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Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

legiscope.com

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Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#121

Post by doublerabbit »

IshKebab wrote: post #89
ryandrake wrote: post #55

People blame the cookie banners themselves or the legislation that "made them necessary" but somehow never seem to blame the web companies for doing the naughty things on their websites that make them subject to the law. The "cookie banner problem" exists because it's primarily end users that are shouldering the burden of them, and not the companies. For the company, it's a one time JIRA ticket for a junior software…

Well yeah because the "naughty things" are totally allowed. Can you blame them for trying to make money legally, and most people would say fairly morally (most people in the real world; not on HN). I think 90% of the blame lies with the EU. They had experience from the cookie law that this would happen. It like... say you would rather people didn't drink alcohol in pubs (because of all the scary violence it leads to)…

D: Drink in pubs till 10pm including no alcohol purchases after 10.

That's the law here in Scotland. As annoying as it is, the same law doesn't apply in the rest of the UK but it's reasonable.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#122

Post by dmix »

ryandrake wrote: post #55

People blame the cookie banners themselves or the legislation that "made them necessary" but somehow never seem to blame the web companies for doing the naughty things on their websites that make them subject to the law. The "cookie banner problem" exists because it's primarily end users that are shouldering the burden of them, and not the companies. For the company, it's a one time JIRA ticket for a junior software…

The second cookies are blocked the industry moved to fingerprinting and other methods

It's like piracy, there's only so much you can do plugging holes

Cookie banners always felt like a feel-good solution. Made worse by inconsistent UIs, differing button texts, long explanations, etc.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#123

Post by BiteCode_dev »

legitster wrote: post #72
ryandrake wrote: post #55

People blame the cookie banners themselves or the legislation that "made them necessary" but somehow never seem to blame the web companies for doing the naughty things on their websites that make them subject to the law. The "cookie banner problem" exists because it's primarily end users that are shouldering the burden of them, and not the companies. For the company, it's a one time JIRA ticket for a junior software…

> never seem to blame the web companies for doing the naughty things on their websites Part of the problem is that the law didn't seek to distinguish between tame first-party cookies and the really naughty third-party cookies so the burden is equal regardless of how malicious the service is. > For the company, it's a one time JIRA ticket for a junior software engineer to code up a banner. This is actually not true. T…

It totally does make the distinction.

If you use cookies for auth, no need to disclail it.

Better, you don't need a banner even of you do track users for anybody with DNT. So you can offer a seamless experience.

They just don't care.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#124

Post by Alupis »

whstl wrote: post #49
Alupis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shame companies cannot live without tracking cookies Most cookies are entirely benign. Many cookies (or something like a cookie) are required for a website to operate normally. The EU law, while good intentioned, was/is too broad and failed to understand the realities of operating websites. This regulation has caused the entire world to be annoyed with useless cookie banners that 99% of people just reflexively clic…

> Many cookies (or something like a cookie) are required for a website to operate normally "Essential Cookies" do not need a consent banner. Case in point: Hacker News is 100% compliant AFAIK and has no banner. > Many websites have legitimate need to store PII. If there is actual legitimate interest or legal requirements, such as collecting an address for delivering a package or performing fraud-prevention, there is…

And if that data is "transferred" to a 3rd party for that analysis (aka. a REST call into their API) then you are back to requiring these annoying banners.

Or, more common for ecommerce, "transferred" into an advertising algorithm so the business can gain more similar customers. Oh the horror!

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#125

Post by jorvi »

legitster wrote: post #72
ryandrake wrote: post #55

People blame the cookie banners themselves or the legislation that "made them necessary" but somehow never seem to blame the web companies for doing the naughty things on their websites that make them subject to the law. The "cookie banner problem" exists because it's primarily end users that are shouldering the burden of them, and not the companies. For the company, it's a one time JIRA ticket for a junior software…

> never seem to blame the web companies for doing the naughty things on their websites Part of the problem is that the law didn't seek to distinguish between tame first-party cookies and the really naughty third-party cookies so the burden is equal regardless of how malicious the service is. > For the company, it's a one time JIRA ticket for a junior software engineer to code up a banner. This is actually not true. T…

> and there's now an industry dominated by a small handful of players (Osano vs OneTrust)

Because of that there are now neat categories of cookies / cookie purposes.

