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TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

reuters.com

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Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#91

Post by slavak »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #7

I have always promised myself that if I become a billionare, I will simply stop providing services to municipalities or countries that create arbitrary laws that make it hard or difficult to do business in. Honestly Google should have just boycotted Europe for a week and seen how well everyone handles not having gmail, google, or anything. California is particularly onerous about all sorts of stuff like labelling eve…

I really wish people like you who _are_ billionaires would stop making threats and just do it already. Taking your ball and going home because you can't play nice doesn't work in grade school, and won't work in adult life; but maybe there would be a lot less background noise from all the rich people shaking their fists and threatening to do things we know damn well they never will.

Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#92

Post by j1elo »

Say there is this new law that forbids to smoke inside public places (read: restaurants, bars, pubs). For the sake of the metaphor, say these places received some benefit from tobacco companies from having people smoke, so naturally they react to this law by remembering in the most annoying ways how you cannot smoke inside because of those pesky lawmakers (and not because people really voted in favor of less smoking in public places). For example, by creating smoke-friendly spaces where allowed, leaving less and more cluttered space for the smoke-free tables; and giving priority to the orders that come from smoker areas.

This is the cookie modal. It's the pages that show obtuse cookie modals the ones choosing to follow an aggressive anti-user approach. The fact that seemingly ALL of them are aggressive or use obscure techniques only shows how ingrained this smoking problem was all around.

EDIT -- the thing about this comparison is that those things happened when they implemented the anti-smoking laws in my country. You would see smoke-preferential areas, or in most places which didn't make the cut to have one, customers were all angry because they weren't able to smoke a cigarette after their lunch. But give it time, and years later most if not all restaurants and customers have accepted the new situation, offering an overall better experience for everybody involved. And I think that's what will eventually happen with the cookie law now that the GDPR has made more obvious and annoying the whole process.

Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#93

Post by AntiImperialist »

djohnston wrote: post #9

As I click my 10,000th cookie modal to read this article, I am forced to ask if this legislation has made my web experience better in any way, to which the answer is a resounding no. I understand the importance of it, but please prioritise revising its shortcomings rather than doubling down on being the most tech-hostile region in the developed world.

https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#94

Post by bzb6 »

DangerousPie wrote: post #12
calvinmorrison wrote: post #7

I have always promised myself that if I become a billionare, I will simply stop providing services to municipalities or countries that create arbitrary laws that make it hard or difficult to do business in. Honestly Google should have just boycotted Europe for a week and seen how well everyone handles not having gmail, google, or anything. California is particularly onerous about all sorts of stuff like labelling eve…

> Honestly Google should have just boycotted Europe for a week and seen how well everyone handles not having gmail, google, or anything. I think the EU would have loved that. There are perfectly viable alternatives to pretty much everything that Google offers, some of which created in Europe. They just never gain any traction because it's convenient to just use Google for everything. I still use Gmail and Google Cale…

It seems you don’t see the value in having one integrated provider for everything. Other people clearly do.

Also if there were GOOD European alternatives to those google service people would use them, but there simply aren’t. Low salaries and terrible regulations are to blame.

Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#95

Post by Xylakant »

weinzierl wrote: post #58
tjoff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As clear as can be yes. Now you know which websites are willing to absolutely ruin your experience just to abuse you. The implications can be seen pretty much everywhere in society, it is a momentous step in the right direction.

Many sites ruin your experience because they don't know any better. GDPR is perceived as a Sword of Damocles by many smaller and medium sized companies and they will annoy you with elaborate consent solution for which they are paying a ton of money even if they most probably wouldn't need to do it. For the big players it is easy. They often don't annoy you with consent banners because: - they have legal departments t…

> they have legal departments that understand GDPR and protect them (e.g. GitHub)

Funny coincidence that you picked GitHub since pretty much to the day two month ago that they removed all non-essential cookies https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/

No cookie banner is required for session cookies etc.

Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#96

Post by [deleted] »

avianlyric wrote: post #65
bzb6 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now you know which websites are willing to absolutely ruin your experience just to abuse you. Which is absolutely all of them. I guess the legislators wanted the popups to be annoying so publishers would be forced not to import their party scripts. Turns out publishers can’t stay open without the ads that pay their bills which means popups are the new normal, to the point where when I see a website that doesn’t hav…

> I guess the legislators wanted the popups to be annoying so publishers would be forced not to import their party scripts. Nope, GDPR is pretty clear on this point. All they want is informed consent. GDPR doesn’t care how you get it.

[deleted]

Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#97

Post by newswasboring »

stingraycharles wrote: post #85
tjoff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As clear as can be yes. Now you know which websites are willing to absolutely ruin your experience just to abuse you. The implications can be seen pretty much everywhere in society, it is a momentous step in the right direction.

But the worst offenders just have a simple “we use cookies” banner; the ones that give you the most choice are often more intrusive.

The best are ones which just give reject all cookies option (of course they still use strictly functional cookies). And I always thought that is how it should be, both extremes should be equally easy to choose.

Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#98

Post by forgotmypw17 »

I recently spoke with an older brother of a young man, about 13, who is heavily addicted to TikTok. His brother told me that he has been skipping school to stay on his phone, and that when his phone is taken away, he flies into a screaming rage, and runs down the street barefoot.

Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#99

Post by SiempreViernes »

bzb6 wrote: post #94
DangerousPie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly Google should have just boycotted Europe for a week and seen how well everyone handles not having gmail, google, or anything. I think the EU would have loved that. There are perfectly viable alternatives to pretty much everything that Google offers, some of which created in Europe. They just never gain any traction because it's convenient to just use Google for everything. I still use Gmail and Google Cale…

It seems you don’t see the value in having one integrated provider for everything. Other people clearly do. Also if there were GOOD European alternatives to those google service people would use them, but there simply aren’t. Low salaries and terrible regulations are to blame.

I'm not sure many people go upload on youtube because they already had a gmail, and a small enterprise loosing all their documents because they got their home made ads copystriked by drive by DMCA trolls also doesn't sound like a great integration feature...

Honestly, what, beyond the account infrastructure, is integrated in googles consumer products?

Re: TikTok hit with consumer law breaches complaints across Europe

#100

Post by newswasboring »

leesalminen wrote: post #79
hrktb wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they don't know any better There is a ton of literature about how it should be done, there has been enough press for anyone to be aware that it's a serious subject that needs to be studied, and small companies will often consult with external legal advisors because they can't afford to get on the wrong side of the law on this aspect. I've participated to a ton of these discussions in small and big entities, basical…

> because they can't afford to get on the wrong side of the law on this aspect. Conversely, some can't afford to get on the right side of the law on this aspect. In our case, we had ~15 customers in the EU (out of ~2000), totaling $2,000/mo MRR. After talking with our legal counsel, we decided to exit the EU market entirely. Our business model was a simple niche B2B SaaS. We never sold, shared, or traded any data of…

Is there no open source effort to make this easy? Or is it one of those instances where people want to do it but don't want to take the legal stands (which is completely understandable).

Edit: Also if you are not selling/using this data, why can't you remove everything but session cookies? Please note I'm not a web developer so the answer can just be because it's too much work.

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