Comment by Pooge

Comment by Pooge 13 hours ago

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> And the GDPR, a great regulation for customer data, has had the side effect of putting cookie law banners everywhere which makes the web more frustrating

I say it countless times, but no. Data harvesting Big Tech put cookie banners everywhere and make the web frustrating for you. If they respected Do Not Track, they would not need to show you the banner. Instead, they don't take it into account and prefer to show you a banner that takes up all page instead of having a small banner that asks you if you want to agree to optional cookies.

SpecialistK 9 hours ago

That doesn't pass the sniff test. If a masked assailant in the street is going to rob me, but has to say a certain sentence before so and almost uniformly does, that speaks to the legal priorities of those making the laws.

If hoovering up my data is bad, make it illegal. Don't wrap it up in niceties and then deflect the blame.

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  • Pooge 9 hours ago

    The priority of the GDRP was that you needed your users' consent to process their personal data. The industry answer—cookie banners—is something that the industry created because their tracking incentives were higher than their users' experience.

    Do Not Track was a thing since basically forever and the industry willfully chose to ignore it.

    If you want to keep using websites that have dark patterns and track you, that's on you. I would argue it's even better than before because at least the average user would notice he's being tracked and the website makes it clear that the user's interests are not aligned with the website's owner.

    Blaming it on the lawmakers—which I use as mockery as much as the next guy—is of bad faith, in my opinion.

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    • SpecialistK 9 hours ago

      Why is blaming the lawmakers, the only ones who can enact laws governing this, "bad faith"? Bad faith does not mean a decision or opinion you disagree with.

      Do Not Track was ignored because there was no legal requirement to. Wikipedia is not the best source, I know, but its first sentence on the "Adoption" section is: "Very few advertising companies actually supported DNT, due to a lack of regulatory or voluntary requirements for its use"

      Lack of regulatory requirements. In other words, no government had the smarts or the spine to make it a law. Who is to blame for making the law...? Lawmakers.

      "that's on you" is also an absolute cop-out, in my opinion. Lots of things on the internet are illegal, usually for good reason. I don't think I need to list examples. The EU, EU member-states, and other jurisdictions have no problem making horrendous things on the web illegal to host or visit. If data harvesting is bad, explicitly make it illegal.

      "The average user would notice he's being tracked" also is the counter-argument to my point - if every site, no matter how banal, has a bar at the bottom with a big blue button that effectively says "yeah whatever go away" then it's ignored. Boy who cried wolf. If this bar only showed up on Meta and Google and Doubleclick ads then maybe it would carry some weight.

      I didn't think it was necessary to say, but apparently it is: my criticism of this part of the GDPR is not to invalidate the good work it has done for user rights on the web. Only to note that regulations, no matter how well intentioned (the point of the OP), come with side-effects that were unseen at the time. Don't waste keystrokes defending those unfortunate side effects (while apparently blaming everyone except those with the power to change it) but instead form campaigns and working groups to propose something better and encourage your legislators to adopt it.

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      • Pooge 9 hours ago

        I agree that the GDPR could have gone much further but making data harvesting illegal was never the point—and this is not my opinion.

        Websites could show a small banner that says "hey, we use cookies for targeted advertising; click here to opt in to them" but instead chose to use a full-screen pop-up where you can't even navigate properly if you don't click. Hell, some don't even have an easy to access "Reject all" button—I even wonder if it's legal.

        While I admit cookie banners are a side effect of the GDPR, they only came to be because that's what the industry chose. Claiming that the reason Big Tech did not honor DNT is because there was no legal requirement is true but not the full picture; they ignored it because it is against their advertising incentives.

        GDPR should be even more radical for sure but none of what they enacted was a mistake.

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