5 ms·

Except this is not the question. Why is it so hard for people to understand cookies are absolutely needed even if you just want to calculate retention or number

Except this is not the question. Why is it so hard for people to understand cookies are absolutely needed even if you just want to calculate retention or number of unique visitors.

Pet_Ant 3y ago
> even if you just want to calculate retention or unique visitors. Why is it so hard to for people to understand that I just want you to serve me the page and bugger off? It's like justifying embedding GPS tracking in pamphlets that people hand out on the street. I don't want to be tracked period. Is it that hard?
- ploum 3y ago
  Exactly. Is it your business to track people? There’s 90% chance that no, it’s not your business. There’s also a lot of chances that your website is about a product. In which case, it doesn’t make sense to know how many people come and read. People only need the information to know "will I buy that or not?" or, even more frequently "I’ve bought that but I don’t understand something". Tracking is counterproductive in most scenarios. (but very few understand that)
  - viraptor 3y ago
    You don't need cookies for it, but it very much makes a difference how many people come and read. Optimising the visitor-to-buyer pipeline is an important job for retail. To even begin doing that, you need to know what percentage of visitors bought something.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      > you need to know what percentage of visitors bought something. Why? What will you improve by knowing that, and why couldn't you improve that without knowing it?
  - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
    Europe's parliament website[1] uses cookie banner, even though its job is literally to just show information. If they want to track visitors any non trivial site would. [1]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en https://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en
    - ploum 3y ago
      Which demonstrates exactly my point: web dev are now incapable of not tracking users even if it’s actually harming their business. I had an experience with a national meteo application including facebook trackers. I complained and they replied that they were totally unaware of that fact. The tracking was added by default by the contractor as part of his standard template. (note: they removed the tracking after my complain). But it is also about people in charge, who are completely addicts to statistics about the number of visitors and all information. People like to track others. They actually want that. The sad part is that nobody in IT really complain nor tell them that it is creepy. We install blockers on our own computers and get over it, writing code that track those without blockers without batting an eye.
      - starbugs 3y ago
        > The sad part is that nobody in IT really complain nor tell them that it is creepy. Which may be because if you do, you will typically be called the "technical person" who "doesn't understand anything about 'normal' users" and you should be more focused on your actual technical tasks. Sorry for being cynical. I couldn't resist.
- starbugs 3y ago
  Your opinion is comprehensible from a user's standpoint. Once you have worked a while in business or marketing, you will see that it's not that easy unfortunately. There's a lot of pressure to provide certain numbers or at least to collect them "just to be sure". Typically this requirement comes without any willingness to invest money, because "you can just install Google Analytics for free". I don't want to justify this at all, because I believe in the long run these numbers aren't worth what people claim they are worth at all. I just wanted to explain that not everyone is "bad" or "anti-social" for complying with "leadership" decisions and installing a CMP and Google Analytics.
  - pavas 3y ago
    > Once you have worked a while in business or marketing, you will see that it's not that easy unfortunately Nobody is forcing anybody to do this, this is a personal and business decision to make more money at the expense of users' well-being. When you're surrounded by lots of people that think a certain way, you start to see it as acceptable and even good. Though I know lots of people that disagree, I personally don't think it's justifiable. If someone finds it justifiable, they should take responsibility for it.
    - starbugs 3y ago
