Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web • Hacker News Board

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#61

Post by cpeterso » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:13 PM UTC

modzu wrote: post #6

then there's reddit and its giant full page ad for the app before finally redirecting me to the content once i find the tiny link to continue instead of opening the app store... yes reddit and fb and gmail and the like are intentionally crippled when viewed on mobile. why? maybe because the data an app can suck up off your phone is much more valuable. no pesky same-origin policies! i digress :(

I've read lots of articles from companies like Pinterest and Flipkart about how lightweight PWAs increased user engagement by some huge amount, like 200%. So why are other companies like Reddit spoiling their mobile web experience by pushing their apps so hard?

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#62

Post by Bizarro » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:14 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #7

I'm a really big fan of geotargeting these notices only to the EU. If the EU wants cookie notices, give the EU cookie notices. Don't give anyone else cookie notices, because they're garish and few people reasonably care.

If you don't have operations in the EU then you don't have to worry about that nonsense to begin with.

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#63

Post by cookiePuss » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

thrill wrote: post #37

littlestymaar wrote: post #15

How ironic, websites have been breaking user experience for years by embedding always more trackers that took forever to load. If a publisher doesn't want to display a GDPR notification to its users there's a simple trick : just don't collect and monetize personal informations!

Notifications should be for exceptions that require action.

Action, like "close your browser and clear your cookies, disable cookies, and then block further cookie dropping from that site as well"?

Exceptions like when you're being ratted out, to many other companies that perform surveillance on you, by a company you have no particular affection for?

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#64

Post by dominotw » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:20 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #7

I'm a really big fan of geotargeting these notices only to the EU. If the EU wants cookie notices, give the EU cookie notices. Don't give anyone else cookie notices, because they're garish and few people reasonably care.

Is this different from GDPR in the sense that EU citizen can be accessing your website from other parts of the world?

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#65

Post by dominotw » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:22 PM UTC

mrec wrote: post #46

pupppet wrote: post #11

They’re terrible. Who are we kidding, no one has backed out of the website after seeing one of these notices.

I back out of them all time. Particularly the egregious dark-pattern ones: "Click this giant green button to let us track you out the wazoo, or click this tiny misleadingly-named link to drag you through a six-hour hell of settings dialogs which will drop you out without actually changing anything the instant it thinks it can get away with it."

do you know if an example website that does this.

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#66

Post by anthony_franco » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

modzu wrote: post #6

then there's reddit and its giant full page ad for the app before finally redirecting me to the content once i find the tiny link to continue instead of opening the app store... yes reddit and fb and gmail and the like are intentionally crippled when viewed on mobile. why? maybe because the data an app can suck up off your phone is much more valuable. no pesky same-origin policies! i digress :(

Use this link on mobile. It’s way better: https://i.reddit.com/

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#67

Post by etatoby » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

xg15 wrote: post #24

SteveNuts wrote: post #2

Do these notifications actually help with GDPR compliance or are they just a CYA for the websites?

Given that (from my IANAL understanding) the GDPR requires opt-in and forbids "click I accept or leave our service" style forced opt-in, I'd say this is not even CYA - it's closer to magical cargo cult incantations.

> the GDPR requires opt-in and forbids "click I accept or leave our service"

That's an asinine law if I ever saw one. Telling me how I should run my business? Really? From what vantage point, if I may ask?

If I had a company, I would ignore the whole thing and invite them to cross the pond and try their crap in my jurisdiction, under my laws. Or just block them altogether. If they want to go back to the middle ages, let them.

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#68

Post by zelon88 » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

modzu wrote: post #6

then there's reddit and its giant full page ad for the app before finally redirecting me to the content once i find the tiny link to continue instead of opening the app store... yes reddit and fb and gmail and the like are intentionally crippled when viewed on mobile. why? maybe because the data an app can suck up off your phone is much more valuable. no pesky same-origin policies! i digress :(

Oh man! And you think anyone is bad when it comes to intrusive cookies just look at the crap Reddit keeps on you!

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#69

Post by JeanMarcS » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #42

Are Cookie policy notifications a thing outside of the EU? I always assumed that websites geo target these notifications and life with the small risk of corner cases (like EU customer in the US). If anyone has experience, or numbers I’d find that highly interesting. One datapoint from Germany: We were largely unaffected by cookie notifications before GDPR, because of a local law (TMG) that superseded the EU “cookie l…

The « funniest » part is that Spiegel probably made several news article about GDPR. In France it’s the same.

Sad thing for them, they won’t be able to pretend they didn’t knew (which will be a good lesson taught)

Re: Cookie policy notifications have ruined user experience on the web

#70

Post by davidfischer » Fri, Aug 03, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

tremon wrote: post #56

fasteddie wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. You can use cookies for necessary operations of the website, which this almost certainly is. Also, country level location data isn't PII, and also doing a geoip lookup that you don't store anywhere also isn't in violation.

This isn't true either. If you're using an IP lookup to determine the user's current country, that's still processing PII (since many courts have already ruled that an IP address is unique enough to identify a person -- technical challenges notwithstanding). However, you have a clear and stated use case for processing that PII so consent is not required, but you are required to mention this processing in your privacy…

For the purpose of the GDPR, an IP is PII. However, one can get rough location using an anonymized version of an IP address (say one that has zeroed out the last octet or two).

From Recital 26 (https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-26/):

> The principles of data protection should therefore not apply to anonymous information, namely information which does not relate to an identified or identifiable natural person or to personal data rendered anonymous in such a manner that the data subject is not or no longer identifiable.