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Maybe stop doing stupid shit that will legally require you to inform users that you're about to sell/share everything you know about them to 3rd parties? I fai

Maybe stop doing stupid shit that will legally require you to inform users that you're about to sell/share everything you know about them to 3rd parties? I fail to understand companies that display page after page of cookies and tracking stuff for you to approve don't see the issue with their actions or the insanity of "allow us to share data with our 1500 partners". Does no one in these business look at this and go: "Hey, why do we need 50 different tracking tools" or "Why do we share customer data with over a thousand other businesses?". When you actually read what these pop-ups says, then you understand why they are there, and why the problem with the laws isn't that it's annoying, but that it is not much more restrictive.

simonbarker87 2y ago
The vast majority of websites just want to know where their visitors are coming from and, if they are selling a product, some aggregate level of demographic knowledge to tailor their marketing efforts. They really don’t care about an individual or even small cohort and aren’t selling the data on. Targeting advertising is sooo much more effective for small and medium sized businesses and actually makes many businesses viable in a way they weren’t in the past. The ideal solution would be to find a way for businesses to get those insights in a way that preserves privacy at the individual level. Something like apples differential privacy system but web wide.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  > Targeting advertising is sooo much more effective for small and medium sized businesses I'm starting to question that, but without any proof that just me rambling. Assuming that it works, I'd actually be fine with a site saying "Hey, just letting you know, we use Google Analytics to learn more about you, is that cool?". The 1500 partners and 50+ trackers aren't numbers I'm making up, those are numbers I frequently see. Sure, you feel you need a tracker, I can easily enough say no to a single tracker. I can also understand a webshop needing to share information with their advertising partner, but not 1500 of them. The law would never have amounted to anything if the reality was a limited scope of data sharing with a clear obvious purpose. It's the insane amount of tracking and data sharing that triggered all this.
  - simonbarker87 2y ago
    Anecdotally for the three ecom businesses I’ve run/worked at it’s been our only method of profitable marketing. As usual it’s the extreme ends of the spectrum that ruin for everyone.
    - mrweasel 2y ago
      I haven't been in that line of business for 10+ years, so my understand and reference is also a bit out of date. Retargeting did very little. Ads helps in some cases, but rarely generic ads, it had to be extremely targeted, which was normally done by manually buying ad space with certain TV programs or in specific locations. The big ones for us was price comparison sites, if we could get on HotUKDeals we'd have a great week, but in particular Google Shopping did made a big difference.
      - simonbarker87 2y ago
        Agree, retargeting was a waste of money - it essentially just annoyed people.
- fredski42 2y ago
  > The ideal solution would be to find a way for businesses to get those insights in a way that preserves privacy at the individual level. Isn’t that what Mozilla and Meta are together experimenting with?
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  Targeting, yes; retargeting, no. So much user time is spent, for example, on a few big sites which have enough data within their own siloes (based on users' behaviour and topics of interest), they can target pretty well without relying on external data. The big video sites, social media, Amazon/eBay/etc. And then there's a big layer of smaller sites who can inherently target because they're already specialist in nature. The losers in this scenario aren't really the brands, they're big generic sites such as news media who don't have any way to acquire targeting information on their own.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  It doesn't matter what they want. It doesn't matter why they want it. They are not entitled to this information. They should not be able to know anything at all about us without our explicit consent. We should not have to sacrifice our privacy and peace of mind so that businesses can succeed. If they can't succeed without surveilling us and selling us out, then let them go bankrupt.
