Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

markosaric.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 457 posts

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#71

Post by rightbyte »

black_puppydog wrote: post #36

Assuming for a moment that the test websites didn't give a specific reason to trust them more or less than any other website operator. This means that if your website has significantly more than those 9% consent, you're either perceived as very trustworthy, or your GDPR banner is confusing (or, less charitably, deceiving) users. Would be interesting to see how the consent rates for big offenders like techcrunch, news…

I tried Tech Crunch without adblocker and I would have to click out 16 "partners" after clicking "read more" two times. There is like hundreds of "IAB Partners" of which an unspecified amount need separate opt-out on their websites. It is not clear if "select all" opts out or in on the "IAB Partners".

So I guess exactly zero visitors opt out there in the intended way. So 100% "opt-in".

I tried to opt-out from all to see how many cookies would be set anyway but gave up after 5 minutes.

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#72

Post by gsich »

amelius wrote: post #22
davidweatherall wrote: post #2

The author's consent form is very simple and isn't using any shady UX tricks to get the user to consent. One action will opt you in, one action will opt you out. I wonder what results you would see for something like yahoo, the daily mail, reddit, or other sites that heavily rely on ad revenue, which attempt to force the user to accept the cookies through non-obvious no buttons, or long processes to opt out of cookie…

We should have GDPR settings in the browser.

DNT. Has been sabotaged from the beginning. Default on leads to sites saying "we don't accept DNT".

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#73

Post by duckington »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #27

GDPR opt-in questions train people to accept forms without reading or thinking. I think this will be dangerous. And I'm really irritated that I can't access local news sites in America because they aren't compliant -- so they blanket ban European access. That's deeply problematic.

Agreed. I'd guess for ~90% of web users, GDPR popups have lost all meaning. The thought process is not about opting in or out, it's more "how do I close this popup as quickly as possible?".

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#74

Post by alpaca128 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #57
amelius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should have GDPR settings in the browser.

Most sites already ignore the "do not track" flag from your browser.

The difference is that "do not track" isn't enforced at all.

It would be much better to make a browser-side dialog like it's done with location tracking and desktop notifications, and also provide a checkbox in the settings. Most importantly it would take away control from shady websites to implement it on their shady terms(though admittedly giving that control to Google's browser may not be ideal either).

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#75

Post by afiori »

bewareandaware wrote: post #3

I must say I'm really surprised. I'm a frontend developer and probably more keen to keep an eye on this stuff but there are lots of times where I just say yes because the popup is in-my-face and I just want to scroll to the content. I guess where the article falls flat is where the author says a "proper GDPR content banner" was implemented. No online publication will do this. At least they will trick you with button…

> At least they will trick you with button colors

I agree with the broader point, but principles of a nice user interface also apply here.

Unless the website tricks you into clicking a button that you did not intend to click (like with your double negative example) it is not a trick. If you do not read and just click the most colorful rectangle to make the pop-up go away that is the user problem even under the GDPR

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#76

Post by emn13 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #56
beshrkayali wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why GDPR, although theoretically a good idea, is pretty much useless in practice. I'd like to see how many websites offer a reasonable consent widget that doesn't opt you in by default, keep nothing checking but a huge button to tick and accept, or the usual million-and-one checkboxes to untick, and many other cheap tricks that even the most vigilant of consumers will fall to at some point. I use everything…

I can only speak for myself, but actually I go to the detailed cookie settings and unselect everything I'm not ok with. In particular, I unselect ga and Fb pixel because I believe the habit of collecting visit data at an all-seeing central site isn't worth it, and actually is the major characteristic of a dystopian future that hacker culture has always been opposed to. If the consent settings are rubbish, I don't bot…

It may be the German implementation is different in this regard, but IIRC the GDPR did not create a personal right; enforcement is solely at the discretion of the relevant authority. I thought that was intentional; as a way to limit frivolous lawsuits, but I'm no expert by any means - are you sure this is actually possible?

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#77

Post by AnthonyMouse »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #59
oblio wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2016, I think, there were 0 airplane crashes and 0 air travel fatalities. Across 200 countries, hundreds of airlines and several airplane manufacturers, probably thousands of airports, millions of flights. If you think that was an easy feat, then I don't know what to tell you. Do you know how it was achieved? With finely tuned and ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy. When people really care, bureaucracy works wonders…

> 0 airplane crashes I presume you meant commercial aviation, rather than aviation in general. Unfortunately not quite true even there. Your broader point stands though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aviation_accidents_an...

> Your broader point stands though.

Well no, you've neatly disproved it.

The reason it works for commercial aviation and not anything else -- not even aviation in general -- is that the bureaucratic processes used for commercial aviation incur a massive overhead. When you have a product which costs a hundred million dollars a unit anyway and can kill 300 people in one shot if it fails, you pay the cost. For anything else it's too expensive, but spending less money causes the bureaucracy to be ineffective.

And even in commercial aviation, the overhead is still there, it's just capable of eating the loss. (Or maybe it isn't, given the miserable lack of competition in that industry now. And then where does that lead us on safety, Boeing?)

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#78

Post by ben_w »

oblio wrote: post #45
beshrkayali wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't trust governments/bureaucrats to be able to come up with a solution for this issue. This is one of those problems that evolves very quickly, and the solution probably needs to be done by a private company or by each person individually.

In 2016, I think, there were 0 airplane crashes and 0 air travel fatalities. Across 200 countries, hundreds of airlines and several airplane manufacturers, probably thousands of airports, millions of flights. If you think that was an easy feat, then I don't know what to tell you. Do you know how it was achieved? With finely tuned and ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy. When people really care, bureaucracy works wonders…

> Do you know how it was achieved? With finely tuned and ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy.

Not to dispute the effectiveness of a finely tuned and ruthlessly efficient bureaucracy, but pilots and airlines have a strong incentive to not have fatal accidents; websites however have a strong incentive to track their users.

To use an analogy, enforcing this will be less like mandatory driving exams and more like net-zero carbon emissions.

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#79

Post by hvidgaard »

beshrkayali wrote: post #34
black_puppydog wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More a problem of enforcement than the legislation IMO. It wouldn't take many cases to be properly litigated before publishers would understand this is a law that is to be obeyed like any other.

I honestly don't trust governments/bureaucrats to be able to come up with a solution for this issue. This is one of those problems that evolves very quickly, and the solution probably needs to be done by a private company or by each person individually.

They just have to create judicial precedent a few times and the system can easily hand out an impressive amount of warnings and fines.

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#80

Post by jtnjns »

Silhouette wrote: post #51
PietdeVries wrote: post #28

How cycnical - an article further down (Two young scientists built a $250M business using yeast to clean up wastewater) links to Forbes.com that indeed allows me to set my tracking preferences.However, anything other than 'accept' will result in a message stating 'we are processing the request this may take up to a few minutes'. So they can set hundreds (yeah - that is right, I have seen pages tell me they wanted 500…

This is like the companies that mysteriously lack the ability to unsubscribe you from their mailing lists in less than 30 days, even though plenty of us manage to run systems that normally do it in real time.

There is an interesting Twitter thread about how this process worked in a UK bank, although their turnaround was about 4 days

https://mobile.twitter.com/Joe8Bit/status/115631296526570701...

Post reply on HN