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Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

amazingcto.com

11–20 of 662 posts

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#11

The funny thing about legislation is that you're responsible for the unintended consequences of your laws too.

In this case, it is just showing that most companies are collecting more data than they need.

You don’t need a banner for the data that is necessary for the service to work at minimum level. There is no role for the consent since the site won’t work otherwise.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#12
post #4

Dumb take. “Just run your business with 10% of the revenue? What’s the problem?” Edit: to those downvoting, yea, it’s agreed that tracking is bad but the tone of the article completely ignores that a lot of the web’s content depends on this model so if it “just didn’t track” a large swath would no longer exist.

If a business cannot survive without it essentially stealing my property (read: my data), it should not survive.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#13
post #4

Dumb take. “Just run your business with 10% of the revenue? What’s the problem?” Edit: to those downvoting, yea, it’s agreed that tracking is bad but the tone of the article completely ignores that a lot of the web’s content depends on this model so if it “just didn’t track” a large swath would no longer exist.

Why does your business deserve to exist if you can't do so without stealing from your customers?

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#14
post #4

Dumb take. “Just run your business with 10% of the revenue? What’s the problem?” Edit: to those downvoting, yea, it’s agreed that tracking is bad but the tone of the article completely ignores that a lot of the web’s content depends on this model so if it “just didn’t track” a large swath would no longer exist.

totally agree. who cares that we are selling our users data to the highest bidder, gotta get that money right?

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#15
post #4

Dumb take. “Just run your business with 10% of the revenue? What’s the problem?” Edit: to those downvoting, yea, it’s agreed that tracking is bad but the tone of the article completely ignores that a lot of the web’s content depends on this model so if it “just didn’t track” a large swath would no longer exist.

The point of the legislations is to protect the citizens, not corporate income.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#16
One of the most egregious abusers of this recently got told off for it, I want to say it's IAB, but they're all as bad. Trust arc or whatever they're called deliberately made it as annoying and deceptive as possible. You can't blame the EU at all for a deliberate misinterpretation of the law.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#17
Imagine a market in which companies charge a lot of hidden fees behind their customers' back, and users are not happy when they realize after the fact. The law is updated to say you are not allowed to charge the user a fee unless you tell him in advance.

Companies with tons of hidden fees decide to keep them but force you to read all the fees on every page of the menu before you can see the rest of the text, in the most annoying way possible, and promote the idea that the issue is not the extravagant fees, nor the fact that the companies hide them before and had to be forced by law to warn you about them, no the problem is a law that force them to tell you what you're getting into before it's too late !

That's, essentially, what's happening. And we have people complain that companies need to display their fees.

On this issue in the group that complain about the cookie law there are some people who are very wrong on purpose because it's in their interest, and some people who are very wrong because they genuinely don't understand the position they're defending, complaining about being made aware of the fee, instead of the fees themselves or the fact that the companies hide them if not forced by law.

To each their own belief about which category PG fits into.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#18
post #8
post #4

Dumb take. “Just run your business with 10% of the revenue? What’s the problem?” Edit: to those downvoting, yea, it’s agreed that tracking is bad but the tone of the article completely ignores that a lot of the web’s content depends on this model so if it “just didn’t track” a large swath would no longer exist.

If your business is "doing sketchy shit with people's data", and the regulatory hammer just came down on you... well, yeah.

Come on, this is such a ridiculous take. Adding google adsense to a website needs a cookie bar.

That’t not "doing sketchy shit with people's data"

I can’t believe how many people have bought into this EU regulation hook line and sinker. It’s ridiculous, imagine the man hours that have been wasted in the last 7 years just clicking cookie bars. And as OP says, it’s completely unrealistic to not have them.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#19
Note that this isn't a cookie law, it's also the EU's main anti-malware law. The principle is that no piece of third-party controlled software should write information to your computer/phone, or read info from it, over the Internet, without your prior informed consent (with narrow exceptions for storage/reads that are needed to provide a service you've asked for, or equally narrow functions like load balancing). This isn't just about browser cookies, but also your webcam, your mic, and the contents of your Documents folder.

The principle seems sound, but the EU is deadlocked over reforms to create some extra exemptions, e.g. for security scans/mandatory updates, or privacy-respecting audience metrics. EU regulators are already sort of turning a blind eye to those, so it's fair to say the EU isn't great at regulating - it's not fixing what society mostly seems to see as bugs/overreach in the original (now decades-old) law.

Re: Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

#20

The funny thing about legislation is that you're responsible for the unintended consequences of your laws too.

On the one hand when murders go up because you make using a gun in a crime an automatic 5 year prison term you should have foreseen that possible situation, on the other hand the real bad guy is the one shooting the witnesses.
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