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Two years in, GDPR defined by mixed signals, unbalanced enforcement

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Re: Two years in, GDPR defined by mixed signals, unbalanced enforcement

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually a good idea. It's really frustrating how (in other types of news) a lot of buzz can be generated and then just silence and we forget it all and move on. But it's not really something that would sell well. Not many people care about yesterday's news, people want to know what's coming next and not what came out of some magazine's prediction several years ago.

Since we're talking about ideas for news services: I would love to be able to get a list of the most important news in a month or a year. Not a top 10 list but simply a way to try to catch up if you miss a few months.

There are various newsletters for this (mostly weekly), as well as those "what happened this year" summaries everywhere in December.

Also, there are physical magazines that get issued monthly (though it's rarer for political and "news news" topics).

Re: Two years in, GDPR defined by mixed signals, unbalanced enforcement

#102
post #20

I think GDPR has its heart in the right place. I don't think it really helps and I suspect that is because users themselves really don't know what is actually happening behind the scenes and no amount of banners or otter things changes their level of knowledge. And I fear even if they know, users don't care and are happy to click past a banner / trade their privacy for free things. GDPR seems to play out as a strange…

> users don't care and are happy to click past a banner / trade their privacy for free things.

Are we discounting the possibility that users make a rational choice that we happen not to like?

Re: Two years in, GDPR defined by mixed signals, unbalanced enforcement

#103
post #24

I would pay a subscription to a news site if they spent all their time evaluating 2-5 year old events and determining which side was right. 2 years ago comments of "this will only benefit the lawyers" would be -50 points. Turns out... actually yeah.

There is a bit deja vu, since at that time we were pointing out similar flaws in the DPD (lack of enforcement, lack of clarity, govt inefficiencies, the inability for proponents to separate intent from reality, etc). Sadly, there is an absolute "for or against" mentality out there. You can't make it clear that the implementation of such a law would be poor enough to not justify it being enacted in the first place les…

I think the reason why these situations boil down to "for-or-against" is because people craft narratives about these measures/changes to law. If the narratives are pushed hard enough then they end up overpowering nuanced discussion.

"If you don't agree with GDPR then you must want to steal my data". It's difficult to make nuanced arguments against it when you get shouted down by statements like that. These narratives are used to label someone and it seems to be common in modern politics.

Re: Two years in, GDPR defined by mixed signals, unbalanced enforcement

#104
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of websites also consider analytics cookies as essential For a lot of websites, they are.

Under PECR, a cookie being essential means necessary to provide the requested service , not necessary to stay in business. If the user wants to view a news article, and you can serve the article without using analytics cookies, then PECR doesn't allow the cookie. (The situation for paywalls is complicated.)

Internet Explorer was absolutely essential for Microsoft Windows to provide the requested service.

Re: Two years in, GDPR defined by mixed signals, unbalanced enforcement

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a lot of people say this, but I'm just not convinced it's actually the law. It's not obvious to me that analytics cookies categorically can't be essential or that "freely given" implies strict UI neutrality between accepting and declining.

Well, essential means that a web service cannot technically work without it. For example, a session cookie.

The law explicitly has exemptions around purely functional cookies so you are free to set session cookies without requiring consent/disclosure.

Re: Two years in, GDPR defined by mixed signals, unbalanced enforcement

#107
post #20

I think GDPR has its heart in the right place. I don't think it really helps and I suspect that is because users themselves really don't know what is actually happening behind the scenes and no amount of banners or otter things changes their level of knowledge. And I fear even if they know, users don't care and are happy to click past a banner / trade their privacy for free things. GDPR seems to play out as a strange…

> users don't care and are happy to click past a banner / trade their privacy for free things. Are we discounting the possibility that users make a rational choice that we happen not to like?

Yes, they could be making a rational choice that we don't agree with.

Re: Two years in, GDPR defined by mixed signals, unbalanced enforcement

#108
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of these aren't actually compliant. Tracking should be opt- in and consent should be freely given . If your notice is annoying enough that most people click accept (or if clicking decline is harder) then you are already in breach. A lot of websites also consider analytics cookies as essential and don't provide a way to decline those which isn't compliant either. These websites can be detected very easily…

On mobile, some of the opt-out toggle switches don't even function. You literally cannot disable the toggle in iOS Safari.

Yeah but that says more about the clumsiness of iOS. Since upgrading to 13, a ton of stuff is broken, like tap to zoom, and significant ability to edit text fields. Web pages randomly freeze, forcing a kill and reopen, which I rarely saw before.
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