      > Nobody is forcing anybody to do this Depends on how you define "force". My experience is that the source of all this is the fear of having a substantial disadvantage against the competition and having to defend your decision of sustaining such a perceived disadvantage against the CEO/board. Understandable from my point of view, even though I don't like the outcome. This then usually trickles down the hierarchy in companies and, yes, someone will somehow implement it to earn their living. I'd define the implication of losing your livelihood as a consequence of not doing what you are told as force, but that is open to opinion I guess. An anecdote that might be worth mentioning in this context: I was once told by some CEO that they didn't hire a really qualified person, because that person had enough money to not be dependent on the job. This is, in my experience, an appropriate reflection of the role of money in controlling people's decisions. It's essential that you are dependent so that you can be forced to comply or risk losing your livelihood.
starbugs 3y ago
I'd like to point out that I answered the question even if not using cookies is not an option. But to elaborate a bit: At least in Germany (and I believe this applies more or less everywhere) if you install a 1st-party tracking method based on 1st-party cookies, that doesn't fall under the 3rd-party consent requirement and you don't need consent. That means you can track your valuable retention numbers and won't need a consent banner. It's a common misunderstanding that you need that consent for all cookies. You only need it for cookies that aren't required to do your business. And 3rd-party cookies aren't. It's just that marketing typically don't want to spend any money on this, because these retention numbers turn out to not be enough value to justify the investment. I wonder if they are as valuable as you described at all. Edit: I should have said 1st-party tracking that doesn't collect personally identifiable information (PII).
- mnw21cam 3y ago
  If you're doing 1st-party tracking, and you are collecting personal data for that purpose (which is almost by definition going to be true), and the user hasn't explicitly asked for that tracking to take place (for instance by creating an account and logging in, or by putting items in a shopping basket and expecting them to be retained) then yes you will need to ask for consent to do that tracking. The test isn't whether collecting that data is required to do your business - it is whether collecting that data is required to do what the user is asking you to do. So if (for example) you are tracking your users to see where they click in your web site in order to improve your web site, then that is only required for your business - your user has no interest in that, didn't ask for it, and therefore must be asked for consent for you to do it.
  - starbugs 3y ago
    I was referring to the grey area of legitimate interest in the law and how I was briefed to interpret it ca. 2021. Things may have moved on and I am not a lawyer. You might be right and what the lawyers told me back then isn't true or was true and is no longer considered true. What I was basically saying is that 1st-party cookies are considered more likely to reflect a legitimate interest than 3rd-party cookies. And I think that is what the interpretation of the law was (or maybe still is). You can do 1st-party tracking without collecting personally identifiable information if it's just about retention without a user ID, which I was referring to. And I in fact think that there is a case to be made that this could be part of the legitimate interests of improving the user experience on a web property of a given business, hence not requiring consent.
IanCal 3y ago
> Why is it so hard for people to understand cookies are absolutely needed even if you just want to calculate retention or number of unique visitors. Yeah you don't need to do that though. You want to.
viraptor 3y ago
You won't get precise numbers anyway - if you're large enough, adblock will kill even your first-party analytics. On the other hand, people with multiple devices will be undercounted. At that point, you may as well start counting access per IP and adjust for the known cgnat endpoints.
lopis 3y ago
If you want to track me to calculate retention, you need my concent. Easy as that. You can't promise me you're only using my user ID for that single purpose. We've been taught through experience that if someone has data, it will be used.

