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Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

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Re: Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

#61

Post by nickpp »

gspr wrote: post #58
nickpp wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percent of the population do you think has as the first priority when visiting a website the detail that they are tracked or not? What percent do you think even cares ? And what is the law protecting them against?! I still have to discover the horrifying malice tracking does to visitors. So far I know two downsides: resource usage and ads following you. Now compare that with the gigantic waste of time when hunti…

> What percent of the population do you think has as the first priority when visiting a website the detail that they are tracked or not? Why does it have to be first priority in order to matter a lot? > What percent do you think even cares? I don't know, exactly. I seem to recall that several tens of percents of people are worried about technological tracking, so I'd hazard a guess of a few tens of percents. > I stil…

> Why does it have to be first priority in order to matter a lot?

That is it: it doesn't matter to the regular Joe. At all. Because it was made first priority by throwing it into his face as the first experience when visiting a new website by this insane regulation.

> several tens of percents of people are worried about technological tracking

Are they truly worried about it or they are just saying that? Because there were ways to avoid tracking even before GDPR but what percent of those people used them? And are they worried enough to pay some membership or simply stop visiting the offending website?!

> happily stream your bathroom to the public

Are you really equating cookie tracking with bathroom privacy?! That's quite a stretch. Even then, I am not sure if there are laws protecting my bathroom privacy, but if there were I am sure they don't require me so sign some sort of waiver every time I take a dump in my own damn house!

> It's protecting you from the trackers!

Well now I can sleep so much better. I was quite worried about those awful trackers and their... tracking habits. Good thing those Brussels bureaucrats, in their infinite wisdom, thought to protect me against such a horrifying danger, a danger I was completely helpless to protect myself from. What other things are endangering me right now and I have no idea? Somebody call the politicians for help!

Re: Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

#63

Post by Kim_Bruning »

nickpp wrote: post #48
mola wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Being tracked and analyzed in unknown ways without your concent seems very serious. The fact you got used to it doesn't make it less serious. Would you accept people following you around all day taking notes? I'd guess not, so what's the difference with web tracking? GDPR is good, the sites are doing their best to make the GDPR experience bad to encourage the existence of people with your opinion. It doesn't ha…

> Being tracked and analyzed in unknown ways without your consent seems very serious. Really?! What is the worst thing that can happen? What exactly is the danger here? > Would you accept people following you around all day taking notes? While I browse the web? Sure, why not. I would certainly worry if it was the government doing it, since the government usually has nefarious reasons, but a private party... go straig…

Presumably you live in a democratic nation with a strong constitution, respect for law and order, lack of discrimination, and where freedom of speech is a non-negotiable absolute.

Further, I assume your country has a strong army and/or is separated from any would-be invaders by tall mountains, deep oceans, or both.

In that case, probably the worst thing you need to worry about is some level of power imbalance when negotiating with large companies over insurance rates, real estate, or credit.

So, you know how some places have these oddly specific laws based on some of something that happened there? Well, a lot of places in the EU have had some Interesting experiences with people being tracked and analyzed in unknown ways. Hence the laws against it.

Re: Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

#64

Post by gspr »

nickpp wrote: post #61
gspr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What percent of the population do you think has as the first priority when visiting a website the detail that they are tracked or not? Why does it have to be first priority in order to matter a lot? > What percent do you think even cares? I don't know, exactly. I seem to recall that several tens of percents of people are worried about technological tracking, so I'd hazard a guess of a few tens of percents. > I stil…

> Why does it have to be first priority in order to matter a lot? That is it: it doesn't matter to the regular Joe. At all. Because it was made first priority by throwing it into his face as the first experience when visiting a new website by this insane regulation. > several tens of percents of people are worried about technological tracking Are they truly worried about it or they are just saying that? Because there…

> That is it: it doesn't matter to the regular Joe. At all.

That's what we're arguing about, isn't it?

> Because it was made first priority by throwing it into his face as the first experience when visiting a new website by this insane regulation.

I struggle to see how you go from what is the first thing you see, to what is the most important thing.

