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Soon we wont be needing ad-blockers because we'll have so many legal nag pop ups that you wont be able to see the ads! Seriously, can we come up with a better

Soon we wont be needing ad-blockers because we'll have so many legal nag pop ups that you wont be able to see the ads! Seriously, can we come up with a better solution to these things? Like can browsers notify you about cookies instead in a non-intrusive way? Same with social media nagware. Just thinking aloud, because websites will become increasingly annoying over time.

johndhi 2y ago
I'm a lawyer in this space. Couldn't agree with you more. Edit to add some more detail. There's a lot of scholarship that more information or transparency can't be bad - and I don't disagree too much - but the cluttering and intrusiveness is too much. Every legal regime (privacy, safety, consumer protection, IP, etc) clambors to be the most important and worthy of being front page news. But this results in a brutal web experience. I miss the old, simple websites we had as kids. Can't we all agree that a privacy policy or terms link is enough? That's what links are for.
- the8472 2y ago
  My understanding as a layperson is that most of those banners are not mandated by law and it's companies choosing this approach rather then picking other options such as not storing PII unless strictly necessary for the interaction with the user. So why fault the laws here?
  - johndhi 2y ago
    You're right, I guess -- but if you want to build a competitive business in today's world, you simply need to collect a lot of personal information and do analytics on your website. If it were outlawed to place cookies on people's browsers, then it would be easy - Amazon.com would have only strictly necessary cookies, Facebook.com same, etc. But given it's possible to comply with the law by throwing up obnoxious banners, that's what these companies do, and you're basically forced to do, if you compete with them. Whether you blame 'capitalism' or 'the marketplace' for those things or, you believe 'the government' has the job of understanding this and putting in place laws that make it easier across the board, is kind of up to your political affiliation.
- DistractionRect 2y ago
  > Can't we all agree that a privacy policy or terms link is enough? That's what links are for. Ultimately those are written by lawyers for lawyers. They're extremely long, verbose, and hard for a layman to parse. And that's on purpose. It's a dark pattern to get people to agree because they lack the time to read and to understand [0][1][2]. Reading isn't the same as understanding, and that's a separate bag of worms which comes up all the time in legal affairs. Take the recent Disney fiasco. I don't think the average person would read the ToS and come to the conclusion that Disney can more or less kill your loved ones with impunity in their parks if you watch Disney Plus. Not that other lawyers agree either, but apparently that's the understanding of Disney's lawyers. Not that pop ups, modals, and warnings are much better. But I think a clear warning/opt out pop up is far better than a link buried in account settings or policy/ToS. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/reading-the-privacy-policies-you-encounter-in-a-year-would-take-76-work-days/253851/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/readi... [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/it-would-take-17-hours-to-read-the-terms-conditions-of-the-13-most-popular https://www.pcmag.com/news/it-would-take-17-hours-to-read-th... [2] case in point, I'm sure better links exist but I'm sort on time and just plugging what I reviewed from the top of Google results.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    IANAL, but my understanding of the Disney agreement is that it states that completely clear. Just like every other terms of use I've read. What people disagree is in whether it's actually enforceable.
    - DistractionRect 2y ago
      It's not so cut and dry, or maybe it is to lawyers, IANAL. I don't think the average person would believe that forced arbitration would be applied to a separate Disney service, and that it's for all time. That using a Disney plus trial promo several years ago would force arbitrartion in a wrongful death suit stemming from a visit to a physical establishment is well beyond, IMO, a reasonable expectation.
      - 2y ago
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
> Seriously, can we come up with a better solution to these things? Like can browsers notify you about cookies instead in a non-intrusive way? Same with social media nagware. I mean if it's notifying you in a non-intrusive way then it's not really notifying you. That said I absolutely agree with the spirit of your comment. All the EU regulations accomplished was adding an infuriating dialog about cookies that the vast majority of users just click-through anyway, which I suspect will also happen to anyone subjected to surgeon general's warnings about how bad social media is for you. They already click through the T's and C's without reading, I doubt this will be more interesting. This, IMO, is just another symptom of our individualist-obsessed culture. We'll tell people how terrible a thing is for them to consume, but ultimately, we also permit them to consume it. I don't think that's a wrong idea in and of itself, I'm generally pro-autonomy, but products that explicitly create addiction in their consumers are, IMO, an ethical gray area with regard to this and undermine the notion that they are being engaged with in a healthy way, which is core to the pro-autonomy argument. If you choose to consume alcohol, knowing the health issues it can cause, then I'm absolutely fine with you doing so, and extend that to any other harmful substance or product. If you are addicted to it, on the other hand... well, it's complicated.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Cerium 2y ago
  A check engine light is not a real notification? If a notification is standardized then it does not need to be intrusive.
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    Depends on the driver I guess... Some people will just ignore it till their car stops driving / turning on... The light also used to double as a maintenance light.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      It's still a maintenance light for many things. If you check over the list of diagnostic codes for any given model, they vary widely from a "should check this out next time it's convenient, something looks off" all the way to "PULL OVER RIGHT NOW." I'm old enough that I remember when it was commonplace to figure out what on earth your car was even mad about that you had to take it to a mechanic and pay for the privilege. That's one aspect I will absolutely give has improved both to new cars' infotainment systems that can give much more detailed information about what's wrong, and to the wide-spread adoption of DTC decoding devices/apps.
supriyo-biswas 2y ago
> because websites will become increasingly annoying over time. You could have websites emit headers in responses that will offer the appropriate regulatory compliance warnings, which the user agent can surface in an appropriate way such as in an address bar icon or a dedicated button, and allow the user to ignore them entirely, upon request. Although not directly related to this particular article, this would also be a way in which porn bans can be easily enforced (e.g. Virginia) instead of requiring intrusive user verification - the website software might emit a "X-Regulatory-Info: porn" header, which parental control software can then look for; and any websites not emitting that header would be considered illegal.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  This is kind of what I'm thinking, or even an API for the ones where you need to store information like "I only want x cookies" but just in some uniform way.
  - captn3m0 2y ago
    P3P tried this and failed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P
    - giancarlostoro 2y ago
      Was that one mandated by policy though? I don't think it was, it was something browsers wished websites would adopt, and since they didn't now we've got stupid web elements that are unnecessarily shoved in our faces. Meanwhile tracking people has probably gotten worse and worse over the years (for the consumer). What I'm proposing is if we're going to legislate the web, make it smarter and intuitive. Unfortunately the people writing these laws rarely get feedback from people who actually build websites or care about end-users.
candiddevmike 2y ago
Have the user agent default to no for everything unless manually allowed by the user via a discreet, intentioned toggle similar to the tracking toggle Apple implemented.
VoodooJuJu 2y ago
>Like can browsers notify you about cookies instead in a non-intrusive way They absolutely can, and they absolutely can be our user agents for maintaining cookie whitelists, blacklists, with a consistent UI for being notified a site uses cookies and if we want to allow them. But they don't do that. It would have been 1000x more user-friendly and convenient for our user agents to behave like actual agents, filtering cookies for us, instead of 1000 different flavors of invasive cookie banners and "necessary cookie" notices. But the EU lawmakers didn't want that, or perhaps they just didn't understand the problem enough.
ahoka 2y ago
The solution would be honoring Do-Not-Track: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track

