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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

#271

Post by BlackFly »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #39
diggan wrote: post #5

Correct URL: https://legiscope.com/blog/hidden-productivity-drain-cookie-... > This situation calls for an urgent revision of the ePrivacy Directive Shame companies cannot live without tracking cookies, and shame that the blame somehow end up on the regulation, rather than the companies who are the ones who introduce this cookie banner and "massive productivity loss". You know the best way of not having to put up coo…

> You know the best way of not having to care about GDPR? Don't store PII. I hear this a lot. As an American that hosts casual personal websites, I can't help but worry that I'm in violation of the GDPR. For example, my router logs connections for debugging. And my NGinx server maintains server logs for debugging. These contain IP addresses. I'm pretty sure those are considered PII under GDPR. And there are a lot of…

You are not EU based, you are not a processor/controller operating in the union, public international law doesn't grant EU law jurisdiction: the GDPR has no direct effect on you.

It could be that you are running ads and your ad provider is a processor in the EU and because they cannot handle jurisdictional consent well they attempt to pawn that off onto you in your terms and conditions. EU law has already decided that they cannot turn a blind eye however, if you aren't collecting consent then your processor has to assume that consent isn't given.

So yeah, worry about your contracts with third parties that might try to sneak in liability transfers and how your own jurisdiction would deal with that. If your provider is transferring that kind of liability maybe they are trying to also make you liable in the case that their ad installs a virus, so I hope you are already aware of such third party liability transfers in your contracts if your jurisdiction allows for such things.

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

#272

Post by randomdata »

ben_w wrote: post #266
randomdata wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNT does not provide informed consent. It may, if set to not track, imply denial, but the reverse is not true. If DNT is accepting or unset, the site needs to fall back to the banner to get consent. And at that point you may as well prompt everyone with the banner instead of complicating the codebase with extra logic for a DNT edge case.

Mm. For existing privacy options — location, microphone, camera — Safari on iOS has the options of "ask"/"deny"/"allow". I wouldn't be surprised by legislation for a Do Not Track option in DMA designed Gatekeepers' browsers, defaulting to "ask", where all three options must be handled accordingly by websites. "Ask" would also have to be the default behaviour when no preference is transmitted.

Again, as the law in question requires informed consent, "allow" and "ask" end up being the same thing. A new DNT law as you propose would contradict the other law of which we speak.

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

#273

Post by elric »

satokausi wrote: post #260

This calculation somehow assumes that clicking banners on your free time equals lost money in terms of production. If the average time for toilet visits per day is 12 minutes, we are losing 89.8 million hours a day collectively across Europe, and continuing the same logic in as in the article, with 25€/h this sums to 5% of EU GDP being spent down the drain. Maybe we should focus efforts on a productivity programme to…

That's very much apples and oranges. One is a biological necessity, while the other is a consequence of surveillance capitalism.

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

#274

Post by amadeuspagel »

sensanaty wrote: post #234
amadeuspagel wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you'll be glad to know that this law already hits companies where it hurts, because many people will close the tab after the slightest annoyance. I hope you're happy that this law already encourages people to stay within a few big websites (where they've already clicked away the cookie banner) and not explore anything new (where they'd have to click away a cookie banner every time).

Or, crazy idea, don't have invasive user-tracking cookies? Github doesn't even have a cookie banner and they're one of the largest websites on the planet. After seeing websites pull shit like "legitimate interest" where they share data with 9 trillion of their "partners", they can all rot for all I care.

Yeah, you're probably right. If Github, where most users are logged in, can do without a cookie banner, some random blog probably can do as well.

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

#275

Post by BlackFly »

Alupis wrote: post #58
diggan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most cookies are entirely benign. Many cookies (or something like a cookie) are required for a website to operate normally. The EU law was/is too broad - and has caused the entire world to be annoyed with useless cookie banners. Give reading the actual implementations a try. You'll quickly notice they actually thought of this. I wouldn't say it's "expertly crafted" by any means, but the banner is for a specific "cl…

You might try to argue many types of cookies are non-essential - but that would be because you lack experience in this domain. 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. The EU law compels a popup for these types of services/scripts and 99% of people just click through them because t…

> how customers navigate their store [a]isles.