  - simonbarker87 2y ago
    If that’s where this all shakes out to it will have the affect of creating retail monopolies worse than even in the pre internet days as marketing will be simply too expensive for many online small businesses. 90% of Shopify stores would be dead in the water.
    - GJim 2y ago
      Don't be silly! Nobody is stopping anybody from advertising or marketing. Simply that if your advertisers wish to track me, then they must ask my specific opt-in permission to do so. And so they should. If your business cannot survive without illegally (!) tracking and trading in personal data, then you have a scummy business model and a business that has no right to exist.
  - Ferret7446 2y ago
    And you aren't entitled to visit their website. Seems like everything is working fine then? Most of them won't go bankrupt just because you stop visiting; based on reality, most of them are doing relatively fine.
    - GJim 2y ago
      > And you aren't entitled to visit their website. Yes you are! The GDPR prohibits conditioning the provision of service on consent to the processing of personal data. Thus mandating acceptance of advertisers tracking cookies ("cookie walls") without providing alternative means of website access are considered violations of the GDPR.
    - 2y ago
- compiler1410 2y ago
  all this effort - easily defeated by adblock and antitracking tools xD
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    Not easily and often not completely.
- timeon 2y ago
  If they can't do business without selling users data, then they shouldn't be doing the business.
Earw0rm 2y ago
Presumably the partners are brought in en masse via some third party brokerage/aggregator service. It's not like a news site is selecting and managing 1500 different partners individually.
- GJim 2y ago
  This is not an excuse! I can only imagine the disbelief and laughter in court if a thief said "Your honour, it's not like I stole one car, I actually stole 1500 different ones"!
thn-gap 2y ago
What I always find funny about this, is that the popup is presented with "We value your privacy", followed by "allow us to share data with >500 partners". I wished that such statements had some value greater than nil.
- ikari_pl 2y ago
  but they DO put a measurable value on your privacy
  - benfortuna 2y ago
    Put another way, they monetize the erosion of your privacy.
latexr 2y ago
> When you actually read what these pop-ups says, then you understand why they are there, and why the problem with the laws isn't that it's annoying, but that it is not much more restrictive. Worse, people (including on HN) actively blaming the EU for it. It’s like having a law mandating people are informed when there’s poison in their drink, then seeing people complain about the warning labels everywhere. The label isn’t the problem! As you said, if anything the issue is that the law isn’t aggressive enough.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  > Worse, people (including on HN) actively blaming the EU for it. The EU is exactly to blame for it. The activity isn't illegal, and the EU didn't make it illegal. What the *EU did* was make it so that companies engaging in that legal activity now had to disclose it in some way, and thee cookie popups are the best way to do that. It's ridiculous to try and say the EU isn't to blame when they introduced and approved the legislation directly responsible for the popups.
  - troupo 2y ago
    EU: Don't track users, don't obtain vast amounts of data on users, don't sell that data to third parties. If you you do, ask users for informed consent. Industry: we hear you. Here's "informed consent" form riddled with dark patterns because we believe that all data is ours by God's decree, and our 15 000 "partners" agree with us ... HN: The EU is to blame for this