johndhi 2y ago

I'm a lawyer in this space. Couldn't agree with you more. Edit to add some more detail. There's a lot of scholarship that more information or transparency can't be bad - and I don't disagree too much - but the cluttering and intrusiveness is too much. Every legal regime (privacy, safety, consumer protection, IP, etc) clambors to be the most important and worthy of being front page news. But this results in a brutal web experience. I miss the old, simple websites we had as kids. Can't we all agree that a privacy policy or terms link is enough? That's what links are for.

the8472 2y ago
My understanding as a layperson is that most of those banners are not mandated by law and it's companies choosing this approach rather then picking other options such as not storing PII unless strictly necessary for the interaction with the user. So why fault the laws here?
- johndhi 2y ago
  You're right, I guess -- but if you want to build a competitive business in today's world, you simply need to collect a lot of personal information and do analytics on your website. If it were outlawed to place cookies on people's browsers, then it would be easy - Amazon.com would have only strictly necessary cookies, Facebook.com same, etc. But given it's possible to comply with the law by throwing up obnoxious banners, that's what these companies do, and you're basically forced to do, if you compete with them. Whether you blame 'capitalism' or 'the marketplace' for those things or, you believe 'the government' has the job of understanding this and putting in place laws that make it easier across the board, is kind of up to your political affiliation.
DistractionRect 2y ago
> Can't we all agree that a privacy policy or terms link is enough? That's what links are for. Ultimately those are written by lawyers for lawyers. They're extremely long, verbose, and hard for a layman to parse. And that's on purpose. It's a dark pattern to get people to agree because they lack the time to read and to understand [0][1][2]. Reading isn't the same as understanding, and that's a separate bag of worms which comes up all the time in legal affairs. Take the recent Disney fiasco. I don't think the average person would read the ToS and come to the conclusion that Disney can more or less kill your loved ones with impunity in their parks if you watch Disney Plus. Not that other lawyers agree either, but apparently that's the understanding of Disney's lawyers. Not that pop ups, modals, and warnings are much better. But I think a clear warning/opt out pop up is far better than a link buried in account settings or policy/ToS. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/reading-the-privacy-policies-you-encounter-in-a-year-would-take-76-work-days/253851/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/readi... [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/it-would-take-17-hours-to-read-the-terms-conditions-of-the-13-most-popular https://www.pcmag.com/news/it-would-take-17-hours-to-read-th... [2] case in point, I'm sure better links exist but I'm sort on time and just plugging what I reviewed from the top of Google results.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  IANAL, but my understanding of the Disney agreement is that it states that completely clear. Just like every other terms of use I've read. What people disagree is in whether it's actually enforceable.
  - DistractionRect 2y ago
    It's not so cut and dry, or maybe it is to lawyers, IANAL. I don't think the average person would believe that forced arbitration would be applied to a separate Disney service, and that it's for all time. That using a Disney plus trial promo several years ago would force arbitrartion in a wrongful death suit stemming from a visit to a physical establishment is well beyond, IMO, a reasonable expectation.
    - 2y ago

