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The vast majority of people DO NOT care about cookies nor do they care about trackers. However, there is a very real productivity loss with all the cookie prom

The vast majority of people DO NOT care about cookies nor do they care about trackers. However, there is a very real productivity loss with all the cookie prompts - both trying to implement them, getting around them, and the billions of people who have to click on them every single day. We've got to come up with a better solution.

rapnie 4y ago
The author states this: > To make this very clear: user/visitor consent is only needed for data going to 3rd parties. All cookie laws, including GDPR and CCPA, allow essential first-party cookies to be exempt from collecting user consent before performing their actions. So your session tracking cookie on your site DOES NOT need a consent popup AT ALL. Most consent dialogs can be avoided, were it not that the surveillance capitalist services need your data, and shove these dialogs full of deceptive design in your face. In hopes to have as many people as possible complain about the regulations, and use that pressure to lobby them away again.
- 4ad 4y ago
  My bank doesn't use 3rd party cookies, but they have a modal wall you have to click through anyway that explains that they DO NOT use cookies. This is insanity. Their explanation is that users are so accustomed to these cookie walls that a site without one would feel suspicious and unsafe. I very much blame the EU on this, because the EU policy has solved NOTHING, tracking still happens just as before, except now users just have to go through more friction. Of course I am also pissed at the websites and entities that sell my data, but that is irrelevant to my gripe with the EU.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    Businesses: want to track users and collect their data with reckless abandon Businesses: implement rampant dark patterns to trick people into accepting tracking and data collection Businesses: flood the internet with inane, obnoxious and blatantly illegal cookie dialogs ... 4ad: I blame the EU (Hint: show me where GDPR says anything about cookies)
    - qtzfz 4y ago
      Most internet businesses need tracking to survive, so it's more like either you click past a cookie banner or you don't get to see the content at all.
      - illiarian 4y ago
        > Most internet businesses need tracking to survive Of course they don't.
      - Nextgrid 4y ago
        > Most internet businesses need tracking to survive Most criminal gangs need to steal/rob/etc to survive too.
    - 4ad 4y ago
      I blame the businesses for destroying the social fabric of the internet, and I simultaneously blame the EU for implementing pointless regulations that do not solve the first problem while making life miserable for its subjects.
      - illiarian 4y ago
        Businesses: destroy the social fabric of the internet Regulation, literally: do not collect people's data without their consent if you don't require that data for services you provide. Applies in equal measure to websites, banks, grocery stores, shit processing plants and nuclear power stations. ... 4ad: I still blame the EU, and it's a pointless regulation. Edit: This comment really says it much better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567507
        4ad 4y ago
        You seem to think that the EU should be imune from criticism because it tries to do the right thing. No, when politicians make things worse and absolutely don't solve any problem they promised they will solve then they should be held accountable, removed from positions of power, and replaced with competent people who write better regulation. Edit to your edit: indeed, the EU is mostly about making people miserable while convincing them it's actually better for them.
- Hermel 4y ago
  So why do even the official website of the European commission and the European parliament have a cookie consent button? One would assume that they are not "capitalist services".
  - rapnie 4y ago
    Unfortunately big tech surveillance capitalists (which is different than "capitalist services", mind you) are court suppliers of IT services that EU institutions depend upon. Edit: And as the sibling said, in many cases it may be restricted to analytics and simple 'reject' suffices, which is at least better than some of the intricate dialog designs.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    I mean, you could literally read what their banner says. E.g. Eu Paarliament "We use analytics cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. You have the choice to refuse or accept them. Reject. Accept". Those analytic cookies are not required for the functioning of the website, and those web sites are required to ask for your consent to gather any additional data.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Is he right though? I work with affiliate people a lot, and they hate cookie-consent popups. Even when you do all your analytics inhouse with self-hosted matomo, if you want to use a cookie, you need consent is what the lawyers say unanimously. And these aren't "we want you to ask for consent because we secretly want more privacy" lawyers, these are "I get paid to find a way for you to do your tracking in the easiest way possible and I don't care about privacy" lawyers. Maybe they're all wrong, but I have doubts.
  - gbalduzzi 4y ago
