Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

amazingcto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 662 posts

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

#111

Post by plextoria »

arbuge wrote: post #89

"Companies could easily avoid any cookie banner. Just don’t track." It seems like a point dear to the author's heart, given the way he highlights this and puts it in bold at the top of the article. But while it sounds good on the surface, it doesn't take much digging to show it's silly. If you store any kind of data about a visitor to make their life more convenient, is that tracking? Shopping carts? Notification pre…

> But while it sounds good on the surface, it doesn't take much digging to show it's silly. If you store any kind of data about a visitor to make their life more convenient, is that tracking? Shopping carts? Notification preferences? etc.

A tracking warning a login/sign up would be enough. No need to ask for cookie consent at every visit. It would just be part of the typical T&C.

> It's actually a bit ironic to ask visitors if it's ok to track them. If they say no, you have to track them to at least remember that choice. Easily solved with a cookie that says "don't track". If cookie is set, don't track anything.

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

#112

Post by gwd »

JimDabell wrote: post #43

Yes there is. More specifically, it’s the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002/58/EC, which each member state adjusts their own laws to follow. It’s published here: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... The relevant part: > Article 5 > Confidentiality of the communications > 3. Member States shall ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information…

> This shall not prevent any technical storage or access ...or as strictly necessary in order for the provider of an information society service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user to provide the service.

If the functionality explicitly requested by the user -- e.g., logging in, or changing the default language or currency, or what-not -- no consent is necessary to keep cookies. Cookies are only necessary for things the user didn't implicitly ask for, like tracking.

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

#114

Post by hgomersall »

rkangel wrote: post #69
tlb wrote: post #21

Part of what it means to be "good at regulation" is to anticipate the likely consequences of regulations. So a regulation that says that "businesses must now give away their products for free, unless they honk each customer's nose" will result in a lot of sore noses. Which is basically the case here. Almost all websites make money through ads, or at least keep logs of user activity to help them optimize their website…

Your point is well made, and this is an unfortunate consequence of the regulation (and I enjoyed the analogy). But it isn't necessary to have cookie banners on every website. Github is a moderately complex, user-optimised website, right? https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/

I clicked on that link and immediately got a cookie banner. Am I missing something?

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

#115

Post by Diggsey »

gostsamo wrote: post #9
ianlevesque wrote: post #2

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

No, people cannot escape responsibility by saying "the law made me be belligerent toward my users". It is intentional choice to use cookies and to make it unpleasant for people.

> No, people cannot escape responsibility by saying "the law made me be belligerent toward my users".

Correction: people should not be able to escape responsibility by saying this.

The problem is that right now people do escape responsibility for saying this because the EU is not properly enforcing these new laws.

Introducing a law and then not enforcing it has consequences, and those consequences should have been foreseen. Either the law is unenforceable due to practical constraints, in which case it's a bad law, or the EU is failing to enforce it due to inability.

Hopefully the EU starts putting more focus on enforcing its existing laws rather than creating new ones.

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

#116

Post by leononame »

poszlem wrote: post #68
leononame wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it show that? Most people I know are annoyed by this and click on "reject" (if they can find it), but for a lot of non-technical people these banners are just a given because they don't even understand the problem. Doesn't mean they don't care

How many "normies" do you know that stopped visiting websites that track them? I don't know anybody who isn't in my tech bubble who cares, and very few normies who would rather pay money than to give access to their data.

None. That doesn't mean they don't care. As I said, most people I know are annoyed by this but take these banners and tracking as a given because they don't understand enough about technology and see them everywhere. And let's be honest here, if you were to stop visiting sites that track you, you could just stop using more or less the whole internet. It's not about stopping to use these sites, it's about stopping those sites from tracking you, which almost everyone I talk to is ok with. The only people I see that defend the amount of tracking happening on the web are commenters online (here, on reddit, etc.). That leads me to believe it's mostly corporate accounts.

To the point: Not using a site is not the point of it. Insert "yet you participate in society" meme

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

#117

Post by cbeach »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #51

Hate this way of thinking where the government (with seemingly good intentions) tries to stop something but leaves a loophole where all our lives are made more tedious and then people defend it saying the companies should just not do it, well we needed the law in the first place so it's a bit silly thinking to suggest they stop doing it after the law, no?. If the cookie law was written properly then it would have jus…

Exactly this.

The law could have been written in such a way that we could use a browser setting and avoid incessent popups which irritate users and desensitise them to genuinely useful warnings.

Whatever the good intentions of EU lawmakers, they seem inept at technical legislation because they ALLOW companies to continue doing shady things, and rather than tackle it, the legislators create a law that merely annoys users.

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

#118

Post by master-lincoln »

poszlem wrote: post #27

Putting up a wall in the middle of a busy street and then getting upset when people find ways around it doesn't make sense. The solution is either to remove the wall or ensure it cannot be bypassed. Right now, it's just irritating for the average person and slightly inconveniencing those who actually break the rules. This is the same situation with the cookie banner regulations. If the goal is to eliminate tracking,…

I think the goal was to give citizens the possibility to make informed decisions about where their personal data is being used.

If you don't care about tracking, ok. But some do. The EU tried to cater to both audiences which I think is fair. Turns out most people that did not care about tracking would also not consent when they are asked about it specifically and there are no immediately perceived downsides visible.

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

#119

Post by catapart »

miracle2k wrote: post #81
nolok wrote: post #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 m…

> 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. The reality is that I (a…

This is addressed in the article. They could track you, with your consent, in many different ways. The fact that they are choosing to force this cost upon you is what is ridiculous.

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

#120

Post by elygre »

iainmerrick wrote: post #99
squigz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this is around the 5th time this sentiment has been expressed in this thread, I have to ask... are cookie banners really so frustrating? Oh no, gotta click one, maybe 2, more buttons...

If you want to click “no” it’s often dozens of clicks (e.g. to explicitly disable each “trusted partner” with “legitimate interest”) alongside constant attempts to trick you into clicking “yes” accidentally.

This is actually in violation of the rules. Withholding consent is supposed to be as easy as giving consent.
Post reply on HN