    - krick 2y ago
      This is correct. However, I always thought that legislation is pretty stupid. It isn't exactly comparable to alcohol/tobacco warnings. Actually, I always thought they are stupid too, but at least they can count as an "informed nonsent", since it's pretty clear, what's the harm they are taking about. Cookies, on the other hand... Even for me, who was perfectly aware of the problem long before this legislation, and who was privacy-oriented to begin with, it isn't clear, what's the consent I'm giving. First off, I know everybody uses cookies, and almost everybody uses some trackers. Second, even me, somewhat informed user, I don't really understand, what is that information they are sharing with third parties, and why should I care. I feel kinda stupid when I bother to press "reject all". Like, does it even matter, what I choose? Wouldn't they do it anyway, whatever they do? Then, I use ublock and I hope it helps. If it doesn't, well, tough luck, but what do I do? I do want to read that one paragraph from the medium/NYT article I found on Google, despite how much I hate them. I won't stop using the internet because of... whatever this is. I can only imagine, what it's like for average user, who is, let's be honest, pretty clueless. I guess for them it is indeed the EU who is too blame here. GDPR is more useful, but still I'm not sure if it really helps. Like, I remember someone complaining that before GDPR you could bulk-download gpx files from Strava, and now you can only request .fit files, that are supposed to containt more data, but really aren't that useful for most. Well, it's not GDPR you should blame, it's Strava and all their partners/competitors (especially Garmin, god I hate them so much). They are successfully making life harder for you, because they don't want it to be easy to get your own data back. And who is to stop them? Maybe it's a matter of time, I don't know, but it doesn't seem GDPR is effectively enforcing what it is supposed to.
ruthmarx 2y ago
> Maybe stop doing stupid shit that will legally require you to inform users that you're about to sell/share everything you know about them to 3rd parties? Why? It's legal and extremely lucrative. If it's really an issue, maybe the EU could actually limit these activities instead of just forcing sites to put a notification that they are attempting to engage in those activities?
- GJim 2y ago
  I don’t know if you are trolling or so misinformed it is funny. The UK and EU do limit those activities. They remain entirely legal providing you get explicit opt-in consent.
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    > I don’t know if you are trolling or so misinformed Neither, you just somehow misinterpreted my comment. > The UK and EU do limit those activities. They remain entirely legal providing you get explicit opt-in consent. The point is that they do not limit them sufficiently, clearly. People who complain about the popups want to blame the businesses, but the business are doing in compliance with the law. That's the point. So blaming the business for the popups doesn't make sense, because the popups are a result of EU regulation, not the businesses doing anything wrong. Because as you say, the EU limits those activities and allows those businesses to do as they do.
    - latexr 2y ago
      > The point is that they do not limit them sufficiently, clearly. I agree. The law should’ve been stronger. But we work now with the hand we have. > People who complain about the popups want to blame the businesses Not in my experience. There’s a split between people blaming the business and blaming the EU. > but the business are doing in compliance with the law. Most aren’t. The GDPR says explicitly that withdrawing consent must be at least as easy as giving it. Yet most popular websites make it incredibly simple to accept but obtuse to refuse. However, you may have noticed that’s starting to get better. More and more websites have a clear way to reject now. Meta (Facebook / Instagram) in particular are now way clearer than at the start. We have to thank organisations such as noyb¹ for that. They have been tireless in that fight and won a number of high-profile cases. ¹ https://noyb.eu/ https://noyb.eu/