    > Even when you do all your analytics inhouse with self-hosted matomo, if you want to use a cookie, you need consent is what the lawyers say unanimously If you use a cookie for Matomo tracking than yes, you need consent. You are using a cookie for a non essential service (analytics), so you need to ask consent. But you can use Matomo as cookieless: https://matomo.org/cookie-consent-banners/ https://matomo.org/cookie-consent-banners/ If matomo gathers data without a cookie, you can still use technical / essential cookies without consent. As an example Github.com, owned by Microsoft, does not have a cookie consent popup and sets at least 5 cookies as soon as you open it: - color mode (dark / light) - user timezone - whether the user is logged or guest - a session cookie - _octo, that I don't understand.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      But that primarily says that Github doesn't care about cookies (or consent), not that you (not being a multinational corporations with an army of lawyers and millions in lobbying spending) can do the same. I'm pretty sure those cookies are non-compliant if you look at them closely, because none of them are necessary for the operation of the service. a) a default value doesn't need to be stored in a cookie -- and it has to be a default value, because you haven't selected a color scheme or a timezone b) login-state does not require a cookie: either you're logged in and have a session, or you aren't, and you don't, c) there's no reason for a session on the public facing side that doesn't contain any private/individualized data, unless you want to use these session cookies to track users -- and it's only about users as bots will typically ignore cookies. My money is on "Microsoft knows that cookie consent is optional if you're not a small European company".
- nicbou 4y ago
  That's completely false though. Tracking your users without consent is still not allowed, even if you store the data on your own servers.
shmde 4y ago
Also accepting them cookies is one single click but rejecting them feels like entering the dark realm with multiple options and not knowing where to click. I am software dev but still have to use just enough mental resources to reject all of the non essential ones. How the fuck is this legal.
- germanier 4y ago
  It's not legal. It's just not rigorously enforced. It was promised that things get better with the proposed ePrivacy regulation. Let's see.
- Anduia 4y ago
  It is not legal for webs to make rejecting cookies more complicated than accepting them. In fact, the French data protection authority CNIL has issued orders to around sixty players that do not make refusing cookies as easily as accepting them. They have also fined companies such as Google and Facebook for making it harder to reject cookies than to accept them. The CNIL has ordered these companies to provide a means of refusing cookies as simple as the existing means of accepting them. Also, under GDPR, it is not legal for websites to make rejecting cookies more complicated than accepting them. In May 2020, the EU updated its GDPR guidance to clarify that cookie walls do not offer users a genuine choice because if you reject cookies you’re blocked from accessing content. It confirms that cookie walls should not be used. Companies such as Google have introduced new options to reject tracking cookies in Europe after their existing dialog boxes were found to be in violation of EU data laws. Now what I don't know is if users outside of EU get the evil-twin version of those popups when visiting websites. My experience browsing the www is just not as bad as many people describe because I usually get a "reject all" button or when "managing" the cookies, they are all disabled by default and I can simply save the options.
submeta 4y ago
> vast majority of people DO NOT care about cookies nor do they care about trackers I highly doubt that. Do give people simpler ways to opt-out of all tracking, and they‘d happily chose that. Currently we have two problems: 1) The consent button is one click for cookies, the other is several clicks away. 2) The layman does not now how to choose a setting to always opt-out of tracking.
dre_bot 4y ago
Most don't even know what the hell a cookie is or any of the shit in those prompts.
- pelorat 4y ago
  I mean Gen-Z barely knows what an operating system is.
illiarian 4y ago
>The vast majority of people DO NOT care about cookies nor do they care about trackers. When presented with "Ask app to not track" on iOS, 96% users clicked "do not track" https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-o...
- boffinism 4y ago
  These two statements are not incompatible.
- shmde 4y ago
  Having a clear cut "CALL TO ACTION" dialogue option which presents one positive ( don't track me ) and one negative ( track me ) option. People choose the positive one. Cookies/tracking banners on website completely obfuscates the choice. Negative option ( track me ) is presented as the pearly gates to heaven and easy to click. Positive option ( don't track me ) is presented as these mathematical puzzle where you must know what to click or your dog gets executed. So yeah people care about not being tracked when presented with clear instructions to which one is bad and which one is good.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    > Having a clear cut "CALL TO ACTION" dialogue option which presents one positive ( don't track me ) and one negative ( track me ) option. That is literally the requirement by GDPR > Cookies/tracking banners on website completely obfuscates the choice. On purpose. In violation of GDPR.
- ssss11 4y ago
  That “most users don’t care” line is tossed around by people all over the place and you righty point out that it isn’t true. If my job relied on people giving up their data privacy I would probably continue telling everyone that line as well.
no_time 4y ago
