7 ms·

No, the problem is 100% the law, because it was written in a way that allows this type of malicious compliance. Laws need to be written well to achieve good ou

No, the problem is 100% the law, because it was written in a way that allows this type of malicious compliance. Laws need to be written well to achieve good outcomes. If the law allows for malicious compliance, it is a badly written law. The sites are just trying to maximize profit, as anyone could predict. So write better laws.

itopaloglu83 1y ago
Although I agree the law isn’t as good as it could be. It’s also impossible to create perfect law when websites are looking to avoid the spirit of the law to begin with. Otherwise how can we explain “please see our privacy policy and send us a sneaker email to opt out” kind of tracking options.
- lesuorac 1y ago
  Yeah law is kinda like the rules in sports leagues. You have to keep updating it as the meta shits. It's impossible to write things correctly the first or final time and especially with the interpretation of words changing over time it doesn't matter if you could.
  - a4isms 1y ago
    Rules in sports are always being adjusted, and participants are always looking for (barely legal) ways to get around them. Example: In cycling, they banned narrow handlebars. There's an aero advantage, but it was seen as a safety problem. So cyclists canted their brake hoods way inside, rested their hands on the brake hoods, and got an aero advantage. And now there's a rule about brake hoods. Laws are meant only be living things that change as society changes, and also change to patch what we might call "exploits." You are perfectly correct: It's never one and done, it's an ongoing process.
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    This is part of why a lot of EU directives are almost 50% "why this law is necessary and what we're trying to achieve", 30% "what needs to be implemented", and then 20% "who's going to look after all of this and how". That way, a misplaced comma or a wonky sentence doesn't allow for easy loopholes that need tighter laws to fix issues. Now law text will work forever, but this format makes for a very solid foundation.
- narag 1y ago
  You don't need to write the perfect law. Just write a law that has more or less the intended effect. Imagine you write a program to do something and it doesn't work at all as expected and at the same time it causes endless annoyance to users. A law is very similar to a program. It's software for the society. It didn't work and the authors are blaming everybody except themselves.
  - thesuitonym 1y ago
    The difference between a law an a program is that the computer isn't a malicious actor trying to do everything in it's power to subvert the law. A law is nothing like a program, because a computer will do nothing without a program, but societies do all sorts of things regardless of laws.
    - narag 1y ago
      The world a program works in and the computer it runs on are often very malicious, or they sure act like they are. Not to talk about users, some are pure evil :-) We put a lot of safeguards, exception handling and all kind of measures to control errors.
  - itopaloglu83 1y ago
    Of course the politicians share a portion of the blame, but we cannot ignore the fact that websites are just playing the blame game as well. We’re also seeing tracking despite the lack of user consent as well. This could be a fluke but when I make anonymous search on website and switch to another, I’m seeing the product I have just searched in the ads. With all the tracking disabled I mind you.
    - narag 1y ago
      But, but... we're the good guys, we're just fighting those evil advertisers! I don't know if they'll finally find a way to control the spying, but how many years have passed since they made the law?
  - Kbelicius 1y ago
Ar-Curunir 1y ago
Surely you cannot absolve those websites of all blame. They don’t have to engage in malicious compliance, yet they do.
michaelmauderer 1y ago
But the courts are saying: the law does NOT allow this. So maybe “malicious compliance” is a misnomer. We should just call it "illegal dark pattern".
- narag 1y ago
  Lawmakers must consider enforcement. What are the practical consequences of those rulings?
  - seszett 1y ago
    Well almost all websites in France do the legal thing now with an obvious "decline all" button, which was not the case at first. It took just a pair of ruling that made it clear this illegal pattern was going to actually be cracked down upon, and now these popups are just a small annoyance rather than the absolutely enraging trap that they were at first. Of course I still wish they were unnecessary, but they serve as a reminder that these websites are still trying to prey upon their visitors.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      > now these popups are just a small annoyance rather than the absolutely enraging trap Disagree. The popup is the enraging problem. It's not a small annoyance. I click them multiple times every single day and it's ludicrous. I don't need a "reminder". The last thing I want is some "reminder" day after day after day. I want a law that protects consumers in the first place.
      - Kbelicius 1y ago
        > Disagree. The popup is the enraging problem. It's not a small annoyance. I click them multiple times every single day and it's ludicrous. Then don't visit webpages that do illegal things and are hostile to their users. > I want a law that protects consumers in the first place. This is that law.
raverbashing 1y ago
I agree with you But we see how some companies cough cough Apple cough throw massive hissy fits and tries to find the most minuscule opening on the law
- lillecarl 1y ago
  [dead]
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    This is a myth. I don't think there is a single court ruling that would support this interpretation anywhere on the planet.