simonbarker87 2y ago

The vast majority of websites just want to know where their visitors are coming from and, if they are selling a product, some aggregate level of demographic knowledge to tailor their marketing efforts. They really don’t care about an individual or even small cohort and aren’t selling the data on. Targeting advertising is sooo much more effective for small and medium sized businesses and actually makes many businesses viable in a way they weren’t in the past. The ideal solution would be to find a way for businesses to get those insights in a way that preserves privacy at the individual level. Something like apples differential privacy system but web wide.

mrweasel 2y ago
> Targeting advertising is sooo much more effective for small and medium sized businesses I'm starting to question that, but without any proof that just me rambling. Assuming that it works, I'd actually be fine with a site saying "Hey, just letting you know, we use Google Analytics to learn more about you, is that cool?". The 1500 partners and 50+ trackers aren't numbers I'm making up, those are numbers I frequently see. Sure, you feel you need a tracker, I can easily enough say no to a single tracker. I can also understand a webshop needing to share information with their advertising partner, but not 1500 of them. The law would never have amounted to anything if the reality was a limited scope of data sharing with a clear obvious purpose. It's the insane amount of tracking and data sharing that triggered all this.
- simonbarker87 2y ago
  Anecdotally for the three ecom businesses I’ve run/worked at it’s been our only method of profitable marketing. As usual it’s the extreme ends of the spectrum that ruin for everyone.
  - mrweasel 2y ago
    I haven't been in that line of business for 10+ years, so my understand and reference is also a bit out of date. Retargeting did very little. Ads helps in some cases, but rarely generic ads, it had to be extremely targeted, which was normally done by manually buying ad space with certain TV programs or in specific locations. The big ones for us was price comparison sites, if we could get on HotUKDeals we'd have a great week, but in particular Google Shopping did made a big difference.
    - simonbarker87 2y ago
      Agree, retargeting was a waste of money - it essentially just annoyed people.
fredski42 2y ago
> The ideal solution would be to find a way for businesses to get those insights in a way that preserves privacy at the individual level. Isn’t that what Mozilla and Meta are together experimenting with?
Earw0rm 2y ago
Targeting, yes; retargeting, no. So much user time is spent, for example, on a few big sites which have enough data within their own siloes (based on users' behaviour and topics of interest), they can target pretty well without relying on external data. The big video sites, social media, Amazon/eBay/etc. And then there's a big layer of smaller sites who can inherently target because they're already specialist in nature. The losers in this scenario aren't really the brands, they're big generic sites such as news media who don't have any way to acquire targeting information on their own.
matheusmoreira 2y ago
It doesn't matter what they want. It doesn't matter why they want it. They are not entitled to this information. They should not be able to know anything at all about us without our explicit consent. We should not have to sacrifice our privacy and peace of mind so that businesses can succeed. If they can't succeed without surveilling us and selling us out, then let them go bankrupt.
- simonbarker87 2y ago
  If that’s where this all shakes out to it will have the affect of creating retail monopolies worse than even in the pre internet days as marketing will be simply too expensive for many online small businesses. 90% of Shopify stores would be dead in the water.
  - GJim 2y ago
    Don't be silly! Nobody is stopping anybody from advertising or marketing. Simply that if your advertisers wish to track me, then they must ask my specific opt-in permission to do so. And so they should. If your business cannot survive without illegally (!) tracking and trading in personal data, then you have a scummy business model and a business that has no right to exist.
- Ferret7446 2y ago
  And you aren't entitled to visit their website. Seems like everything is working fine then? Most of them won't go bankrupt just because you stop visiting; based on reality, most of them are doing relatively fine.
  - GJim 2y ago
    > And you aren't entitled to visit their website. Yes you are! The GDPR prohibits conditioning the provision of service on consent to the processing of personal data. Thus mandating acceptance of advertisers tracking cookies ("cookie walls") without providing alternative means of website access are considered violations of the GDPR.
  - 2y ago
compiler1410 2y ago
all this effort - easily defeated by adblock and antitracking tools xD
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  Not easily and often not completely.
timeon 2y ago
If they can't do business without selling users data, then they shouldn't be doing the business.

Earw0rm 2y ago

Presumably the partners are brought in en masse via some third party brokerage/aggregator service. It's not like a news site is selecting and managing 1500 different partners individually.

GJim 2y ago
This is not an excuse! I can only imagine the disbelief and laughter in court if a thief said "Your honour, it's not like I stole one car, I actually stole 1500 different ones"!

thn-gap 2y ago

What I always find funny about this, is that the popup is presented with "We value your privacy", followed by "allow us to share data with >500 partners". I wished that such statements had some value greater than nil.

ikari_pl 2y ago
but they DO put a measurable value on your privacy
- benfortuna 2y ago
  Put another way, they monetize the erosion of your privacy.

latexr 2y ago

> When you actually read what these pop-ups says, then you understand why they are there, and why the problem with the laws isn't that it's annoying, but that it is not much more restrictive. Worse, people (including on HN) actively blaming the EU for it. It’s like having a law mandating people are informed when there’s poison in their drink, then seeing people complain about the warning labels everywhere. The label isn’t the problem! As you said, if anything the issue is that the law isn’t aggressive enough.