>We've got to come up with a better solution. I've got an easy one for you: stop embedding google analytics and others. You don't need a cookie banner when you only have operational ones or better yet, none at all.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  Are you sure that out-of-the-box GA requires it? I thought the only info it recorded was anonymised.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    Even with consent and configuration, GA might be illegal in the EU. It's currently in a grey area after some latest rulings.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    GA collects insane amounts of data. And you might have to disable a lot of that collection manually https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9019185?hl=en#zippy=%2Cin-this-article https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9019185?hl=en#zi... And even then it might not be strictly compliant due to Schrems II ruling
  - boffinism 4y ago
    Don't confuse cookie laws with data laws
  - progval 4y ago
    According to the French data protection authority, "out-of-the-box" GA requires consent because they aren't anonymised: https://www.cnil.fr/en/google-analytics-and-data-transfers-how-make-your-analytics-tool-compliant-gdpr https://www.cnil.fr/en/google-analytics-and-data-transfers-h...
    - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
      Well, I'm glad I don't use GA on my personal site, then, even if it means I have no idea what traffic levels it gets. GA is incredibly popular though - I would guess the vast majority of blogs etc. use it and have no consent to do so.
mabedan 4y ago
You’re missing the point of the article. The banner is only needed if your business relies on handing over info about the user to 3rd party. And yes, it’s reasonable to make sure user knows about it. The fact that these pop ups are annoying is the fault of the creator, not the regulation. Try accessing Apple.com or iCloud.com. No cookie pop up, yet one of the most successful businesses in history. You don’t have to be annoying
- qtzfz 4y ago
  What info? My IP address and the pages I've visited inside their site? By visiting a site I know I'm giving that info to them, they can do whatever they want with it.
  - jeltz 4y ago
    Not without breaking the law.
    - qtzfz 4y ago
      Which is why it's a stupid law that has made everybody's lives worse, both the businesses and the users.
      - hammyhavoc 4y ago
        Why is it a stupid law? Why should businesses be free to look up the IP and figure out who is looking at their page? An IP can reveal a lot of information, especially if there's servers hanging off of it.
  - illiarian 4y ago
    > What info? Any personally identifiable information. GDPR is not a complex law no matter how shady businesses and clueless devs are trying to tell you. It's also been in effect for 7 years. You'd think it's enough time to have at least some clue on what it's about. And yet we still have these inane threads on HN claiming it's about cookie popups, and people having no idea what info trackers collect.
wongarsu 4y ago
At least part of the intent of the law was that websites would reduce the amount of tracking if they have to explicitly ask for consent. You can build your website with just functional cookies (session cookie, storing preferences like dark mode, etc) and cookie-less tracking, and go without any cookie popups. Somehow the industry decided it's better to annoy your users with consent for 50 different trackers with the most in-your-face popup possible to cause users to reflexively hit consent instead.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  > Somehow the industry decided it's better to annoy your users with consent for 50 different trackers with the most in-your-face popup possible to cause users to reflexively hit consent instead. GDPR actually has provisions against this kind of malicious compliance - the problem is a chronic lack of enforcement, despite it being trivial to detect with a web crawler.
datkirby 4y ago
People are definitely aware of them. The trouble lies with how easy opting-out is. Many websites have included options to just opt for the "compulsory" option. The only concern now is how many of them would willingly provide that option.
ssss11 4y ago
Of course the simple solution that we all know is to not collect the damn data in the first place. But marketing boffins the world over will never willingly do this unless it’s enforced by law, so we’re left with the user’s taking on the burden of clicking deliberately confusing stuff and not knowing whether they’ve ended up consenting or not.
maeln 4y ago
Most people do not care because they don't really see/understand how it affect them. Just like most people probably don't care about HVAC regulation, welding regulation for system under pressure and other very technical field. They will see the issue and care about it when something happen. We have a lot of regulation about welding under high pressure because we know from experience what happen when we have no rules (things go boom). What happen when we have no regulation about tracker ? We get massive data leaks from poorly secured data hoarding company (hello Equifax). This is dangerous in many many ways: Identity theft, scam & spam, identifying people with certain political view, from a minority of some sort, etc... GDPR does not solve all this issue, some company can still hoard massive amount of data about you (it is always scary to ask for a data extraction from Meta, Twitter, ... and how you have a "profile") and have bad security, but it does limit in how many hand this data circulate and how easy it is to gain access to.

