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Why our website looks like an operating system

posthog.com

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Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#151

Post by auggierose »

ttiurani wrote: post #64
Retr0id wrote: post #33

> Legally-required cookie banner > PostHog.com doesn't use third-party cookies, only a single in-house cookie You're legally required to let me opt out of that cookie. Unless it's essential to the site functionality, in which case you don't need the banner at all.

Exactly. If they indeed only use the cookie for essential functionality, this kind of joke banner only makes their choice to respect visitors' privacy equally annoying. Even worse: because it makes it seem like the EU law is just meritless pestering of people, they are actually fighting for the right for worse sites to spy on their visitors. It's baffling.

If the EU was a serious entity, they would just forbid cookies that are non-essential. Simple as that. Either you take your responsibility as a law maker serious, or you refrain from making laws entirely.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#152

Post by beeflet »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #133
beeflet wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fix here would be to legally force them to comply with Do Not Track instead of forcing them to post compliant banners

They are not forced to use banners, they are forced to get explicit opt-in permission before tracking users, which can be done in non-obtrusive ways.

Okay, so regard the Do_Not_Track header as explicit opt-out permission

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#153

Post by valleyer »

Klonoar wrote: post #87
copypaper wrote: post #37

I'm curious how well this will do. Marketing websites are extremely important for first impressions (unless you're Berkshire Hathaway [1]). Although this is impressive and unique, it took me a minute to get over the "learning curve". Reminds me of Jakob's Law, "Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know" [2]. But…

I wonder how much, if anything, Geico pays to advertise on that page.

Zero, as Geico is owned by Berkshire.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#154

Post by swiftcoder »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #113
digitalPhonix wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has done literally nothing to improve anything whatsoever, in any country That’s because of malicious compliance from all the websites/advertisers. I guess that is partly the lawmakers’ fault for not pre-empting that; but much larger blame lies on the industry that refuses to grant user privacy. As an example for a site that followed the intent of the law instead: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/u…

in what way is it malicious compliance? the law just requires you ask for consent. that’s exactly what companies do. some companies violate the law by asking for consent in a way that is misleading or incorporates dark patterns. but if the law says “you must ask for consent before you do X” and companies ask for consent before they do X, that is just compliance, not malicious compliance. As an example of true malicio…

The malicious compliance is more that they all refused to add the one-click opt-out until a high-profile enforcement against Google brought them to heel.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#155

Post by omnimus »

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #111
digitalPhonix wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has done literally nothing to improve anything whatsoever, in any country That’s because of malicious compliance from all the websites/advertisers. I guess that is partly the lawmakers’ fault for not pre-empting that; but much larger blame lies on the industry that refuses to grant user privacy. As an example for a site that followed the intent of the law instead: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/u…

Blaming the industry for it doesn't change the reality that the law has done very little to improve the thing it was aimed at and made the internet worse for users (and developers) with all the banners. By any objective measure its outcomes are terrible - lawmakers should do better than just throwing out things like that.

Very little? The norm used be to slap google analytics on everything. Suddenly everybody thinks about compliance — especially those who didn't even have idea there was something wrong.

Many sites ditched tracking altogether so they don't have to have banners. Everybody is aware of GDPR so you can be pretty confident that when european site has no banner it doesn't track you.

Could the law be better? Sure I would love to ban tracking altogether. But this was lobbied to hell by AD companies. Everybody was kicking and screaming because they want all the data. And we still got something that helps. That is a win.

And you can see how industry hates it in way they implement the banners. It is annoying and confusing on purpose. You could comply in nice way but when you need to share the data with your 141 ad partners and each one gets their own checkbox… good luck.

Same reason nobody was respecting the dont track me flag. The industry is absolutely and exclusively to blame here.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#156

Post by swiftcoder »

gf000 wrote: post #110
xp84 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'selling of data' is separate of course, but the banners do nothing to actually ensure that they aren't collecting data you don't know about. They're honor system, which is dumb when you could have browsers not send that data back without opt-in. In other words, of course Facebook knows you like bacon if you've followed 5 bacon fan pages and joined a bacon lovers group, and they could sell that fact. But without…

> They're honor system, which is dumb when you could have browsers not send that data back without opt-in. Given that there is no objective way to differentiate between functional and tracking cookies, your "technical" solution would also boil down to honoring marking certain cookies as such by the website owner, effectively being the same as what we have today. (Though I do agree that the UX would be nicer this way)

Well, I mean, we could go the route Safari has, and just blanket-disable 3rd party cookies by default. It's... quite effective (if a tad annoying for folks implementing single-sign-on)

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#157

Post by digitalPhonix »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #113
digitalPhonix wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has done literally nothing to improve anything whatsoever, in any country That’s because of malicious compliance from all the websites/advertisers. I guess that is partly the lawmakers’ fault for not pre-empting that; but much larger blame lies on the industry that refuses to grant user privacy. As an example for a site that followed the intent of the law instead: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/u…

in what way is it malicious compliance? the law just requires you ask for consent. that’s exactly what companies do. some companies violate the law by asking for consent in a way that is misleading or incorporates dark patterns. but if the law says “you must ask for consent before you do X” and companies ask for consent before they do X, that is just compliance, not malicious compliance. As an example of true malicio…

Have you seen the 300 individual checkboxes you need to disable? Or the hoops that the advertising industry went through to claim that “Do-Not-Track” didn’t count for:

> In the context of the use of information society services, and notwithstanding Directive 2002/58/EC, the data subject may exercise his or her right to object by automated means using technical specifications.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:02...

Article 4, Section 21.5

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#158

Post by knuckleheads »

hliyan wrote: post #149

Why this feels so incredibly appealing compared to prevailing designs is probably something for a psychologist / cognitive scientist / neurologist (?) to answer -- there is certainly something here that warrants better study than what we in the software industry do in rushed blog posts. But I can personally speak to at least one aspect, having worked for a company that does high end web sites and strategy for large S…

If I recall right, they have most everything in the same CMS, in particular their discussion/help forum is integrated into their main site. To me, that's what the difference is, having done similar work in the past. They have a unified and singular control over the content on their front page. It's not a dozen groups obviously jockeying for control of who gets to be higher on the page or featured more prominently, or just a portal for taking you to subdomains of each department. I don't think you can build a website like this if you don't have that CMS behind it unifying everything together, and I don't you can have a CMS like that unless you insist on it very deliberately organizationally, as the tendency in every org is towards sprawling feudal estates ruled by vp's.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#159

Post by 9rx »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #114
benjiweber wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track ? Which failed in part because Microsoft turned it on by default which even further disincentivised publishers from respecting it.

No your browser can just… choose not to send cookies. The website publisher has no say in that.

Cookies are the easiest way to keep track of a user, but if browsers regularly stop sending cookies then website operators will just find another method to fingerprint users and then we're back to square one with the law still requiring publishers to receive opt-in approval, but with no requirements on how.

Re: Why our website looks like an operating system

#160

Post by digitalPhonix »

CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #111
digitalPhonix wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has done literally nothing to improve anything whatsoever, in any country That’s because of malicious compliance from all the websites/advertisers. I guess that is partly the lawmakers’ fault for not pre-empting that; but much larger blame lies on the industry that refuses to grant user privacy. As an example for a site that followed the intent of the law instead: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/u…

Blaming the industry for it doesn't change the reality that the law has done very little to improve the thing it was aimed at and made the internet worse for users (and developers) with all the banners. By any objective measure its outcomes are terrible - lawmakers should do better than just throwing out things like that.

> By any objective measure

Number of sites using google analytics on my browsing session with my consent has gone down

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