  - wtetzner 1y ago
    > They're legally bound to what's best for their shareholders People always say this, but as far as I can tell it's not true.
    - lillecarl 1y ago
      People always say they're bound to maximize profits, which is an interpretation of "doing what's best for your shareholders".
      - mh- 1y ago
        And people are wrong. It's a misunderstanding (or purposeful distortion) of fiduciary duty that gets increasingly perpetuated in comments.
    - edoceo 1y ago
      In 1919, Michigan, USA court ruled shareholders matter more than employees or customers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
      - 1y ago
hananova 1y ago
But the law never allowed this. Enforcement just turned out to be an issue due to the enormity of it all. Also, please remember that in Europe there is no such thing as "the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law." The intent of the law IS the law.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  Honest question, isn't the spirit of the law the same as the intent of the law?
  - skrebbel 1y ago
    Yes and sometimes it's subtly different from the letter of the law. The point is, if I understand it correctly, that in the US, courts always literally interpret the law as written, whereas in the EU there's a culture of sometimes, when the letter of the law super clearly differs from the intent it was obviously written with, siding with the intent of the law rather than the precise wording.
    - actionfromafar 1y ago
      That doesn't jibe with my understanding. For one thing, "interpreting the law as written" is impossible on its face. You need to have an understanding of what it means, i.e. interpret it. And not only that, isn't the whole deal with Common Law that the judge, judges?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - finghin 1y ago
        IIRC a common law maxim oft repeated said something like: “a judge doesn’t make a ruling because it is right, the ruling is right because the judge has ruled it.”
    - Planktonne 1y ago
atoav 1y ago
No. The law does not allow it. To quote Article 4(11) – Definition of Consent > ‘Consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her. Meaning if you force users into pressing a button or let them scroll through 1000 no options, with one easy yes option, you have not collected their free consent. Congrats you broke the law. Meaning if you just have them click yes, but not informed them about the harmful data collection you did not collect free consent. The law is pretty clear on that.
- Measter 1y ago
  Wouldn't this also mean that if a user was using one of those browser extensions that automatically click "yes" to close the pop, then the site would not have informed consent, and therefore would not be allowed to collect the data?
  - 1718627440 1y ago
    Yes. Who the hell uses such a browser extension, though? I use an extension, that always clicks no, but why would anyone want to always be tracked?
    - dspillett 1y ago
      Be careful with just clicking the big “decline” button. That skips past your opportunity to “object to legitimate interests”¹ in many cases. -------- [1] Here “legitimate interest” essentially means “we see your preference not to be stalked, but we want to so we are going to make it that bit more faf to opt out, because fuck you and the privacy we lie about caring about”.
      - pasc1878 1y ago
        And that is breaking the law. The decline button means decline all.
Zanfa 1y ago
Like mentioned by sibling comments, GDPR explicitly does not allow this. It's just the fact that enforcement is spotty and complicated by the fact that the responsibility is shared across all EU member states with limitations what each country can do by itself, with some countries' data protection authorities intentionally dragging their feet to protect multinationals. It's the same issue as with most EU-wide issues, where there's always countries competing with each other at the benefit of others. Also GDPR is not exclusive to browsers or internet, it's applicable universally, for both online and offline businesses and processes, which is why it can't and doesn't prescribe exact technical implementation details.
noja 1y ago
> No, the problem is 100% the law, because it was written in a way that allows this type of malicious compliance. What are you referring to here? Where in the law is this allowed?
Kbelicius 1y ago
> No, the problem is 100% the law, because it was written in a way that allows this type of malicious compliance. There is no malicious compliance here, just breaking the law. So if it is the problem of laws that they are broken then according to you all laws are 100% the problem. That stance, IMO, is beyond stupid.
RHSeeger 1y ago
Well written laws are difficult to create. You usually wind up with one of - The law allows things it shouldn't, or - The law disallows things it should And the later gets swept under the rug as "we won't enforce it that way"... and then it winds up getting enforced exactly that way because someone has an agenda, and this is a hammer.
GTP 1y ago
The GDPR clearly states that denying consent has to be as easy as giving it.
- loeg 1y ago
  The problem is the pop up banner. Having a big "deny" button does not solve the GDPR cookie banner problem.
  - vanviegen 1y ago
    I think that does eventually solve it. If clicking "deny" is as easy as clicking "accept", people will mostly just do the former. As that will erode most worth derived from tracking, sensible operators will decide to stop annoying users and just ditch the tracking altogether. Or so I hope. I wouldn't know, as Brave does a pretty good job of hiding cookie banners in the mean-time.
    - mrguyorama 1y ago
