Some of that can be done by recruiting individual test users to observe, but aggregate stats on usage are also incredibly valuable to understand how people are using the site, where they get stuck, what features are important to them, and more. There's no need to identify particular users, but tracking user behaviour in general is incredibly valuable when operating a serious website.
anonymousab 4y ago
Asshole companies flagrantly breaking a law with a low relative level of enforcement can also simply mean that you need to properly enforce that law. Both the size, rate and amount of the fines needs to increase by orders of magnitude. The problem (and the internet in general) is simply much bigger than the current enforcement agencies can ever hope to keep up with.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago

Congratulations, you got taken in by the advertisers. One should take care when writing a law aimed at advertisers, because they will find ways to make the greatest laws look stupid; no matter how sane they were on paper. (and this law was very sane indeed, but sadly still far too nice) I don't want to outright force them out of business, since we do still need advertisers occasionally. But laws will definitely need to be yet even more strict.

simulate-me 4y ago

If you look more closely at the dialog, they usually break the cookies down into "necessary" and "optional" cookies. Necessary cookies are used for things like maintaining you login state. Optional cookies are used for things like advertising tracking. When you decline cookies access, you're only declining the optional cookies.

yardstick 4y ago

The cookie law never required a prompt for cookies necessary for the website to function. Ie session cookies are fine. What does require consent is advertising/tracking/metrics cookies.

jimmaswell 4y ago
Paying the bills is necessary for a website to function, but nobody seems to care about that.
- lupire 4y ago
  Advertising doesn't require cookies. Transactions (for data) require consent.
- MathMonkeyMan 4y ago
  Ask for money and see what happens. Maybe go into another business.
  - jimmaswell 4y ago
    We had a great thing going when websites ran on tracking. Nobody was actually harmed in any tangible way. Now every news site wants me to pay $20/month to read it.
    - yardstick 4y ago
      You can still run ads on your site without requiring user consent. It’s the personalisation of those ads that requires consent. TV, Radio, Magazines, Newspapers etc have worked for years just fine with generic, non-personalised ads. Or in the case of cable/sat, non-personalised ads + subscription fees.
      - AlotOfReading 4y ago
        Radio, and print media worked for years, but the Internet absolutely eviscerated their funding models. It's a bit late to imagine closing the Pandora's box of personalized advertising without the mother of all temper tantrums and PR campaigns from the ad industry.
        salawat 4y ago
        Tantrum away. They have been measured and found wanting.
    - rebuilder 4y ago
      To me it seems that the more the web has become monetised the less useful it has become. Low-effort blogspam that only exists to draw ad revenue increasingly drowns out “real” content. So I’m not so sure we “had a great thing going”. If cookie consent forms reduce privacy violations, lower ad revenue and push these “content creators” off the web, that seems like a win-win to me.
alfiedotwtf 4y ago
Passively rather than actively agreeing (i.e "continuing to use this site means you agree to our terms" vs "click here to agree to our terms" doesn't pass the sniff test when it comes to contract law... at least in my jurisdiction. tl:dr; making the user click "I agree" would work more for you in a court setting

wintermutestwin 4y ago

>The fix is to repeal this dumb law. The fix is to have the law recognize that data is extremely valuable personal property, that stealing it is a criminal act and that the predatory "buying" of it (such as offering a $ service in exchange for $$$$$$ worth of data) should be highly regulated.

Minor49er 4y ago
Trying to legislate it in the way that you propose opens up a lot of problems. For example, using cookies to track users based on information that their browsers willingly provide. If this is considered "theft", then copying anything without removing the original would be theft, which would be a huge problem for anyone advocating for free file sharing or "piracy". Secondly, not all data can be treated as equally valuable, let alone "extremely" valuable. That depends on factors such as what the data is, who is using it, and how. A dump of user activity on a cosmetics site might be useless to a layman, moderately valuable to an academic researcher, and highly valuable to a fashion marketer. Finally, if all data is extremely valuable, then anyone entering bogus data should be persecuted for fraud. The solution is to educate the population on how these technologies work so that they understand the risks involved with surfing the web. These consent boxes are beyond useless because consent should be implicit when simply using the Internet. Ad block technology takes care of a lot of this already
- salawat 4y ago
  >using cookies to track users based on information that their browsers willingly provide. Browsers do not "willingly provide" anything. Code is written to trigger functionality. You're ascribing motivation where there is none. Developers willingly write that code. >If this is considered "theft", then copying anything without removing the original would be theft, which would be a huge problem for anyone advocating for free file sharing or "piracy". Non-sequitur. Just because the API is there, does not mandate it's use. Free file sharing or even "piracy" can still happen without cognitive dissonance. It isn't the copying that is the problem, but rather the storing, caching, processing and monetization that taken together create a surveillance apparatus that is the problem. The connection to piracy, while undoubtedly seductive, fails to pass muster, because ultimately, entertainment wants to reach audience, and reap value, even if only in brand recognition. Everyone else does not. Advertising fails to realize, the world is not full of brands looking to be recognized.

tjoff 4y ago

> Waste of time. - Yes! > Cookie consent is dumb. - Yes! > Cookies are not bad - Correct! > Some companies might do bad things with cookies, but how does it help to condition us to agree to cookies on every website we visit. What? Every site that has a cookie-banner does bad things with cookies. That is the very reason that they have to show it.

tempestn 4y ago
If you use tracking to understand how users are using your website and thereby improve its UX, is that doing a bad thing?
- tjoff 4y ago
  Yes I'd say that is a bad thing. It also normalizes tracking. For one you don't have to track users to understand how they are using your website. Also, it is extremely hard to imagine any beneficial outcomes that tracking would enable to outweigh the UX improvement of removing the consent-banner.
- salawat 4y ago
  How about you try using your own website? QA departments suffer through this crap all the time.
  - tempestn 4y ago
    Of course you would use your own website, but you understand it in a way your users don't. From experience I can say you won't anticipate many of the ways things could go wrong. Some of that can be done by recruiting individual test users to observe, but aggregate stats on usage are also incredibly valuable to understand how people are using the site, where they get stuck, what features are important to them, and more. There's no need to identify particular users, but tracking user behaviour in general is incredibly valuable when operating a serious website.

anonymousab 4y ago

Asshole companies flagrantly breaking a law with a low relative level of enforcement can also simply mean that you need to properly enforce that law. Both the size, rate and amount of the fines needs to increase by orders of magnitude. The problem (and the internet in general) is simply much bigger than the current enforcement agencies can ever hope to keep up with.