> Are you really equating cookie tracking with bathroom privacy?!

I am not. I am failing to understand why you think tracking is unproblematic. I'm probing to see at what point you do get concerned about invasion of privacy.

> Even then, I am not sure if there are laws protecting my bathroom privacy

Yeah? Try putting a camera in a bathroom that's not yours.

> but if there were I am sure they don't require me so sign some sort of waiver every time I take a dump in my own damn house!

Nor does a properly implemented, conformant GDPR dialog.

> Well now I can sleep so much better. I was quite worried about those awful trackers and their... tracking habits.

I do understand that you don't care that you're being tracked. That's fine. Carry on. I do not accept your premise that nobody cares. You are not the only person in society. If you are not in a wheelchair, I'm sure you don't personally need wheelchair ramps. Are you angry about those being mandated too?

> Good thing those Brussels bureaucrats,

I should have brought out my bingo board. I already have two items. What's the problem with bureaucrats? What's the problem with their location? Have you been swallowing too much UKIP rhetoric?

Re: Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

#65

Post by nickpp »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #63
nickpp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being tracked and analyzed in unknown ways without your consent seems very serious. Really?! What is the worst thing that can happen? What exactly is the danger here? > Would you accept people following you around all day taking notes? While I browse the web? Sure, why not. I would certainly worry if it was the government doing it, since the government usually has nefarious reasons, but a private party... go straig…

Presumably you live in a democratic nation with a strong constitution, respect for law and order, lack of discrimination, and where freedom of speech is a non-negotiable absolute. Further, I assume your country has a strong army and/or is separated from any would-be invaders by tall mountains, deep oceans, or both. In that case, probably the worst thing you need to worry about is some level of power imbalance when ne…

I live in the EU, but not in one of the countries from your first two paragraphs.

So, I really wonder about those "interesting experiences" with people tracked and analyzed and how being tracked gives me a power imbalance with large companies?!

All I got from being tracked so far was repetitive ads for the same stuff I just purchased on Amazon. Dumb.

Re: Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

#66

Post by tzs »

elric wrote: post #60
ivoras wrote: post #15

I was and still am totally amazed that people still think it's a good idea to require each individual site owner to comply with that kind of policy instead of letting the browser vendors do the hard work. Which is easier - to modify and monitor billions of different sites, or to create a framework and obligations on the side of browsers to handle it? Something like requiring all browsers to start with cookies disable…

Why would it be a good idea to place the burden on the browser? That's like shooting the messenger. All of these websites whose life seems to depend on being personal-data-thieves should simply go the way of the dinosaur. If you can't make enough money to keep your site afloat without violating people's rights, then your website shouldn't exist. What I'd prefer, and where browsers could actually play an integral part…

> What I'd prefer, and where browsers could actually play an integral part, is an easier system for online (micro)payments. Want to read this article? Pay €0.05 please. No registration required. Want a monthly subscription? That'll be €5/month, please create an account.

Micropayments are much harder than most people realize. It's not at all hard to design a system that can handle the actual payment part of micropayments. It's the legal environment around micropayments that is hard.

A big problem is taxes. If I'm in jurisdiction X and your site is in jurisdiction Y and I pay you for access to an article, X may consider that a sale in X and want you to pay VAT or sales tax.

Even if you don't meet the minimum volume requirement that a X has before taxes kick in, many jurisdictions still require you to register with them and file quarterly reports if you have any sales there. (And minimums are often of the form at least $S in sales or T transactions. In many US states T is 100 or 200, so you could end up owing tax on a few dollars total of microtransactions).

Re: Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

#68

Post by Kim_Bruning »

nickpp wrote: post #65
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably you live in a democratic nation with a strong constitution, respect for law and order, lack of discrimination, and where freedom of speech is a non-negotiable absolute. Further, I assume your country has a strong army and/or is separated from any would-be invaders by tall mountains, deep oceans, or both. In that case, probably the worst thing you need to worry about is some level of power imbalance when ne…

I live in the EU, but not in one of the countries from your first two paragraphs. So, I really wonder about those "interesting experiences" with people tracked and analyzed and how being tracked gives me a power imbalance with large companies?! All I got from being tracked so far was repetitive ads for the same stuff I just purchased on Amazon. Dumb.