      >If clicking "deny" is as easy as clicking "accept", people will mostly just do the former. Unfortunately, I don't actually think people realize the law is on their side here. My girlfriend never clicked "Reject All" until I told her to because she thought something wouldn't work if she did that!
      - speleding 1y ago
        Your girlfriend was somewhat right though: if you click "Reject all" they cannot show you targeted ads, and will show you generic ads instead. That's why I always accept the tracking cookies, for me the price of the privacy incursion is worth seeing more relevant ads.
    - loeg 1y ago
      If the goal of the law was to ban tracking, it should have just done that. Otherwise, the purpose of the law is what it does -- mandate annoying tracking popups on every website.
phatfish 1y ago
And you write 100% bug free and secure software right? There is no way a law can account for every malicious tech bro trying to subvert it on first pass, or even after that. It is always a constant battle with bad actors.
mvieira38 1y ago
Viewing corporations as amoral bots that are justified in squeezing every bit of profit out of humans is exactly what is wrong with our society. Someone in a big tech was the inventor of this dark pattern and they think they're awesome for finding a loophole in the well-meaning regulation, at the cost of the costumer they supposedly should serve. That person is the problem, and so are the people that followed them
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  corporations are the mechanism by which bad actors are shielded from responsibility. limited liability is used in bad faith in these cases; regulating this bad-faith usage should impact the individuals responsible for the implementation, but should also impact those not directly involved for allowing it to happen in the first place, including board members, management and investors (if you really want to see change, start fucking with peoples' money when they allow bad things to happen through inaction).
- crooked-v 1y ago
  For this "modern" view, you have to look back to 1896, when New Jersey made it easy to create for-profit corporations beholden only to shareholders as a way to attract investment to the state.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    It's really not even primarily the privately-held corporations that are the problem. Some family business, even if it's big, is more likely to care about its reputation because that's their family's company and it's still going to be their family's company in 50 years or more. Whereas you get publicly-traded companies and the primary shareholders are investment funds, whose managers get bonuses based on short-term results and who may not be in the same job or having the fund hold the same companies in as little as a year from now. So their incentive is to have companies squeeze customers for short-term gains and then choose the right time to pawn the shares off on some bag holders who see strong recent numbers and don't realize what that strategy does to the company's long-term prospects.
bko 1y ago
You think websites like having this crap? You think they haven't considered alternatives? What greedy corporate executive is thinking "yes, let's make our product considerably worse just to prove a point" They obviously looked at the alternatives and decided that the benefits of cookies or the cost of compliance is bad enough to allow for this crappy experience. And they all pretty much decided across the board. So what problem is this cookie crap trying to solve? No one asked for it, no one wants to comply and now we're just making the web worse off as a result.
zoeysmithe 1y ago
The law was written by lobbyists to be this way. We were never going to get a global 'just serve needed cookies' browser button.
mrandish 1y ago
> Laws need to be written well to achieve good outcomes. This is a critical failure point which should get more attention. Laws (and regulations) are like computer code in some key ways. Early computer code was written assuming it would be run by experts in trusted, benign environments that were relatively fixed in size and complexity. Our legislative law-making structures were created with similar assumptions. As the world changed, code changed but law-making structures didn't. At a minimum, while being drafted laws should be subject to independent red-teaming and penetration testing to A) Assess their ability to actually accomplish their stated intent over time in the real world, and B) Surface likely unintended perverse consequences. Of course, that still wouldn't solve the issue of intentional weakening of laws with vague terminology, incomplete scoping, inserting loopholes, exceptions, etc by special-interest-driven legislators. Sadly, these days I think intentional nerfing of laws during drafting is the biggest cause of 'bad laws'. But at least the red-teaming concept might prevent some unintended bugs on top of lobbyist-driven nerfing.
create-username 1y ago
browsers should be developed so they do not provide the web server any more information than any other visitor. web browsers should curl the website and process it locally without telling the server anything else. It seems like web browsers were developed in a pre-surveillance capitalism world
the_other 1y ago
No, the problem is 100% the addiction to tracking and data harvesting. If you don’t do that, you don’t need the banner.
artyom 1y ago
I agree. The law was lobbied to death before it was passed. Thus, the lawmakers are the problem. The intent was nice, but the ask from the article is essentially asking browsers to implement uBlock Origin built-in and expect Google to just comply without pushback. Unlike to happen because the ones that got us the current law, the ones that make the browsers, and the ones that make money from the ads (cookies == ads) are all the same companies.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

