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Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

markosaric.com

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

#141

Post by levosmetalo »

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…

> 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 cookies.

I don't wonder about their numbers, it's obvious their numbers are good for them. What I wonder is how are they getting away with something that is clearly illegal.

As already explained, in properly implemented GDPR survey, it should be equally easy to accept, decline or ignore tracking, with the default being decline if user doesn't give explicit consent.

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

#142

Post by jnxx »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #116
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…

The latest trend in dark UI GDPR patterns is presenting an endless list of things that will track you. It starts with "allow necessary cookies" enabled, and the rest disabled, and presents 3 buttons, a 2 small gray ones and a big green one, and unless you're REALLY careful, you'll end up accepting all cookies. The text is something along the lines of "Cancel", "Save Changes", and finally the big green one is "Accept…

The problem is that companies which do that kind of dark patterns are very likely to ignore your settings anyway in the future. Like, for example, Amazon.

What then comes to my mind is the thought: "Well, would I try to do an ongoing delicate business with a well-known notorious asshole and trickster?". Obvious answer is "no".

So, in most cases, I just leave that site.

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

#143

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Retric wrote: post #128
ben_w wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Airlines and airline manufacturers also have vast financial incentives to risk crashes by taking minor shortcuts. That doesn’t exist for your drivers test.

That's not in the airline's interest because then the plane crashes and they lose a hundred million dollar plane and get sued and go bankrupt.

It could be in an individual manager's interest because then they get a bonus and are working for some other company by the time the plane crashes, but the airline itself has the aforementioned incentive to put processes into place all on their own to prevent that from happening.

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

#144

Post by afiori »

Mirioron wrote: post #125
afiori wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally see as usual business of the internet. Every country has their rights to regulate internal markets and every company need to decide how many markets to cover. Personally I like GDPR more than no-GDPR and think that it would be nice if the US had a GDPR compatible regulation (as in the EU and the US diplomatically agree that it is enough for US company to respect the US regulation and for European compani…

But it's not just local US news sites. Plenty of other businesses won't do business with Europeans as a result. Even video games shut down over this (Ragnarok online, I believe). But the real question is the signal GDPR sends - how many online businesses will simply not get created (especially in Europe) because of GDPR? The nebulousness of the situation is why I've decided to not create at least one website before.…

> A Chinese service could steal all of your data, sell it, and nothing would happen because they're outside the jurisdiction of the EU.

But now it is illegal, the thing that might happen is that the EU bans Chinese apps like India did.

> Plenty of other businesses won't do business with Europeans as a result.

I believe you, this is something to consider when making stricter regulations. The same happens with food imports regulations and many other fields.

Some of the business that will not be created are business that should have been created, many other will be legitimate business that will simply consider the risk of the nebulousness of enforcement too high.

One example early on was that it is now unclear whether industrial sensors are by accident in violation of GDPR because the resolution needed for industrial application is enough to distinguish different humans.

My uninformed opinion is that these are solvable problems and personally I blame decades of recklessness in this field that made this necessary.

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

#145

Post by bad_user »

gear54rus wrote: post #115
shmageggy wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verizon/Yahoo/Techcrunch is such a blatant offender, and especially noticable because they get posted here often. Their modal is a giant obfuscation dark-pattern, and far as I can tell, there is no way to opt out.

I'd like to remind you and everyone else about Firefox reader mode. Solves like 99% of this user-enslaving shit.

Screw that, I just close the page. If a publication disrespects their readers like that, then the content is trash anyway.

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

#146

Post by Retric »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #143
Retric wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines and airline manufacturers also have vast financial incentives to risk crashes by taking minor shortcuts. That doesn’t exist for your drivers test.

That's not in the airline's interest because then the plane crashes and they lose a hundred million dollar plane and get sued and go bankrupt. It could be in an individual manager's interest because then they get a bonus and are working for some other company by the time the plane crashes, but the airline itself has the aforementioned incentive to put processes into place all on their own to prevent that from happeni…

Losing a brand new hundred million dollar aircraft is a huge hit. Losing a 50 year old aircraft is a different story, especially when the options are to retire it or keep flying. Further risking a crash when your airline is facing bankruptcy suddenly looks like a reasonable trade off.

It’s not like a major airline is going to intentionally crash an airplane, but if they can trade 1 billion dollars for an extra crash every 20 years that’s a net financial benefit.

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

#147

Post by alkonaut »

jariel wrote: post #139
bambax wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone consent to be tracked if given a real choice? What are the benefits? The 9% look like an error.

"What are the benefits? " ? That the site exists in the first place ? Why is it so hard for people to do business math and these conversations on HN never have anything to do with material reality of the parties involved? It's understandable that we all want something for free - that's easy - but it's not understandable that we can't grasp how revenue is used to pay journalists etc.. We know they're all on the edge o…

Needing ad revenue and needing to track visitors are different things.

Structurally obviously we are now in a situation where “well targeted ads” can generate some revenue, and “well behaved ads” barely can. The future has to be one where dumber ads pay more because tracking isn’t technically possible and/or illegal.

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

#148

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dageshi wrote: post #135
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go the other way with it -- the problem is we don't have a low overhead system for anonymous micropayments, so ads are the only competitive way to offer a service with a very low cost (and thus price) per use. If there was an easy way to anonymously pay the site the five cents they get from the advertiser without incurring 500% payment processing overhead then would sites even be using advertising? But then w…

It's too late. You can't start to charge for things you used to give away for free. Plus with the internet, there's always an alternative, you just haven't found it yet. So the moment you run into a paywall you will turn around and start searching for the same thing you were just looking for but for free.

> It's too late.

What do you say we try it and find out?

> So the moment you run into a paywall you will turn around and start searching for the same thing you were just looking for but for free.

Because the existing paywalls are some nonsense where you have to give them your home address and sign up to pay a recurring monthly fee which you know is going to be a bear to cancel and costs dollars rather than cents, whereas what it ought to be is a browser plugin that just pays them automatically when you visit the site as long as the amount is below your threshold (with a circuit breaker that requires you to manually approve if you get charged more than like $5 over the course of an hour).

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

#149

Post by a_imho »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #9

I am not convinced that GDPR will ever really be enforced. Severe breaches have mostly been ignored so far and the minor dark patterns that dominate GDPR compliance popups and wrong defaults are going to be the tail end of compliance enforcement. Just like cookie laws before it GDPR will probably just make websites annoying with obnoxious implementations and remain largely unenforced until the EU does something else…

It won't be enforced as long as the incentives with the power to enforce are not aligned with the users. Probably never.
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