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Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

markosaric.com

191–200 of 457 posts

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#192
post #12

Wait. You tracked users after they opted out of tracking? How else did you get this data?

GDPR doesn't actually require consent to process personal data. It requires that the processing be lawful. Consent is one basis for lawfulness, but it is not the only one. There are 5 others.

One of these is that the processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest.

You could probably make a colorable argument that research for publication into the effectiveness of GDPR implementation approaches is in the public interest.

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#194

I signed up for a new account on a fitness website yesterday. They track health and food and diet you enter. anyway, during the sign up they had a opt out, I chose to do just that, however the opt out process then took over the screen with a modal window, which gave a loading bar and took about thirty seconds to complete... But guess what... There was a big CANCEL button. I couldn't perform any action during sign up…

There's a Germany-based competitor to myfitnesspal called Yazio that has a good privacy policy. Don't know if their database of nutritional information is as good in your location though.

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#195
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally see as usual business of the internet. Every country has their rights to regulate internal markets and every company need to decide how many markets to cover. Personally I like GDPR more than no-GDPR and think that it would be nice if the US had a GDPR compatible regulation (as in the EU and the US diplomatically agree that it is enough for US company to respect the US regulation and for European compani…

But it's not just local US news sites. Plenty of other businesses won't do business with Europeans as a result. Even video games shut down over this (Ragnarok online, I believe). But the real question is the signal GDPR sends - how many online businesses will simply not get created (especially in Europe) because of GDPR? The nebulousness of the situation is why I've decided to not create at least one website before.…

>> how many online businesses will simply not get created

How many online businesses [that aim to quietly collect PII for their own monetary gain] will simply not get created?

Hopefully none of those actors will get created.

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#196
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The future has to be one where dumber ads pay more because tracking isn’t technically possible and/or illegal." So you're inching closer to the reality. Read your statement again though: where is this 'magical ad tech' that enables newsies to make a decent dolllar? It's non existent. Ergo, they are out of business and you get severely limited content. So, either people can chose to share some basic information, pay,…

You mean we are going to see proportionally more content from people who actually know what they are writing about rather than professional clickbait writers? Doesn't seem so bleak to me.

'Unpaid home hobbyist writers' don't have more credibility than newsrooms, with budgets, copy editors, massive networks of sources, researchers, professional staff support - which costs money.

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why GDPR, although theoretically a good idea, is pretty much useless in practice. I'd like to see how many websites offer a reasonable consent widget that doesn't opt you in by default, keep nothing checking but a huge button to tick and accept, or the usual million-and-one checkboxes to untick, and many other cheap tricks that even the most vigilant of consumers will fall to at some point. I use everything…

More a problem of enforcement than the legislation IMO. It wouldn't take many cases to be properly litigated before publishers would understand this is a law that is to be obeyed like any other.

Those two are linked fundamentally - even medieval and ancient rulers hardly what we would call enlightened knew that making unenforcible laws only breed contempt.

When they can set up anywhere and access everywhere it is asking to be flouted. Geolocated financial intergration is about the only area they can start to touch with enforcement. Without that they have about as much sway as a backwater dictatorship writing hate mail threatening arrest to every first world newspaper which refers to him as a dictator. Right or wrong morally they just look stupid and delusional.

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#198

GDPR opt-in questions train people to accept forms without reading or thinking. I think this will be dangerous. And I'm really irritated that I can't access local news sites in America because they aren't compliant -- so they blanket ban European access. That's deeply problematic.

> And I'm really irritated that I can't access local news sites in America because they aren't compliant -- so they blanket ban European access. That's deeply problematic. The usual answer I get when I complain about this is either "It doesn't happen to me" or "They wanted to steal your data. You're better off without being able to use their site." I've yet to be convinced by either argument as a European. It's almos…

If a U.S. site blocks you from accessing it, it's the fault of the U.S. site, nobody else.

HackerNews is a U.S. site, and it works fine in Europe

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#199
Fundamentally, the browser is the user's agent. Storing cookies, running tracking scripts, etc. should be controlled by the browser. Some browsers may take a strict "block everything" approach, some may be relaxed, and some may harass the user with prompts. Users are free to choose the appropriate browser.

Depending on websites to limit tracking by on their own is very difficult, since it is inherently against many websites' business model. They will keep trying to bypass the rules.

Re: Only 9% of visitors give GDPR consent to be tracked

#200
I enjoy the GDPR if only because it forces websites, even big ones like Google or Reddit, to show me that they value tracking me over everything else, even if it means ruining the user experience and using every dark pattern in the book.

Those websites that are usually all about streamlining and reducing friction to a maximum suddenly don't hesitate to trick me into a maze of slow-loading menus with weird conventions and a purposefully broken and confusing UI in an obvious attempt to trick me into opting in by mistake, even though the mere fact that I clicked the "more options" button means that I'm almost certainly looking to opt out.

These are tactics that I expect to encounter on shady websites, not some of the biggest websites in the world.

Advertising is a cancer that offers next to no added value in our hyper-connected society. Tricking people into seeing ads to trick them into buying stuff they don't need has become the foundation of the web economy. An utter travesty that puts our industry to shame.

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