itopaloglu83 1y ago

Although I agree the law isn’t as good as it could be. It’s also impossible to create perfect law when websites are looking to avoid the spirit of the law to begin with. Otherwise how can we explain “please see our privacy policy and send us a sneaker email to opt out” kind of tracking options.

lesuorac 1y ago
Yeah law is kinda like the rules in sports leagues. You have to keep updating it as the meta shits. It's impossible to write things correctly the first or final time and especially with the interpretation of words changing over time it doesn't matter if you could.
- a4isms 1y ago
  Rules in sports are always being adjusted, and participants are always looking for (barely legal) ways to get around them. Example: In cycling, they banned narrow handlebars. There's an aero advantage, but it was seen as a safety problem. So cyclists canted their brake hoods way inside, rested their hands on the brake hoods, and got an aero advantage. And now there's a rule about brake hoods. Laws are meant only be living things that change as society changes, and also change to patch what we might call "exploits." You are perfectly correct: It's never one and done, it's an ongoing process.
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  This is part of why a lot of EU directives are almost 50% "why this law is necessary and what we're trying to achieve", 30% "what needs to be implemented", and then 20% "who's going to look after all of this and how". That way, a misplaced comma or a wonky sentence doesn't allow for easy loopholes that need tighter laws to fix issues. Now law text will work forever, but this format makes for a very solid foundation.
narag 1y ago
You don't need to write the perfect law. Just write a law that has more or less the intended effect. Imagine you write a program to do something and it doesn't work at all as expected and at the same time it causes endless annoyance to users. A law is very similar to a program. It's software for the society. It didn't work and the authors are blaming everybody except themselves.
- thesuitonym 1y ago
  The difference between a law an a program is that the computer isn't a malicious actor trying to do everything in it's power to subvert the law. A law is nothing like a program, because a computer will do nothing without a program, but societies do all sorts of things regardless of laws.
  - narag 1y ago
    The world a program works in and the computer it runs on are often very malicious, or they sure act like they are. Not to talk about users, some are pure evil :-) We put a lot of safeguards, exception handling and all kind of measures to control errors.
- itopaloglu83 1y ago
  Of course the politicians share a portion of the blame, but we cannot ignore the fact that websites are just playing the blame game as well. We’re also seeing tracking despite the lack of user consent as well. This could be a fluke but when I make anonymous search on website and switch to another, I’m seeing the product I have just searched in the ads. With all the tracking disabled I mind you.
  - narag 1y ago
    But, but... we're the good guys, we're just fighting those evil advertisers! I don't know if they'll finally find a way to control the spying, but how many years have passed since they made the law?
- Kbelicius 1y ago