Would be nice if we could select one time in our browser “necessary cookies only”, and that would be communicated to every website visited, without the need for a banner. But that’s user friendly and that’s anathema to the modern web :)

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#126

Post by ben_w »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #54
ben_w wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has Facebook ever not been hidden behind a login? Because even if that doesn't count as "intelligent & creative publishers", it certainly set a much harder trend to get around than the banners.

> Has Facebook ever not been hidden behind a login? Yes. Not sure when they added the loginwall, but it was relatively recently, compared to my birth.

Hm. Could've sworn it had one back in 2009…

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#127

Post by azinman2 »

diggan wrote: post #92
ffsm8 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did though? You don't need a banner for actually legitimate use (session Cookie, settings, etc) The things they're calling legitimate use just isn't, which is why they need banners.

I keep seeing this misinformation going around, and it has been going around since almost day 1 of when the directive became known. I'm not sure where it's coming from, or who initially thought it worked like that, but judging by the comments in this submission it seems like a ton of people are very misinformed about how these things actually work.

So how to these things actually work?

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#128

Post by ryandrake »

Alupis wrote: post #105
ryandrake wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Website operators have a right to study how people use their website just the same as a brick-and-mortar operator has the right to study how customers navigate their store isles. I think reasonable people can disagree about this, and if enough reasonable people think that a web site operator should not have that "right" then they should be able to pass legislation to curtail it. As a user, I say I should have the r…

Why is this different than a brick-and-mortar to you? Do people feel they are "private" when shopping in a retail store with AI cameras tracking patterns and behavior, names and purchases collected at checkout, loyalty "discount" cards to get even more data, etc? Even without your name, they can identify you by recognition alone, aka. an anonymized cookie used to track a specific user's behavior. Somehow people think…

For the record, I don't think brick and mortar stores should have an automatic right to surveil and study the personal information of in-person customers without their consent but I agree that ship has largely sailed.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#129

Post by JumpCrisscross »

diggan wrote: post #115
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying you don’t need to worry about GDPR if you don’t keep PII is the “nothing to hide” argument. There is still a cost to demonstrating compliance that goes beyond complying.

Maybe an analogy will make it click: If you have marijuana on you in a country where marijuana is illegal, then finding marijuana on you is illegal. If you don't have marijuana on you, you're not doing anything illegal. Replace marijuana with "personal data" and imagine it is about websites with visitors within EU. If they're not storing, processing and/or transmitting personal data, there is no compliance requiremen…

> If you have marijuana on you in a country where marijuana is illegal, then finding marijuana on you is illegal. If you don't have marijuana on you, you're not doing anything illegal

This is a good analogy. By making the marijuana illegal, you also implicitly widen search powers. You can’t arrest someone you think smells like weed if weed is legal. (Or answer a neighbor’s complaint that they suspect they’re growing weed.)

Same idea. If you say you aren’t storing personal data and I say you are, someone’s got the authority to check. Those checks and confirmations cost time and money. With a complain-investigate set-up like GDPR (and American securities law), the burden is on the respondent.

Re: Analysis of economic and productivity losses caused by cookie banners in Europe

#130

Post by diggan »

lysace wrote: post #24
Seanambers wrote: post #12

This is the EU in a nutshell. You also have quite a few people defending this. GDPR is basically exactly what Bill Gurley talks about here ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9cO3-MLHOM Regulatory capture.

Also quite a few people (mostly from the north) fighting this idiocy. In general: Southern+Central EU wants to build a new USA. Northern states meanwhile want to reduce the power of the EU. A common market is really the only thing we want. UK had enough and quit.

> In general: Southern+Central EU wants to build a new USA. Northern states meanwhile want to reduce the power of the EU. A common market is really the only thing we want.

As someone from the north (specifically Sweden) who now lives in the south (specifically Spain), I'm not sure there is majority in either places, either directions, to state this with confidence. Lots of swedes are happy with EU and wants to make it stronger, and lots of Spaniards who had enough of EU and wants it weaker.

Maybe it looks differently in the center/eastern parts, haven't spent much time there admittedly.

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