The other approach to killing the cookie banner is simply to declare that such a thing cannot constitute “informed consent”. (Perhaps: “ticking a checkbox and/or clicking a button cannot constitute informed consent”; and see what they try next.) From a factual perspective, I honestly think that shouldn’t be controversial: it’s well-understood that very few people actually read those things, they just want to get them…
> it’s well-understood that very few people actually read those things, they just want to get them out of the way. This is a jaw-drop moment for me every single time I observe someone else using the web and quickly clicking "accept" on every single cookie banners that pops up, without ever wasting a second even reading what they're accepting. It's mind boggling to me. Sure, I'm in IT, so surely I'm more aware of data…
Kill The Cookie Banner
351–360 of 621 posts
Re: Kill The Cookie Banner
#352I always wondered though why a website in the eu, for the love of their users, won't just drop cookie usage and instrusive third party scripts. Just do analytics on the backend and don't set any cookie, except for tokens in authenticated areas
[flagged]
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
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Re: Kill The Cookie Banner
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To me, having a browser setting for cookies is the only sane way to handle this, it's surprising that this was not considered from the beginning. There is one. It's a DNT header. Knucklehead websites ignore it.
Including the one we're posting on
Re: Kill The Cookie Banner
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen people argue, with a straight face, that they prefer to get ads that are "relevant to them". Including here on Hacker News.
I don't trust anyone who is against "relevant ads," because I always think what they want isn't "irrelevant ads," they want "no ads." But no ads isn't an option.
Why? Plenty of websites operate just fine with no or near-zero ads. Just look at the one you are currently on!
And what's with confusing "relevant ads" with "privacy-invading targeted ads"? There's still plenty of ads in print media, on television, and on billboards: none of them are invading my privacy, yet they still manage to be relevant by choosing a medium with a certain target demographic. Websites used to do the same, there's no technical reason we can't return to this.
Re: Kill The Cookie Banner
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cookie control always should have been a browser control. The legal route always should have been to force it to be built into browsers that provide sane defaults, and make it illegal to circumvent what the browser declares as far as fingerprinting etc. any sort of elevation prompt, IF I allow them to be popups or an icon in a toolbar, should always be in the same place and not cover the page.
If people really cared, they’d choose browsers that have better control, but that’s obviously not a priority for them. Why do you think this sort of thing should be regulated to suit your preferences when most people don’t seem to agree with you?
What browsers would those be?
Re: Kill The Cookie Banner
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've seen people argue, with a straight face, that they prefer to get ads that are "relevant to them". Including here on Hacker News.
I don't trust anyone who is against "relevant ads," because I always think what they want isn't "irrelevant ads," they want "no ads." But no ads isn't an option.
I do not want the gas station, or the airplane I'm on, spying on me to build relevant advertising. That is the end game of "relevant ads": my gas pump already serves me ads, the airplane I'm on serves me ads, my own car now (via a software update that occurred after purchase) serves me ads. Monitors now serve ads. TVs are abusing people's Internet connections, which isn't ads, but it's basically the same problem: if I can abuse the customer without consequence, why shouldn't I?
Just no. The problem is, I as a consumer cannot vote with my wallet: companies can and will go "I could take your money, and earn $X, or I could do that and ads and earn $X + $Y."; there is not reason for them to choose the former, and most markets are so concentrated (e.g., airlines) that there is not ample competition for the market to provide ample "vote with wallet" choices. Further, in the car example, it's just bait and switch: even when I think I can vote with my wallet, the company can just alter the terms of the deal, knowing full well the switching price of a car makes me subservient to them.
Re: Kill The Cookie Banner
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
Session cookies do not require a banner.
Aggregated analytics do, and you can't run a serious website without some kind of analytics. Preference-storing does as well, despite any reasonable user expecting that, if they set a preference, it will be saved.
Good.
> and you can't run a serious website without some kind of analytics.
I don't believe you.
> Preference-storing does as well, despite any reasonable user expecting that, if they set a preference, it will be saved.
IANAL, but I'm given to understand that this is untrue.
Re: Kill The Cookie Banner
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but it might also be "you can have this content for free". ads don't require invasve and pervasive tracking
Effective ads absolutely require knowing more about the user than the context on the page it's a 1-2 orders of magnitude revenue difference for the publisher per-impression.
Advertisers are willing to pay more for privacy-invading ads because they believe they are more effective. If privacy-invading ads were illegal they'd just go back to context-dependent ads like they have been using for the thousands of years before the internet was invented, and after an adjustment period the revenue will just bounce back to where it was before.
Most advertisers know this already. If privacy-invading ads were so effective, why are all the major brands now using influencers to market their products? Why go through the effort of finding a specific Instagram channel which might be a good fit and convincing the operator to enter a brand deal, when you could also just directly pay Instagram for a highly-targeted ad one swipe away?
Re: Kill The Cookie Banner
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We did all the tracking on the backend Just checking, you do know that still counts as tracking and may fall under GDPR rules? GDPR was never just about cookies.
I do but we shouldn’t be talking about cookies in our cookie banner then.
It was never about the cookies themselves. That just happened to be the most common form of tracking in use when the GDPR was originally written. Cookie-less tracking still requires a consent prompt, tracking-less cookies never required one.
Re: Kill The Cookie Banner
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
How did you arrive at that conclusion? Laws are the result of debate between sides and the prevailing opinion. The fact that laws aren’t identical in every jurisdiction worldwide reflects that there isn’t universal agreement on every question. Also, sarcasm isn’t welcome here. Please read the HN guidelines.
Your condescension is also obviously unhelpful here. Do better.
HN is supposed to have higher than typical standards for participation than most internet fora and is largely self policing. It’s not condescending to tell people when they are misbehaving. Nor is it condescending to explain to people the law and how things work, provided you’re not insulting them in the process. Which I’m not doing.
I find much more concerning people’s certainty of their mistaken understandings and beliefs, combined with the most ludicrous possible interpretation of other’s positions.