Ar-Curunir 1y ago

Surely you cannot absolve those websites of all blame. They don’t have to engage in malicious compliance, yet they do.

michaelmauderer 1y ago

But the courts are saying: the law does NOT allow this. So maybe “malicious compliance” is a misnomer. We should just call it "illegal dark pattern".

narag 1y ago
Lawmakers must consider enforcement. What are the practical consequences of those rulings?
- seszett 1y ago
  Well almost all websites in France do the legal thing now with an obvious "decline all" button, which was not the case at first. It took just a pair of ruling that made it clear this illegal pattern was going to actually be cracked down upon, and now these popups are just a small annoyance rather than the absolutely enraging trap that they were at first. Of course I still wish they were unnecessary, but they serve as a reminder that these websites are still trying to prey upon their visitors.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    > now these popups are just a small annoyance rather than the absolutely enraging trap Disagree. The popup is the enraging problem. It's not a small annoyance. I click them multiple times every single day and it's ludicrous. I don't need a "reminder". The last thing I want is some "reminder" day after day after day. I want a law that protects consumers in the first place.
    - Kbelicius 1y ago
      > Disagree. The popup is the enraging problem. It's not a small annoyance. I click them multiple times every single day and it's ludicrous. Then don't visit webpages that do illegal things and are hostile to their users. > I want a law that protects consumers in the first place. This is that law.

raverbashing 1y ago

I agree with you But we see how some companies cough cough Apple cough throw massive hissy fits and tries to find the most minuscule opening on the law

lillecarl 1y ago
[dead]
- dns_snek 1y ago
  This is a myth. I don't think there is a single court ruling that would support this interpretation anywhere on the planet.
- wtetzner 1y ago
  > They're legally bound to what's best for their shareholders People always say this, but as far as I can tell it's not true.
  - lillecarl 1y ago
    People always say they're bound to maximize profits, which is an interpretation of "doing what's best for your shareholders".
    - mh- 1y ago
      And people are wrong. It's a misunderstanding (or purposeful distortion) of fiduciary duty that gets increasingly perpetuated in comments.
  - edoceo 1y ago
    In 1919, Michigan, USA court ruled shareholders matter more than employees or customers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
    - 1y ago

hananova 1y ago

But the law never allowed this. Enforcement just turned out to be an issue due to the enormity of it all. Also, please remember that in Europe there is no such thing as "the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law." The intent of the law IS the law.