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

> Seriously, can we come up with a better solution to these things? Like can browsers notify you about cookies instead in a non-intrusive way? Same with social media nagware. I mean if it's notifying you in a non-intrusive way then it's not really notifying you. That said I absolutely agree with the spirit of your comment. All the EU regulations accomplished was adding an infuriating dialog about cookies that the vast majority of users just click-through anyway, which I suspect will also happen to anyone subjected to surgeon general's warnings about how bad social media is for you. They already click through the T's and C's without reading, I doubt this will be more interesting. This, IMO, is just another symptom of our individualist-obsessed culture. We'll tell people how terrible a thing is for them to consume, but ultimately, we also permit them to consume it. I don't think that's a wrong idea in and of itself, I'm generally pro-autonomy, but products that explicitly create addiction in their consumers are, IMO, an ethical gray area with regard to this and undermine the notion that they are being engaged with in a healthy way, which is core to the pro-autonomy argument. If you choose to consume alcohol, knowing the health issues it can cause, then I'm absolutely fine with you doing so, and extend that to any other harmful substance or product. If you are addicted to it, on the other hand... well, it's complicated.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Cerium 2y ago
A check engine light is not a real notification? If a notification is standardized then it does not need to be intrusive.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  Depends on the driver I guess... Some people will just ignore it till their car stops driving / turning on... The light also used to double as a maintenance light.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    It's still a maintenance light for many things. If you check over the list of diagnostic codes for any given model, they vary widely from a "should check this out next time it's convenient, something looks off" all the way to "PULL OVER RIGHT NOW." I'm old enough that I remember when it was commonplace to figure out what on earth your car was even mad about that you had to take it to a mechanic and pay for the privilege. That's one aspect I will absolutely give has improved both to new cars' infotainment systems that can give much more detailed information about what's wrong, and to the wide-spread adoption of DTC decoding devices/apps.

supriyo-biswas 2y ago

> because websites will become increasingly annoying over time. You could have websites emit headers in responses that will offer the appropriate regulatory compliance warnings, which the user agent can surface in an appropriate way such as in an address bar icon or a dedicated button, and allow the user to ignore them entirely, upon request. Although not directly related to this particular article, this would also be a way in which porn bans can be easily enforced (e.g. Virginia) instead of requiring intrusive user verification - the website software might emit a "X-Regulatory-Info: porn" header, which parental control software can then look for; and any websites not emitting that header would be considered illegal.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
giancarlostoro 2y ago
This is kind of what I'm thinking, or even an API for the ones where you need to store information like "I only want x cookies" but just in some uniform way.
- captn3m0 2y ago
  P3P tried this and failed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/P3P
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    Was that one mandated by policy though? I don't think it was, it was something browsers wished websites would adopt, and since they didn't now we've got stupid web elements that are unnecessarily shoved in our faces. Meanwhile tracking people has probably gotten worse and worse over the years (for the consumer). What I'm proposing is if we're going to legislate the web, make it smarter and intuitive. Unfortunately the people writing these laws rarely get feedback from people who actually build websites or care about end-users.

candiddevmike 2y ago

Have the user agent default to no for everything unless manually allowed by the user via a discreet, intentioned toggle similar to the tracking toggle Apple implemented.

VoodooJuJu 2y ago

>Like can browsers notify you about cookies instead in a non-intrusive way They absolutely can, and they absolutely can be our user agents for maintaining cookie whitelists, blacklists, with a consistent UI for being notified a site uses cookies and if we want to allow them. But they don't do that. It would have been 1000x more user-friendly and convenient for our user agents to behave like actual agents, filtering cookies for us, instead of 1000 different flavors of invasive cookie banners and "necessary cookie" notices. But the EU lawmakers didn't want that, or perhaps they just didn't understand the problem enough.

ahoka 2y ago

The solution would be honoring Do-Not-Track: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track