rapnie 4y ago

The author states this: > To make this very clear: user/visitor consent is only needed for data going to 3rd parties. All cookie laws, including GDPR and CCPA, allow essential first-party cookies to be exempt from collecting user consent before performing their actions. So your session tracking cookie on your site DOES NOT need a consent popup AT ALL. Most consent dialogs can be avoided, were it not that the surveillance capitalist services need your data, and shove these dialogs full of deceptive design in your face. In hopes to have as many people as possible complain about the regulations, and use that pressure to lobby them away again.

4ad 4y ago
My bank doesn't use 3rd party cookies, but they have a modal wall you have to click through anyway that explains that they DO NOT use cookies. This is insanity. Their explanation is that users are so accustomed to these cookie walls that a site without one would feel suspicious and unsafe. I very much blame the EU on this, because the EU policy has solved NOTHING, tracking still happens just as before, except now users just have to go through more friction. Of course I am also pissed at the websites and entities that sell my data, but that is irrelevant to my gripe with the EU.
- illiarian 4y ago
  Businesses: want to track users and collect their data with reckless abandon Businesses: implement rampant dark patterns to trick people into accepting tracking and data collection Businesses: flood the internet with inane, obnoxious and blatantly illegal cookie dialogs ... 4ad: I blame the EU (Hint: show me where GDPR says anything about cookies)
  - qtzfz 4y ago
    Most internet businesses need tracking to survive, so it's more like either you click past a cookie banner or you don't get to see the content at all.
    - illiarian 4y ago
      > Most internet businesses need tracking to survive Of course they don't.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      > Most internet businesses need tracking to survive Most criminal gangs need to steal/rob/etc to survive too.
  - 4ad 4y ago
    I blame the businesses for destroying the social fabric of the internet, and I simultaneously blame the EU for implementing pointless regulations that do not solve the first problem while making life miserable for its subjects.
    - illiarian 4y ago
      Businesses: destroy the social fabric of the internet Regulation, literally: do not collect people's data without their consent if you don't require that data for services you provide. Applies in equal measure to websites, banks, grocery stores, shit processing plants and nuclear power stations. ... 4ad: I still blame the EU, and it's a pointless regulation. Edit: This comment really says it much better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35567507
      - 4ad 4y ago
        You seem to think that the EU should be imune from criticism because it tries to do the right thing. No, when politicians make things worse and absolutely don't solve any problem they promised they will solve then they should be held accountable, removed from positions of power, and replaced with competent people who write better regulation. Edit to your edit: indeed, the EU is mostly about making people miserable while convincing them it's actually better for them.
Hermel 4y ago
So why do even the official website of the European commission and the European parliament have a cookie consent button? One would assume that they are not "capitalist services".
- rapnie 4y ago
  Unfortunately big tech surveillance capitalists (which is different than "capitalist services", mind you) are court suppliers of IT services that EU institutions depend upon. Edit: And as the sibling said, in many cases it may be restricted to analytics and simple 'reject' suffices, which is at least better than some of the intricate dialog designs.
- illiarian 4y ago
  I mean, you could literally read what their banner says. E.g. Eu Paarliament "We use analytics cookies to offer you a better browsing experience. You have the choice to refuse or accept them. Reject. Accept". Those analytic cookies are not required for the functioning of the website, and those web sites are required to ask for your consent to gather any additional data.
luckylion 4y ago
Is he right though? I work with affiliate people a lot, and they hate cookie-consent popups. Even when you do all your analytics inhouse with self-hosted matomo, if you want to use a cookie, you need consent is what the lawyers say unanimously. And these aren't "we want you to ask for consent because we secretly want more privacy" lawyers, these are "I get paid to find a way for you to do your tracking in the easiest way possible and I don't care about privacy" lawyers. Maybe they're all wrong, but I have doubts.
- gbalduzzi 4y ago
  > Even when you do all your analytics inhouse with self-hosted matomo, if you want to use a cookie, you need consent is what the lawyers say unanimously If you use a cookie for Matomo tracking than yes, you need consent. You are using a cookie for a non essential service (analytics), so you need to ask consent. But you can use Matomo as cookieless: https://matomo.org/cookie-consent-banners/ https://matomo.org/cookie-consent-banners/ If matomo gathers data without a cookie, you can still use technical / essential cookies without consent. As an example Github.com, owned by Microsoft, does not have a cookie consent popup and sets at least 5 cookies as soon as you open it: - color mode (dark / light) - user timezone - whether the user is logged or guest - a session cookie - _octo, that I don't understand.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    But that primarily says that Github doesn't care about cookies (or consent), not that you (not being a multinational corporations with an army of lawyers and millions in lobbying spending) can do the same. I'm pretty sure those cookies are non-compliant if you look at them closely, because none of them are necessary for the operation of the service. a) a default value doesn't need to be stored in a cookie -- and it has to be a default value, because you haven't selected a color scheme or a timezone b) login-state does not require a cookie: either you're logged in and have a session, or you aren't, and you don't, c) there's no reason for a session on the public facing side that doesn't contain any private/individualized data, unless you want to use these session cookies to track users -- and it's only about users as bots will typically ignore cookies. My money is on "Microsoft knows that cookie consent is optional if you're not a small European company".
nicbou 4y ago
That's completely false though. Tracking your users without consent is still not allowed, even if you store the data on your own servers.

