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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

#271

Post by aleph_minus_one »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #236
cafed00d wrote: post #183

> 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…

The law punishes companies, not private citizens. If lawyers are overreacting or companies cannot discern between essential tracking and non-essential then perhaps they are the incompetent ones.

> If lawyers are overreacting or companies cannot discern between essential tracking and non-essential then perhaps they are the incompetent ones.

If the EU is incapable of creating a law where it is unclear even to quite some lawyers where the boundary between allowed and forbidden is, the EU politicians are the incompetent ones.

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

#272

Post by bspammer »

iEchoic wrote: post #136
crabmusket wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopping carts and notification preferences don't require a consent banner.

Our lawyers told us otherwise. Regardless of the answer here, the fact that there's still a debate about what basic functionality requires a cookie banner is really a testament to how bad this legislation is. How long has this been around, 20 years? And there's still widespread debate and lack of understanding as to what specific functionality requires a cookie banner?

> Our lawyers told us otherwise.

Probably because they're not particularly technical people, and also because of the asymmetric incentives for them personally.

Tell someone to put a cookie banner up when they didn't need to: no consequences.

Tell someone not to put up a cookie banner up when they did need to: potentially big consequences for them and their career.

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

#273

Post by hallway_monitor »

FredPret wrote: post #252
polygamous_bat wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not sure why it makes sense to complain about the EU and not the companies. Unfortunately a non-negligible number of people in tech also have libertarian leanings, with a default “gubmint bad!” position, which makes them easy prey for adtech propaganda.

How arrogant to assume your position should be the default one, and people who don’t agree with you are - of course - easy prey for propaganda.

Seems to be a common tactic from a certain faction currently in power in the United States.

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

#274

Post by yau8edq12i »

denton-scratch wrote: post #253
pokot0 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just been in Europe last week (I live in US): you have no idea what a nightmare internet is in Europe. You are only seeing a side effect here.

> what a nightmare internet is in Europe I live in Europe; I don't experience this "nightmare". Would you care to expand?

As someone who's lived in both the US and Europe during the past few years... GP is full of shit.

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

#275

Post by mlrtime »

nojvek wrote: post #258

US does a really shitty job at regulating tech companies - esp privacy and abuse of data. Perhaps because the big tech has captured the regulators with a lobby revolving door. Look at how big a tantrum Apple is throwing regarding 3rd party app stores. I’m glad EU is doing what it’s doing. And the various data locality laws. Data is precious. I wish US would impose stronger fines when data is misused or hacked into du…

And yet there isn't a lot of actual difference between Americans and EU citizens.

Sure lots of EU laws, practically speaking no difference at all.

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

#276

Post by gizmo »

PennRobotics wrote: post #242
gizmo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have /any/ examples of websites that don't have a bunch of 3rd party cookies that still have a cookie banner? Middle managers absolutely love anything with charts and graphs because it makes their decisions feel more scientific. That's why they want tracking software included on their websites. And if the law requires disclosure then a cookie popup is the solution.

It only took two minutes to find at https://www.schwarzkuenstler.com/ and I'm sure I can find a dozen more in half an hour. Germany is a bit litigious w.r.t. internet or privacy, so the combination---cookie consent---is a doozy. Nearly every German website that does anything will have a consent notification, and the slightest misstep (e.g. using Google Fonts without asking permission) can be punishable.

Their privacy policy states they use Google reCAPTCHA, which requires disclosure.

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

#277

Post by ragnese »

CipherThrowaway wrote: post #188
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.

It's so depressing. Many of the people who are pointing the finger at the regulators for the annoying cookie banners don't actually see the web site/app *as* a bad actor. The fact that they had been tracking tons of extra data via cookies without their consent or knowledge was totally fine to them as long as it wasn't inconveniencing them in any way. The cookie banner is an inconvenience to their mindless consumption, so NOW it's a problem and they just don't care what the solution actually is as long as the thing goes away.

I've seen this attitude from tech people, too, so it's not just a matter of tech ignorance or illiteracy.

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

#278

Post by K0nserv »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #269
K0nserv wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even worse, this thread is full of armchair lawyers that will confidently tell you there's no need for cookie banners in particular cases. Nevermind that there's hardly any case law about this and each country seems to interpret it differently. Any actual lawyer would tell you to slap it on there to stay protected. I bet the number of cases of illegal implementations due to insufficient consent are vastly smaller t…

> Any actual lawyer would tell you to slap it on there to stay protected. Presumably, lawyers err on the side of caution? That doesn't mean they're right.

I'd think so too, but the number of implementations that use dark patterns that make it more difficult to reject consent than accept it seems to indicate they aren't erring on the side of caution.

I'm not talking just de-emphasising the reject option here, but cases where there is no reject option or it's buried beneath 2-3 more clicks.

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

#279

Post by 627467 »

hey: I want to be tracked and I'm extremely annoyed that the law forces me to consent on every f- site I go to. Seems fairly clear that I consent when my browser makes a request to someone elses server and I have js enabled.

If you don't want to be tracked: disable js, disable cookies, don't go to website you know will track you.

As a user: the way you can check whether you have a tracker is as trivial as interacting with a cookie banner. Plus the cookie banners are all different but the UI to check cookies on your browser is standard and the same. if the EU wants to do something: force browser vendors to educate users on how to use their software

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

#280

Post by bazoom42 »

Aeolun wrote: post #254
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…

I don’t think this is strictly accurate. There’s nothing about cookies themselves that makes them a problem. It’s the way they are used. Needing to inform people you are using cookies for sessions is like needing to inform people you are using a fork to eat. The problem is that some people are using the fork to stab people, so now we require everyone to say how they’re going to use it in advance. Instead of just proh…

You don’t need to inform people you are using cookies.

It is not about cookies.

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