actionfromafar 1y ago
Honest question, isn't the spirit of the law the same as the intent of the law?
- skrebbel 1y ago
  Yes and sometimes it's subtly different from the letter of the law. The point is, if I understand it correctly, that in the US, courts always literally interpret the law as written, whereas in the EU there's a culture of sometimes, when the letter of the law super clearly differs from the intent it was obviously written with, siding with the intent of the law rather than the precise wording.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    That doesn't jibe with my understanding. For one thing, "interpreting the law as written" is impossible on its face. You need to have an understanding of what it means, i.e. interpret it. And not only that, isn't the whole deal with Common Law that the judge, judges?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - finghin 1y ago
      IIRC a common law maxim oft repeated said something like: “a judge doesn’t make a ruling because it is right, the ruling is right because the judge has ruled it.”
  - Planktonne 1y ago

atoav 1y ago

No. The law does not allow it. To quote Article 4(11) – Definition of Consent > ‘Consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her. Meaning if you force users into pressing a button or let them scroll through 1000 no options, with one easy yes option, you have not collected their free consent. Congrats you broke the law. Meaning if you just have them click yes, but not informed them about the harmful data collection you did not collect free consent. The law is pretty clear on that.

Measter 1y ago
Wouldn't this also mean that if a user was using one of those browser extensions that automatically click "yes" to close the pop, then the site would not have informed consent, and therefore would not be allowed to collect the data?
- 1718627440 1y ago
  Yes. Who the hell uses such a browser extension, though? I use an extension, that always clicks no, but why would anyone want to always be tracked?
  - dspillett 1y ago
    Be careful with just clicking the big “decline” button. That skips past your opportunity to “object to legitimate interests”¹ in many cases. -------- [1] Here “legitimate interest” essentially means “we see your preference not to be stalked, but we want to so we are going to make it that bit more faf to opt out, because fuck you and the privacy we lie about caring about”.
    - pasc1878 1y ago
      And that is breaking the law. The decline button means decline all.

Zanfa 1y ago

Like mentioned by sibling comments, GDPR explicitly does not allow this. It's just the fact that enforcement is spotty and complicated by the fact that the responsibility is shared across all EU member states with limitations what each country can do by itself, with some countries' data protection authorities intentionally dragging their feet to protect multinationals. It's the same issue as with most EU-wide issues, where there's always countries competing with each other at the benefit of others. Also GDPR is not exclusive to browsers or internet, it's applicable universally, for both online and offline businesses and processes, which is why it can't and doesn't prescribe exact technical implementation details.

noja 1y ago

> No, the problem is 100% the law, because it was written in a way that allows this type of malicious compliance. What are you referring to here? Where in the law is this allowed?

Kbelicius 1y ago

> No, the problem is 100% the law, because it was written in a way that allows this type of malicious compliance. There is no malicious compliance here, just breaking the law. So if it is the problem of laws that they are broken then according to you all laws are 100% the problem. That stance, IMO, is beyond stupid.

RHSeeger 1y ago

Well written laws are difficult to create. You usually wind up with one of - The law allows things it shouldn't, or - The law disallows things it should And the later gets swept under the rug as "we won't enforce it that way"... and then it winds up getting enforced exactly that way because someone has an agenda, and this is a hammer.

GTP 1y ago

The GDPR clearly states that denying consent has to be as easy as giving it.

loeg 1y ago
The problem is the pop up banner. Having a big "deny" button does not solve the GDPR cookie banner problem.
- vanviegen 1y ago
  I think that does eventually solve it. If clicking "deny" is as easy as clicking "accept", people will mostly just do the former. As that will erode most worth derived from tracking, sensible operators will decide to stop annoying users and just ditch the tracking altogether. Or so I hope. I wouldn't know, as Brave does a pretty good job of hiding cookie banners in the mean-time.
  - mrguyorama 1y ago
    >If clicking "deny" is as easy as clicking "accept", people will mostly just do the former. Unfortunately, I don't actually think people realize the law is on their side here. My girlfriend never clicked "Reject All" until I told her to because she thought something wouldn't work if she did that!
    - speleding 1y ago
      Your girlfriend was somewhat right though: if you click "Reject all" they cannot show you targeted ads, and will show you generic ads instead. That's why I always accept the tracking cookies, for me the price of the privacy incursion is worth seeing more relevant ads.
  - loeg 1y ago
    If the goal of the law was to ban tracking, it should have just done that. Otherwise, the purpose of the law is what it does -- mandate annoying tracking popups on every website.