ruthmarx 2y ago
> Worse, people (including on HN) actively blaming the EU for it. The EU is exactly to blame for it. The activity isn't illegal, and the EU didn't make it illegal. What the *EU did* was make it so that companies engaging in that legal activity now had to disclose it in some way, and thee cookie popups are the best way to do that. It's ridiculous to try and say the EU isn't to blame when they introduced and approved the legislation directly responsible for the popups.
- troupo 2y ago
  EU: Don't track users, don't obtain vast amounts of data on users, don't sell that data to third parties. If you you do, ask users for informed consent. Industry: we hear you. Here's "informed consent" form riddled with dark patterns because we believe that all data is ours by God's decree, and our 15 000 "partners" agree with us ... HN: The EU is to blame for this
  - krick 2y ago
    This is correct. However, I always thought that legislation is pretty stupid. It isn't exactly comparable to alcohol/tobacco warnings. Actually, I always thought they are stupid too, but at least they can count as an "informed nonsent", since it's pretty clear, what's the harm they are taking about. Cookies, on the other hand... Even for me, who was perfectly aware of the problem long before this legislation, and who was privacy-oriented to begin with, it isn't clear, what's the consent I'm giving. First off, I know everybody uses cookies, and almost everybody uses some trackers. Second, even me, somewhat informed user, I don't really understand, what is that information they are sharing with third parties, and why should I care. I feel kinda stupid when I bother to press "reject all". Like, does it even matter, what I choose? Wouldn't they do it anyway, whatever they do? Then, I use ublock and I hope it helps. If it doesn't, well, tough luck, but what do I do? I do want to read that one paragraph from the medium/NYT article I found on Google, despite how much I hate them. I won't stop using the internet because of... whatever this is. I can only imagine, what it's like for average user, who is, let's be honest, pretty clueless. I guess for them it is indeed the EU who is too blame here. GDPR is more useful, but still I'm not sure if it really helps. Like, I remember someone complaining that before GDPR you could bulk-download gpx files from Strava, and now you can only request .fit files, that are supposed to containt more data, but really aren't that useful for most. Well, it's not GDPR you should blame, it's Strava and all their partners/competitors (especially Garmin, god I hate them so much). They are successfully making life harder for you, because they don't want it to be easy to get your own data back. And who is to stop them? Maybe it's a matter of time, I don't know, but it doesn't seem GDPR is effectively enforcing what it is supposed to.

ruthmarx 2y ago

> Maybe stop doing stupid shit that will legally require you to inform users that you're about to sell/share everything you know about them to 3rd parties? Why? It's legal and extremely lucrative. If it's really an issue, maybe the EU could actually limit these activities instead of just forcing sites to put a notification that they are attempting to engage in those activities?

GJim 2y ago
I don’t know if you are trolling or so misinformed it is funny. The UK and EU do limit those activities. They remain entirely legal providing you get explicit opt-in consent.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  > I don’t know if you are trolling or so misinformed Neither, you just somehow misinterpreted my comment. > The UK and EU do limit those activities. They remain entirely legal providing you get explicit opt-in consent. The point is that they do not limit them sufficiently, clearly. People who complain about the popups want to blame the businesses, but the business are doing in compliance with the law. That's the point. So blaming the business for the popups doesn't make sense, because the popups are a result of EU regulation, not the businesses doing anything wrong. Because as you say, the EU limits those activities and allows those businesses to do as they do.
  - latexr 2y ago
    > The point is that they do not limit them sufficiently, clearly. I agree. The law should’ve been stronger. But we work now with the hand we have. > People who complain about the popups want to blame the businesses Not in my experience. There’s a split between people blaming the business and blaming the EU. > but the business are doing in compliance with the law. Most aren’t. The GDPR says explicitly that withdrawing consent must be at least as easy as giving it. Yet most popular websites make it incredibly simple to accept but obtuse to refuse. However, you may have noticed that’s starting to get better. More and more websites have a clear way to reject now. Meta (Facebook / Instagram) in particular are now way clearer than at the start. We have to thank organisations such as noyb¹ for that. They have been tireless in that fight and won a number of high-profile cases. ¹ https://noyb.eu/ https://noyb.eu/