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Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

noyb.eu

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Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#71
post #26

Cookie banner has ruined the whole web. - Does not protect people (99% are just fake. If you reject cookies you keep get them) - Cost money to company (so cost to customers). A simpler browser extension where you manage your preference once far all (default) with the possibility to personilize x site (think like you do for camera permission) would have solved the problem in a real way and without all the hussle.

Cookie banners just make visible how hard you and your private data have been fucked all over the internet in all the years. It creates visibility where there was none.

Indeed, kind of like the graphic disease labels on cigarette packs. It doesn't directly stop people smoking, but it does raise awareness of what can happen.

Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#72
post #56

This article is excessively negative on the effectiveness of the law. I would say the biggest issue is inconsistent enforcement by DPAs. The other problems are overstated. Believe me, as someone who sees things from the inside of european companies, compliance is still taken very seriously.

I hear you. These so-called "privacy activists" seem to have no clue how much European corporations are spending on data management, privacy controls, legal due diligence and finally serving the customers' GDPR requests. The last one is the publicly visible part, but it really is just the tip of an iceberg in investment on compliance.

This is made even more frustrating by that at least I find GDPR to be not very precise. There are lots of corner cases where it's not clear if some data is covered or not. The strictest interpretations would easily obsolete / criminalize vast majority of ALL software that people today absolutely depend on for their daily lives - like various financial backbone systems - and which largely predate the GDPR.

It's hard to not find the regulation a joke - sadly. While GDPR is not precise, I won't even go into the details about the ridiculous cookie law and the braindead portions of the new 2019 digital copyright directive (that French publishers lobbied in to hurt Google News). If GDPR left you in doubt, that idiocy really showed that these EU bureaucrats are completely out of touch with the reality in the field of technology they want to control.

Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#73
Cookie banner alone has probably done more harm in terms of wasted human life than anything else combined. 4.66 billion active internet users, 92% of which are web users, spending 5 secs per day on clicking all cookies allowed. That's 680 human years wasted per DAY on these banners.

Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#74
post #28
post #26

Cookie banner has ruined the whole web. - Does not protect people (99% are just fake. If you reject cookies you keep get them) - Cost money to company (so cost to customers). A simpler browser extension where you manage your preference once far all (default) with the possibility to personilize x site (think like you do for camera permission) would have solved the problem in a real way and without all the hussle.

That's something the article should have mentioned: 4 years on, and people still think GDPR is about cookies – and even responsible for the intrusive consent pop-ups! It is a testament to the power of the adtech giants and all the other shitty shady businesses, how they managed to twist the narrative. And that's on HN, a presumably tech savvy audience. What chance does the "normal" population stand?

Lots of people on HN work for advertising companies such as Google, Facebook etc, tech savvy or not has little to do with it.

Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#75
post #37
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory yes, but so far they haven't brought the hammer onto anyone of formidable size.

Amazon Europe Core S.à.r.l. Industry and Commerce LUXEMBOURG 746,000,000 euro Non-compliance with general data processing principles 16 Jul 2021 WhatsApp Ireland Ltd. Media, Telecoms and Broadcasting IRELAND 225,000,000 euro Insufficient fulfilment of information obligations 02 Sep 2021 https://www.enforcementtracker.com/?insights

Are those fines given or fines collected? I remember reading that fines collected are really tiny portion of those given.

Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#76
post #60

There are signs that it's getting better. I started seeing cookie dialogs with a Reject all button. Sometimes it's a big one, sometimes it's almost white on white, but it's there. Anyway the vast majority of those dialogs is still misleading. The usual We care about your privacy, accept all, settings thing.

Even YouTube now has a REJECT ALL button.

Which is quite nice for folks like me, who always clear browsing data upon exit.

Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#77
post #66

In the context of the GDPR, I just want to remind people of this thread where a HN user invokes their rights in order to make Spotify back down on a change that would have locked user playlists into their service for no good reason - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24764371 (can't be 100% sure this is what made Spotify change direction, but it seems likely)

That was a great thread, thanks for surfacing it. My gut reaction was that there was no way the thread could be involved in changing spotify's mind. Color me convinced

Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of GDPR is to help abusers legitimise the data they collect. Before GDPR it was a grey area, because users didn't explicitly consent to anything - GDPR fixes that. Ubiquitous pop ups where you agree for your data to be collected and processed, trained users to consent to anything that comes their way and corporations now have legal basis to use, process and sell that data. It was quite clever - make peopl…

> trained users to consent to anything that comes their way and corporations now have legal basis to use, process and sell that data. Sorta? I don't consent to much when I get the pop-up. You can revoke consent at any time as well and you're entitled to the data the company has on you.

Average person don't understand what they click on and they just want the pop up the get out of their way.

You have a bias for being a tech person who understand this, but vast majority of people have no idea what it is about and they just consent because they don't care or know the impact of their decision.

Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#79

Background info: Noyb is the GDPR fan club (run by Max Schrems), trying to get governments to do their jobs to get proper enforcement. And you can join them! https://support.noyb.eu/join

Any opinions on how they are working as an organisation? Good, bad, indifferent?

Re: Statement on 4 Years of GDPR

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there really no way to monitise an audience with ads without collecting their personal info? That seems more of a problem than GDPR exposing that underlying issue. edit: seems like Google have a non-personalised ad option, but it still uses cookies: > A Non-Personalized Ads solution (Ad Manager Help Center, AdSense Help Center) allows you to present EEA and UK users with a choice between personalized ads and non-p…

> Is there really no way to monetise an audience with ads without collecting their personal info? There sure is: Contextual ads. DuckDuckGo does it, various documentation sites do it ( https://www.ethicalads.io/ ), a dutch broadcaster does it ( https://archive.ph/Zk4Pv ). It's how newspapers used to work and TV channels still do, as well as YouTube sponsorships (and probably many more). It improves the UX over person…

Contextual ads have their own set of problems for advertisers though. Think of a blog post writing about someone's traumatic experiences with pregnancy and miscarriages and the algo decides to put an ad for newborn clothes next to it. Ouch...
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