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Dear Paul Graham, there is no cookie banner law

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

#181

Post by sham1 »

ianlevesque wrote: post #2

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

The thing is, the consequences seem to be very much intended. The consequences of forcing companies to be transparent about tracking, and hopefully letting the users start voting with their wallets as they get annoyed by the omnipresent "We Value Your Privacy"-popups (which is very ironic considering all the dark patterns et al that are used to have users get tracked).

If nothing else, at least now people know just how much they've been tracked. One can only hope that this increased consciousness would help people to choose services that don't track people. For example Hacker News doesn't need tracking cookies nor a cookie popup, and it seems to be doing just fine, even in terms of the law ;)

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

#182

Post by madsbuch »

cbeach wrote: post #117
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 us…

it would be horrible regulation if you tell how to comply instead of telling what to comply with.

as written elsewhere (since you obviously didn't read anything) your proposed solution would be just fine. But people opted out of impmenting it that way since it would yield less profit.

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

#183

Post by cafed00d »

> Companies could easily avoid any cookie banner. Just don’t track.

Well, then, the EU should've just made _this_ the law.

And we'd have called it the "Just don't track" law.

Rant & Details:

> There is no law for cookie banners.

> What the EU is saying, you need my consent when you want to track me, profile me and sell my behavior off to ad companies.

> or “Look, Why take a chance?” (Remo Gaggi),

This kinda proves PG's point.

Rant: I find it incredible that folks defend the EU by saying things like "There is no law for cookie banners". No, there is a law. The law is reason people think "Look, Why take a chance?" and build crap like cookie banners in. The law is not a bunch of words on paper. It's the institution that incentivizes or punishes people for their actions; thereby influencing people's behavior.

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

#184

Post by krab »

adulion wrote: post #61

can you build a website nowadays with analytics without using cookies? or violating GDPR?

In my understanding, the most important part is to not share user information with third parties. IIUC, Google can use Google analytics data to join your behavior from multiple sites and then use that to serve targeted ads.

The next level is to not store PII unless there's a specific reason in the user's interest (improving site quality doesn't count, logging in does). Therefore, you can see how many people visited a page, aggregates of device types etc. Just not anything that identifies an individual.

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

#185

Post by demurgos »

piva00 wrote: post #121
poszlem wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100% what PG means IMO and the most sane take on this. Either write the law correctly so it's not easily bypassed or just don't touch anything because you will only make it worse.

The law is not bypassed, the annoying banners with no simple option to reject are illegal . The issue is that enforcement is slow, not that the law is badly written. GDPR's Article 7 [0] is very clear: > 3. The data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time. The withdrawal of consent shall not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Prior to giving con…

Thank you for mentioning point 7.3 this as it's a very important, but gets often ignored. I hope that it gets strictly enforced. _It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent._

Regarding the link you posted, they have a banner at the bottom saying:

> We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. [Ok] [No] [Privacy Policy]

My understanding was that such an implicit consent ("we will assume that you are happy with it") is not legal so I find it a bit surprising to see it used on a website dedicated to the GDPR.

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

#186

Post by suslik »

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…

Well, different people want different things - I'd rather spend a millisecond to click 'refuse' rather than let them track me - out of spite if nothing else. Yes, cookie banners are annoying; the dark patterns within cookie banners (you need multiple clicks to get to the 'refuse' button while the 'accept' button is right there in your face) are even more so. But honestly - screw them.

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

#187

Post by MobileVet »

> Or you are worn down and no longer care after twenty banners and say yes

This is probably the worst omission from the EU law, no limit to the number of times you can be asked.

I told you my answer last time I visited… but you didn’t like it so you ask again, and again, and again. Every time I visit you ask me.

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

#188

Post by CipherThrowaway »

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…

Agree. How much corporate propaganda are people consuming that legislators are seen as wholly responsible for the bad behavior and malicious compliance actions of corporations?

What does it say about the relationship between businesses and consumers that the first response to this bad behavior is to shout "look what you made them do!"

Seemingly it is everyone's fault except the bad actors themselves.

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

#189

Post by AlexandrB »

roenxi wrote: post #126
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…

Hidden fees are bad because of the specific combination - the hiding, and the fees. Since tracking isn't hidden and isn't a fee, the analogy doesn't help to justify the EUs law. People should have a default expectation that if they give their personal data to companies then it will be recorded. And if they don't want cookies then they should disable cookies. The EU's regulation hasn't revealed anything that is useful…

People don't "give" their information to trackers, it's collected without their knowledge. I don't think most people expect the kind of things trackers collect is being collected.

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

#190

Post by pif »

vbo wrote: post #148

With or without EU regulations, client software could decide to discard all cookies once the user has "left" the site. Or it could block cross domain cookies of its own volition. Yes, it doesn't fix the fundamental issue, but it does address it for those that want to fix it against the tide. Yes, it comes with drawbacks, but it is what it is so long as we don't collectively move towards paying for content, ideally in…

> Everyone's needs would be better served if we could pay for content the same way we did back in the day of printed newspapers.

This is one option. Another is that advertisement goes back to those days: you associate advertisement to a content and to a rough geographical location, and that's it. No personalised ads is still possible.

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