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Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

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41–50 of 234 posts

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#41
post #6

GDPR consent buttons and statements are as worthless as the California Proposition 65 cancer warning that gets slapped on every consumer product. Any plugins to strip them out or automatically consent?

Yes: I don't care about cookies https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

An Android version would be great. The mobile web is becoming harder and harder to use.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#42
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I would be interested to know from people outside the GDPR area - do you ever see cookie banners? Do you know what they are? Sometimes I hit a USA based news website which simply denies access, because I'm in the UK, on GDPR grounds. Which seems an overreaction.

EVERY WEBSITE I visit from my location in the USA seems to have these stupid cookie popups. We added one to OUR WEBSITE even though nothing is hosted in the EU - simple cargo-culting "everyone is doing it so we must do it also". I doubt it actually does a @#$@$ darn thing.

I don’t have a cookie banner on my website. You know why? Because I don’t track my users with (or without) cookies. Maybe you should stop doing it on your website, and then the cookie banner can be removed.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#43
post #19

I recently purchased something from the official UK Nintendo Store [1]. I did not opt-in, and was not asked to opt-in, to marketing emails. Several days after purchase I received a marketing email with an Unsubscribe link. I submitted a GDPR enquiry and after a few weeks I get: Having investigated this matter fully, we can see that you were opted in as a result of a small technical difficulty which we are now fixing.…

Having seen how other companies make the sausage, I can take a guess.

To Nintendo, marketing is not a "core" business function, so when the company was sorting out GDPR, no one invited them to the room and they didn't ask to be invited. When companies think about "what data do I have" they tend to get tunnel vision to their main business operations. I bet Nintendo has robust processes for their online gaming services. No one ever seems to think about the twenty dozen Google Analytics accounts they're all running, and a good fraction of them don't even think about their CRM systems.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#45

For me personally - all these popup banners and modal walls for websites about cookies and stuff just really make the internet a worse place. I suspect that empirically, they don't accomplish what the GDPR intended to - and they make the internet less enjoyable. Thanks GDPR.

I was just thinking about that the other day. The billions of extra clicks and taps and wasted seconds. And for what gain? I think that this can be discussed outside of the basic "should we regulate" or not. Specifically looking at these modals that have spread all over, what actual protection does the average user get from this modal?

The modals don't exist to protect the user. Their goal is merely to annoy users to the point they just give up and blindly click "Accept". They only exist for the benefit of companies, and most of them violate GDPR.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#46

Interesting that this site itself may use one of the described dark patterns. The banner on the main page has options "Got it" and "Learn more". There is no indication as to whether the "Got it" button is taken as consent for tracking, nor is there a "Reject all non-essential tracking" option on the main banner. Whether or not this site is compliant depends on whether the "Got it" button is taken as affirmative conse…

This is just a regular journal page. Not surprised they're tracking their users. A better place to link would probably have been the arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02479v1.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#47
post #19

I recently purchased something from the official UK Nintendo Store [1]. I did not opt-in, and was not asked to opt-in, to marketing emails. Several days after purchase I received a marketing email with an Unsubscribe link. I submitted a GDPR enquiry and after a few weeks I get: Having investigated this matter fully, we can see that you were opted in as a result of a small technical difficulty which we are now fixing.…

I complained about tv2.dk (I used to be a customer) sending me a e-mail after I deleted my user and told them not the send me e-mail. This was a really bad experience where their support attempted to make me login to the site which I refused to do since I removed my user previously.

Then I sent them a GDPR request to remove all my info and complained to the Danish Data Protection Agency.

I stopped receiving e-mail but got nowhere with my complaint. The agency wrote me that they didn't want to pursue this. Based on this .. I don't think that anyone is taking GDPR seriously and no one is trying to defend the small people (me!).

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#48
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I would be interested to know from people outside the GDPR area - do you ever see cookie banners? Do you know what they are? Sometimes I hit a USA based news website which simply denies access, because I'm in the UK, on GDPR grounds. Which seems an overreaction.

EVERY WEBSITE I visit from my location in the USA seems to have these stupid cookie popups. We added one to OUR WEBSITE even though nothing is hosted in the EU - simple cargo-culting "everyone is doing it so we must do it also". I doubt it actually does a @#$@$ darn thing.

> We added one to OUR WEBSITE even though nothing is hosted in the EU

Location of the host is irrelevant, it depends on the target audience. Serve pages to the EU? You get to follow it.

> simple cargo-culting "everyone is doing it so we must do it also".

If your site is cargo culting everything it probably also has a ton of third party trackers for the same reason.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#49
post #4

Who came up with the term dark patterns? It's psychological manipulation and fraud, pure and simple

Your comment lacks any explanation at all. Why is the term 'dark patterns' 'psychological manipulation and fraud'?

Every time I see the term 'dark pattern', it's always a case of one or the other, with the delineation into fraud varying depending on the relevant laws. In this case, they mention how websites skirt the minimum GDPR requirements and trick the users to do what they want, so it looks to be both.

The term is in the best case superfluous, in the worst case a harmful euphemism.

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