Except this is not the question. Why is it so hard for people to understand cookies are absolutely needed even if you just want to calculate retention or number of unique visitors.

Pet_Ant 3y ago

> even if you just want to calculate retention or unique visitors. Why is it so hard to for people to understand that I just want you to serve me the page and bugger off? It's like justifying embedding GPS tracking in pamphlets that people hand out on the street. I don't want to be tracked period. Is it that hard?

ploum 3y ago
Exactly. Is it your business to track people? There’s 90% chance that no, it’s not your business. There’s also a lot of chances that your website is about a product. In which case, it doesn’t make sense to know how many people come and read. People only need the information to know "will I buy that or not?" or, even more frequently "I’ve bought that but I don’t understand something". Tracking is counterproductive in most scenarios. (but very few understand that)
- viraptor 3y ago
  You don't need cookies for it, but it very much makes a difference how many people come and read. Optimising the visitor-to-buyer pipeline is an important job for retail. To even begin doing that, you need to know what percentage of visitors bought something.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    > you need to know what percentage of visitors bought something. Why? What will you improve by knowing that, and why couldn't you improve that without knowing it?
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  Europe's parliament website[1] uses cookie banner, even though its job is literally to just show information. If they want to track visitors any non trivial site would. [1]: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en https://www.europarl.europa.eu/portal/en
  - ploum 3y ago
    Which demonstrates exactly my point: web dev are now incapable of not tracking users even if it’s actually harming their business. I had an experience with a national meteo application including facebook trackers. I complained and they replied that they were totally unaware of that fact. The tracking was added by default by the contractor as part of his standard template. (note: they removed the tracking after my complain). But it is also about people in charge, who are completely addicts to statistics about the number of visitors and all information. People like to track others. They actually want that. The sad part is that nobody in IT really complain nor tell them that it is creepy. We install blockers on our own computers and get over it, writing code that track those without blockers without batting an eye.
    - starbugs 3y ago
      > The sad part is that nobody in IT really complain nor tell them that it is creepy. Which may be because if you do, you will typically be called the "technical person" who "doesn't understand anything about 'normal' users" and you should be more focused on your actual technical tasks. Sorry for being cynical. I couldn't resist.
starbugs 3y ago
Your opinion is comprehensible from a user's standpoint. Once you have worked a while in business or marketing, you will see that it's not that easy unfortunately. There's a lot of pressure to provide certain numbers or at least to collect them "just to be sure". Typically this requirement comes without any willingness to invest money, because "you can just install Google Analytics for free". I don't want to justify this at all, because I believe in the long run these numbers aren't worth what people claim they are worth at all. I just wanted to explain that not everyone is "bad" or "anti-social" for complying with "leadership" decisions and installing a CMP and Google Analytics.
- pavas 3y ago
  > Once you have worked a while in business or marketing, you will see that it's not that easy unfortunately Nobody is forcing anybody to do this, this is a personal and business decision to make more money at the expense of users' well-being. When you're surrounded by lots of people that think a certain way, you start to see it as acceptable and even good. Though I know lots of people that disagree, I personally don't think it's justifiable. If someone finds it justifiable, they should take responsibility for it.
  - starbugs 3y ago
    > Nobody is forcing anybody to do this Depends on how you define "force". My experience is that the source of all this is the fear of having a substantial disadvantage against the competition and having to defend your decision of sustaining such a perceived disadvantage against the CEO/board. Understandable from my point of view, even though I don't like the outcome. This then usually trickles down the hierarchy in companies and, yes, someone will somehow implement it to earn their living. I'd define the implication of losing your livelihood as a consequence of not doing what you are told as force, but that is open to opinion I guess. An anecdote that might be worth mentioning in this context: I was once told by some CEO that they didn't hire a really qualified person, because that person had enough money to not be dependent on the job. This is, in my experience, an appropriate reflection of the role of money in controlling people's decisions. It's essential that you are dependent so that you can be forced to comply or risk losing your livelihood.

starbugs 3y ago

I'd like to point out that I answered the question even if not using cookies is not an option. But to elaborate a bit: At least in Germany (and I believe this applies more or less everywhere) if you install a 1st-party tracking method based on 1st-party cookies, that doesn't fall under the 3rd-party consent requirement and you don't need consent. That means you can track your valuable retention numbers and won't need a consent banner. It's a common misunderstanding that you need that consent for all cookies. You only need it for cookies that aren't required to do your business. And 3rd-party cookies aren't. It's just that marketing typically don't want to spend any money on this, because these retention numbers turn out to not be enough value to justify the investment. I wonder if they are as valuable as you described at all. Edit: I should have said 1st-party tracking that doesn't collect personally identifiable information (PII).

mnw21cam 3y ago
If you're doing 1st-party tracking, and you are collecting personal data for that purpose (which is almost by definition going to be true), and the user hasn't explicitly asked for that tracking to take place (for instance by creating an account and logging in, or by putting items in a shopping basket and expecting them to be retained) then yes you will need to ask for consent to do that tracking. The test isn't whether collecting that data is required to do your business - it is whether collecting that data is required to do what the user is asking you to do. So if (for example) you are tracking your users to see where they click in your web site in order to improve your web site, then that is only required for your business - your user has no interest in that, didn't ask for it, and therefore must be asked for consent for you to do it.
- starbugs 3y ago
  I was referring to the grey area of legitimate interest in the law and how I was briefed to interpret it ca. 2021. Things may have moved on and I am not a lawyer. You might be right and what the lawyers told me back then isn't true or was true and is no longer considered true. What I was basically saying is that 1st-party cookies are considered more likely to reflect a legitimate interest than 3rd-party cookies. And I think that is what the interpretation of the law was (or maybe still is). You can do 1st-party tracking without collecting personally identifiable information if it's just about retention without a user ID, which I was referring to. And I in fact think that there is a case to be made that this could be part of the legitimate interests of improving the user experience on a web property of a given business, hence not requiring consent.

IanCal 3y ago

> Why is it so hard for people to understand cookies are absolutely needed even if you just want to calculate retention or number of unique visitors. Yeah you don't need to do that though. You want to.

viraptor 3y ago

You won't get precise numbers anyway - if you're large enough, adblock will kill even your first-party analytics. On the other hand, people with multiple devices will be undercounted. At that point, you may as well start counting access per IP and adjust for the known cgnat endpoints.

lopis 3y ago

If you want to track me to calculate retention, you need my concent. Easy as that. You can't promise me you're only using my user ID for that single purpose. We've been taught through experience that if someone has data, it will be used.