Sure, physical stores can do that in certain way, certainly they cannot reverse pickpocket GPS trackers into our pockets or stalk us around the city. You can ask your customers how they found about your store but they can lie or simply not answer. Cameras in the store? Fine. Cameras in the store bathroom? Not ok.

It is a legitimate interest to understand where your customers are coming from and this can be done without cookies in an anonymous fashion. Similarly, you can understand what people purchase together in an anonymous fashion. Cookies and PII aren't needed for any of this.

Cookies and PII are only necessary when you are trying to surreptitiously correlate people's purchase pattern with something that you shouldn't legitimately know like their sexuality or any given aspect of their identity.

> Lastly - the EU and it's laws don't matter. What are they going to do about non-compliant foreign websites? Nothing.

Rightly so. But if your third party processor is operating in the EU they will hold them liable for processing the data on EU citizens you send them without consent. That is between the EU and your provider.

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

#276

Post by elric »

ayaros wrote: post #137

Why should websites even be trusted with implementing these banners in the first place? Browser vendors should be responsible for implementing these controls per-origin. Give a little banner pop-up built into Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and the rest. Have it display every time a new site sets a cookie for the first time. Or have it reject every cookie by default, unless I whitelist a site. This would result in a consist…

Couldn't agree more. A browser used to be known as a User Agent [1], but most browsers no longer act in the user's best interest, but rather pander to adtech enablers. It is a sad state of affairs.

[1] Shameless plug to my rant on the subject https://blog.melnib.one/2024/05/19/death-of-the-user-agent/

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

#277

Post by scotty79 »

uniqueuid wrote: post #226

I am kind of frustrated by the widespread misunderstandings in this thread. Laws are best when they are abstract, so that there is no need for frequent updates and they adapt to changing realities. The European "cookie law" does not mandate cookie banners, it mandates informed consent. Companies choose to implement that as a banner. There is no doubt that the goals set by the law are sensible. It is also not evident…

> Laws are best when they are abstract ...

Laws are only as good as their real world consequences.

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

#278

Post by self_awareness »

shiroiushi wrote: post #222
self_awareness wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You haven't been reading the news lately, have you? If you're referring to the US elections, then you might be interested in the fact that not everyone on HN is from US, and not everyone cares.

You think the wars in Ukraine or the middle east only affect Americans? You think the change of administration in the US isn't going to affect the global economy?

You Americans are the last people who will be affected by whatever will happen to Ukraine. Even if Putin will punch through the whole EU up to Spain, you are still safe behind the great ocean, don't worry. Well, maybe he'll take Alaska. ;P

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

#279

Post by scotty79 »

uniqueuid wrote: post #226

I am kind of frustrated by the widespread misunderstandings in this thread. Laws are best when they are abstract, so that there is no need for frequent updates and they adapt to changing realities. The European "cookie law" does not mandate cookie banners, it mandates informed consent. Companies choose to implement that as a banner. There is no doubt that the goals set by the law are sensible. It is also not evident…

> You cannot have an informed case-by-case decision without spending time.

Forcing me to make an informed decision where I don't care about the result is the one of the major ways of wasting my time.

If you wanted to create a good law about this you should make it so I only have to make a case-by-case decision if I care about my privacy (as it's currently exploited) and do nothing if I don't.

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

#280

Post by GJim »

randomdata wrote: post #268
GJim wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You The Point No "cookie banner" is required UNLESS you are using cookies to track me or personally idetify me.... in which case, you must ask my explicit consent to do so. Blame the parasitic adtech industry wanting trade your personal data. Not the EU for providing you with consumer protection.

> Blame the parasitic adtech industry wanting trade your personal data. Blame them for what? We all understand that personal information is the currency that pays for these services. While we may not love that we have to pay (who does?), we accept it as a fair trade. Until governments get their ass in gear to make paying with more favourable currencies viable, that is going to remain, now just with extra clicks. > No…

> we accept it as a fair trade.

For it to be a fair trade, you must fairly ask permission for my personal data! That is the very essence of the GDPR!

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