phatfish 1y ago

And you write 100% bug free and secure software right? There is no way a law can account for every malicious tech bro trying to subvert it on first pass, or even after that. It is always a constant battle with bad actors.

mvieira38 1y ago

Viewing corporations as amoral bots that are justified in squeezing every bit of profit out of humans is exactly what is wrong with our society. Someone in a big tech was the inventor of this dark pattern and they think they're awesome for finding a loophole in the well-meaning regulation, at the cost of the costumer they supposedly should serve. That person is the problem, and so are the people that followed them

GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
corporations are the mechanism by which bad actors are shielded from responsibility. limited liability is used in bad faith in these cases; regulating this bad-faith usage should impact the individuals responsible for the implementation, but should also impact those not directly involved for allowing it to happen in the first place, including board members, management and investors (if you really want to see change, start fucking with peoples' money when they allow bad things to happen through inaction).
crooked-v 1y ago
For this "modern" view, you have to look back to 1896, when New Jersey made it easy to create for-profit corporations beholden only to shareholders as a way to attract investment to the state.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  It's really not even primarily the privately-held corporations that are the problem. Some family business, even if it's big, is more likely to care about its reputation because that's their family's company and it's still going to be their family's company in 50 years or more. Whereas you get publicly-traded companies and the primary shareholders are investment funds, whose managers get bonuses based on short-term results and who may not be in the same job or having the fund hold the same companies in as little as a year from now. So their incentive is to have companies squeeze customers for short-term gains and then choose the right time to pawn the shares off on some bag holders who see strong recent numbers and don't realize what that strategy does to the company's long-term prospects.

bko 1y ago

You think websites like having this crap? You think they haven't considered alternatives? What greedy corporate executive is thinking "yes, let's make our product considerably worse just to prove a point" They obviously looked at the alternatives and decided that the benefits of cookies or the cost of compliance is bad enough to allow for this crappy experience. And they all pretty much decided across the board. So what problem is this cookie crap trying to solve? No one asked for it, no one wants to comply and now we're just making the web worse off as a result.

zoeysmithe 1y ago

The law was written by lobbyists to be this way. We were never going to get a global 'just serve needed cookies' browser button.

mrandish 1y ago

> Laws need to be written well to achieve good outcomes. This is a critical failure point which should get more attention. Laws (and regulations) are like computer code in some key ways. Early computer code was written assuming it would be run by experts in trusted, benign environments that were relatively fixed in size and complexity. Our legislative law-making structures were created with similar assumptions. As the world changed, code changed but law-making structures didn't. At a minimum, while being drafted laws should be subject to independent red-teaming and penetration testing to A) Assess their ability to actually accomplish their stated intent over time in the real world, and B) Surface likely unintended perverse consequences. Of course, that still wouldn't solve the issue of intentional weakening of laws with vague terminology, incomplete scoping, inserting loopholes, exceptions, etc by special-interest-driven legislators. Sadly, these days I think intentional nerfing of laws during drafting is the biggest cause of 'bad laws'. But at least the red-teaming concept might prevent some unintended bugs on top of lobbyist-driven nerfing.

create-username 1y ago

browsers should be developed so they do not provide the web server any more information than any other visitor. web browsers should curl the website and process it locally without telling the server anything else. It seems like web browsers were developed in a pre-surveillance capitalism world

the_other 1y ago

No, the problem is 100% the addiction to tracking and data harvesting. If you don’t do that, you don’t need the banner.

artyom 1y ago

I agree. The law was lobbied to death before it was passed. Thus, the lawmakers are the problem. The intent was nice, but the ask from the article is essentially asking browsers to implement uBlock Origin built-in and expect Google to just comply without pushback. Unlike to happen because the ones that got us the current law, the ones that make the browsers, and the ones that make money from the ads (cookies == ads) are all the same companies.

deleted 1y ago

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