shmde 4y ago

Also accepting them cookies is one single click but rejecting them feels like entering the dark realm with multiple options and not knowing where to click. I am software dev but still have to use just enough mental resources to reject all of the non essential ones. How the fuck is this legal.

germanier 4y ago
It's not legal. It's just not rigorously enforced. It was promised that things get better with the proposed ePrivacy regulation. Let's see.
Anduia 4y ago
It is not legal for webs to make rejecting cookies more complicated than accepting them. In fact, the French data protection authority CNIL has issued orders to around sixty players that do not make refusing cookies as easily as accepting them. They have also fined companies such as Google and Facebook for making it harder to reject cookies than to accept them. The CNIL has ordered these companies to provide a means of refusing cookies as simple as the existing means of accepting them. Also, under GDPR, it is not legal for websites to make rejecting cookies more complicated than accepting them. In May 2020, the EU updated its GDPR guidance to clarify that cookie walls do not offer users a genuine choice because if you reject cookies you’re blocked from accessing content. It confirms that cookie walls should not be used. Companies such as Google have introduced new options to reject tracking cookies in Europe after their existing dialog boxes were found to be in violation of EU data laws. Now what I don't know is if users outside of EU get the evil-twin version of those popups when visiting websites. My experience browsing the www is just not as bad as many people describe because I usually get a "reject all" button or when "managing" the cookies, they are all disabled by default and I can simply save the options.

submeta 4y ago

> vast majority of people DO NOT care about cookies nor do they care about trackers I highly doubt that. Do give people simpler ways to opt-out of all tracking, and they‘d happily chose that. Currently we have two problems: 1) The consent button is one click for cookies, the other is several clicks away. 2) The layman does not now how to choose a setting to always opt-out of tracking.

dre_bot 4y ago

Most don't even know what the hell a cookie is or any of the shit in those prompts.

pelorat 4y ago
I mean Gen-Z barely knows what an operating system is.

illiarian 4y ago

>The vast majority of people DO NOT care about cookies nor do they care about trackers. When presented with "Ask app to not track" on iOS, 96% users clicked "do not track" https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-o...

boffinism 4y ago
These two statements are not incompatible.
shmde 4y ago
Having a clear cut "CALL TO ACTION" dialogue option which presents one positive ( don't track me ) and one negative ( track me ) option. People choose the positive one. Cookies/tracking banners on website completely obfuscates the choice. Negative option ( track me ) is presented as the pearly gates to heaven and easy to click. Positive option ( don't track me ) is presented as these mathematical puzzle where you must know what to click or your dog gets executed. So yeah people care about not being tracked when presented with clear instructions to which one is bad and which one is good.
- illiarian 4y ago
  > Having a clear cut "CALL TO ACTION" dialogue option which presents one positive ( don't track me ) and one negative ( track me ) option. That is literally the requirement by GDPR > Cookies/tracking banners on website completely obfuscates the choice. On purpose. In violation of GDPR.
ssss11 4y ago
That “most users don’t care” line is tossed around by people all over the place and you righty point out that it isn’t true. If my job relied on people giving up their data privacy I would probably continue telling everyone that line as well.

no_time 4y ago

>We've got to come up with a better solution. I've got an easy one for you: stop embedding google analytics and others. You don't need a cookie banner when you only have operational ones or better yet, none at all.