In eastern Europe, the original people doing the tracking and analyzing were your favorite local secret police of course. (take your pick, and I'm sure we can google some examples). I'm pretty sure they'd be quite jealous of some of the modern advertising companies.

That said, even if you're in a west European country with a long and proud democratic tradition (like -say- the Netherlands); you can find examples of people accidentally revealing information about themselves in a census (to wit: religious affiliation) thinking What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Well, the neighbors invaded, demanded the census data, and then hauled off everyone with the Wrong Affiliation to be worked to death and/or gassed. Again, you can imagine it would have been much easier for them if they could have just raided Facebook's offices; but fortunately Facebook didn't yet exist back then.

But even if you have a stalwart democracy surrounded on all sides by the sea, you can still get in trouble if discrimination is rife. See for instance the case of Alan Turing, a man who helped Great Britain shorten WWII by at least a year, and saved many lives. However, people found out his sexual orientation, and he ended up being driven to suicide. One could eg. imagine using Mr. Turing's social graph (derived from advertising/tracking/location/phone metadata) to track down further people to arrest. It should also be somewhat easy to guess someone's orientation based on what sites they visit, for instance.

Re: Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

#69

Post by nickpp »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #68
nickpp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the EU, but not in one of the countries from your first two paragraphs. So, I really wonder about those "interesting experiences" with people tracked and analyzed and how being tracked gives me a power imbalance with large companies?! All I got from being tracked so far was repetitive ads for the same stuff I just purchased on Amazon. Dumb.

In eastern Europe, the original people doing the tracking and analyzing were your favorite local secret police of course. (take your pick, and I'm sure we can google some examples). I'm pretty sure they'd be quite jealous of some of the modern advertising companies. That said, even if you're in a west European country with a long and proud democratic tradition (like -say- the Netherlands); you can find examples of pe…

I did say a couple posts above that if the government is doing the tracking - then yeah, I would be worried.

But if I had something (just or unjust) to hide, I would certainly not rely on a government regulation to protect me. I would simply not trust it and I would use my own methods of protection.

Finally, you presented me with a few valid historical cases which I am not sure are even close: none of them involved a private company tracking people and ending up in tragedy.

I would've waited until I had at least such a case before banning the practice altogether. And I would've also considered the cost of my boneheaded regulation: the cost to implement it (billions) and the cost to abide to it when encountering every f-ing day on each new website: thousands of man-lives wasted.

Re: Europe’s cookie consent reckoning is coming

#70

Post by Izkata »

elric wrote: post #60
ivoras wrote: post #15

I was and still am totally amazed that people still think it's a good idea to require each individual site owner to comply with that kind of policy instead of letting the browser vendors do the hard work. Which is easier - to modify and monitor billions of different sites, or to create a framework and obligations on the side of browsers to handle it? Something like requiring all browsers to start with cookies disable…

Why would it be a good idea to place the burden on the browser? That's like shooting the messenger. All of these websites whose life seems to depend on being personal-data-thieves should simply go the way of the dinosaur. If you can't make enough money to keep your site afloat without violating people's rights, then your website shouldn't exist. What I'd prefer, and where browsers could actually play an integral part…

> What I'd prefer, and where browsers could actually play an integral part, is an easier system for online (micro)payments. Want to read this article? Pay €0.05 please. No registration required. Want a monthly subscription? That'll be €5/month, please create an account.

HTTP 402 Payment Required

It goes back to at least 1999 [0], but as far as I'm aware was never implemented (has been "reserved for future use" until the past few years, where Mozilla now lists it as "experimental technology" [1]).

Edit to really fast downvote: I'm not saying this works, but that 1) there is a longstanding mechanism a new feature could be built on, and 2) it's apparently not been worthwhile for over two decades - but it seems it is being looked at now.

[0] https://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616.html / https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2616

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status/402

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