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Europe's cookie nightmare is crumbling. EC wants preference at browser level

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Re: Europe's cookie nightmare is crumbling. EC wants preference at browser level

#11

Post by debugnik »

naIak wrote: post #8
avmich wrote: post #4

> This is not a real choice made by citizens This is something which courts should consider more about other things, such as EULA and Terms and Conditions. Same reasons.

The choice citizens would make every single time is to see the website without ads. Of course, publishers aren’t happy about that, since they would have to close shop. Maybe the EC should consider both sides of the equation.

Advertising has existed for centuries, I'm sure it can survive as an industry without requiring invasive tracking.

Re: Europe's cookie nightmare is crumbling. EC wants preference at browser level

#13

Post by mkmk3 »

naIak wrote: post #8
avmich wrote: post #4

> This is not a real choice made by citizens This is something which courts should consider more about other things, such as EULA and Terms and Conditions. Same reasons.

The choice citizens would make every single time is to see the website without ads. Of course, publishers aren’t happy about that, since they would have to close shop. Maybe the EC should consider both sides of the equation.

False dichotomy, just advertise based on the content of the site without spying on people

Re: Europe's cookie nightmare is crumbling. EC wants preference at browser level

#14

Post by hypeatei »

pjc50 wrote: post #3

This was the correct decision and could have been made a decade ago. An .. institutional deficiency was trying to make the GDPR as completely general as possible rather than doing a technology mandate. But this had two consequences: bad actors could circumvent it, and good actors just trying to comply ended up horribly confused (e.g. is logging an IP address in an Apache log "personal data"?). DNT header. Legally bin…

DNT is dead by the way, Global Privacy Control (GPC) is the new privacy signal mechanism. It has actual legal weight in some jurisdictions already like California and their CCPA law for example.

Re: Europe's cookie nightmare is crumbling. EC wants preference at browser level

#16

Post by elric »

Much like the current cookie banner shitshow, a "centrally configured" setting which "websites must respect" will accomplish nothing. There is no consent, informed or otherwise. Advertisers and their ilk are still hoovering up all the data they can, with or without cookies or consent.

Locking up a few people who don't respect their users' privacy would be a much more effective way of achieving actual results. AFAIK no big adtech or data brokers have been punished in any way.

Re: Europe's cookie nightmare is crumbling. EC wants preference at browser level

#19

Post by mimsee »

IMO there isn't a cookie nightmare but rather a tracking nightmare. I'm not fully up-to-date on if there is a separate EU directive on cookies on the internet specifically, but the GDPR is the _General_ Data Protection Regulation. Meaning that if I go and collect your info on pen and paper, I must then ask your permission on how I process and share that data, especially if sharing that data is not necessary to complete the main transaction but is somehow done auxiliary to the main purpose. (e.g. I buy a pillow online, my info is used to target ads for me.)

GDPR itself doesn't require consent for functional cookies. For example, Apple.com does not have a cookie consent box _at all_.

On tracking specifically, I feel there are at least two levels. One that happens in-browser by third party companies. These are your classic advertisements. The other is more first-party backend-heavy. These would be your local grocery store using your purchase history linked to your membership card and using that data to create analytics and targeted ads etc.

So creating a browser setting would likely not toggle all tracking away, just the ones that are "annoying" while browsing.

Re: Europe's cookie nightmare is crumbling. EC wants preference at browser level

#20

Post by troupo »

"Europe's cookie nightmare" has nothing to do with Europe and everything to do with companies assuming that they have god-given right to all your data in perpetuity.

Things like "precise location information stored for 12 years": https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1817122117093056541

Europe literally said: we're not going to force specific tech decisions on you. All we ask is to let people opt-in if they want to be tracked. What we got is "we care about your privacy, we're sending all your data to 15000 partners" from the industry.

To people crying "but this should've been mandated as a browser setting": Which world's largest advertising company has dominating browser marketshare and subsumes all web standards committees? What exactly prevented that company to come up with a browser setting that isn't "we sell your data by default and use dark patterns to trick you to agree" https://x.com/dmitriid/status/1664682689591377923?

Our industry is shit, and we blame governments for regulations that ... assume that industries shouldn't be shit. There's literally no need for EU to regulate browser settings. And yet here we are.

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