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
Are you sure that out-of-the-box GA requires it? I thought the only info it recorded was anonymised.
- matsemann 4y ago
  Even with consent and configuration, GA might be illegal in the EU. It's currently in a grey area after some latest rulings.
- illiarian 4y ago
  GA collects insane amounts of data. And you might have to disable a lot of that collection manually https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9019185?hl=en#zippy=%2Cin-this-article https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9019185?hl=en#zi... And even then it might not be strictly compliant due to Schrems II ruling
- boffinism 4y ago
  Don't confuse cookie laws with data laws
- progval 4y ago
  According to the French data protection authority, "out-of-the-box" GA requires consent because they aren't anonymised: https://www.cnil.fr/en/google-analytics-and-data-transfers-how-make-your-analytics-tool-compliant-gdpr https://www.cnil.fr/en/google-analytics-and-data-transfers-h...
  - oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
    Well, I'm glad I don't use GA on my personal site, then, even if it means I have no idea what traffic levels it gets. GA is incredibly popular though - I would guess the vast majority of blogs etc. use it and have no consent to do so.

mabedan 4y ago

You’re missing the point of the article. The banner is only needed if your business relies on handing over info about the user to 3rd party. And yes, it’s reasonable to make sure user knows about it. The fact that these pop ups are annoying is the fault of the creator, not the regulation. Try accessing Apple.com or iCloud.com. No cookie pop up, yet one of the most successful businesses in history. You don’t have to be annoying

qtzfz 4y ago
What info? My IP address and the pages I've visited inside their site? By visiting a site I know I'm giving that info to them, they can do whatever they want with it.
- jeltz 4y ago
  Not without breaking the law.
  - qtzfz 4y ago
    Which is why it's a stupid law that has made everybody's lives worse, both the businesses and the users.
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      Why is it a stupid law? Why should businesses be free to look up the IP and figure out who is looking at their page? An IP can reveal a lot of information, especially if there's servers hanging off of it.
- illiarian 4y ago
  > What info? Any personally identifiable information. GDPR is not a complex law no matter how shady businesses and clueless devs are trying to tell you. It's also been in effect for 7 years. You'd think it's enough time to have at least some clue on what it's about. And yet we still have these inane threads on HN claiming it's about cookie popups, and people having no idea what info trackers collect.

wongarsu 4y ago

At least part of the intent of the law was that websites would reduce the amount of tracking if they have to explicitly ask for consent. You can build your website with just functional cookies (session cookie, storing preferences like dark mode, etc) and cookie-less tracking, and go without any cookie popups. Somehow the industry decided it's better to annoy your users with consent for 50 different trackers with the most in-your-face popup possible to cause users to reflexively hit consent instead.

Nextgrid 4y ago
> Somehow the industry decided it's better to annoy your users with consent for 50 different trackers with the most in-your-face popup possible to cause users to reflexively hit consent instead. GDPR actually has provisions against this kind of malicious compliance - the problem is a chronic lack of enforcement, despite it being trivial to detect with a web crawler.

datkirby 4y ago

People are definitely aware of them. The trouble lies with how easy opting-out is. Many websites have included options to just opt for the "compulsory" option. The only concern now is how many of them would willingly provide that option.

ssss11 4y ago

Of course the simple solution that we all know is to not collect the damn data in the first place. But marketing boffins the world over will never willingly do this unless it’s enforced by law, so we’re left with the user’s taking on the burden of clicking deliberately confusing stuff and not knowing whether they’ve ended up consenting or not.

maeln 4y ago

Most people do not care because they don't really see/understand how it affect them. Just like most people probably don't care about HVAC regulation, welding regulation for system under pressure and other very technical field. They will see the issue and care about it when something happen. We have a lot of regulation about welding under high pressure because we know from experience what happen when we have no rules (things go boom). What happen when we have no regulation about tracker ? We get massive data leaks from poorly secured data hoarding company (hello Equifax). This is dangerous in many many ways: Identity theft, scam & spam, identifying people with certain political view, from a minority of some sort, etc... GDPR does not solve all this issue, some company can still hoard massive amount of data about you (it is always scary to ask for a data extraction from Meta, Twitter, ... and how you have a "profile") and have bad security, but it does limit in how many hand this data circulate and how easy it is to gain access to.