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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

#301

Post by PittleyDunkin »

creer wrote: post #194
PittleyDunkin wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure? How does the user opt in or out without an option to opt in or out?

the same way that they interact with any other web page? which never need banners? You don't need a banner to opt in or out (or ignore). By this I mean the law is what it is but the implementation is deliberately hurting the visitors in the hope that they will click "yeah sure whatever" to be let through to the content. The harm does not come from the legislation but is deliberately anti-user by the web site owner. (…

Right but that's not optional cookies functioning at all, that's simply rejecting them altogether. Why not just say that? It's also a much easier sentiment to agree with than these confusing semantics about optional cookies working fine if you just ignore the banner.

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

#302

Post by account42 »

legitster wrote: post #134
ffsm8 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did though? You don't need a banner for actually legitimate use (session Cookie, settings, etc) The things they're calling legitimate use just isn't, which is why they need banners.

The elephant in the room is that almost no one wants to host website without at least some sort of website analytics service, which does not fall under legitimate use. So that's why even a small blog is going to have a cookie banner. There are some analytics companies out there that advertise cookieless analytics, but they are either a) too simple for enterprise or b) a much, much worse privacy and compliance risk.

Well, too bad.

When it comes to processing other people's data you don't get to do whatever you want.

Maybe try running a website without analytics before throwing a tantrum.

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

#303

Post by JimDabell »

secondcoming wrote: post #297
pickledoyster wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's not the regulation but the misguided implementation that's to blame. Sites and cookie banner plugins could just accept DNT signals from browsers and no productivity would be lost.

There is a new signal, GPC, that does the same thing and has been blessed by the advertising industry. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Se...

> Non-standard: This feature is non-standard and is not on a standards track. Do not use it on production sites facing the Web: it will not work for every user. There may also be large incompatibilities between implementations and the behavior may change in the future.

I tried looking at the various browser standards positions, and as far as I can see, nobody has even asked Blink or WebKit if they are interested in supporting it. Is there any movement on this at all? The official website says that it’s part of “several major browsers”, but this seems dishonest when the biggest browser that supports it is Firefox with ~2.5% market share and no actual major browser seems to be aware of its existence.

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

#304

Post by account42 »

drdaeman wrote: post #117
ryandrake wrote: post #55

People blame the cookie banners themselves or the legislation that "made them necessary" but somehow never seem to blame the web companies for doing the naughty things on their websites that make them subject to the law. The "cookie banner problem" exists because it's primarily end users that are shouldering the burden of them, and not the companies. For the company, it's a one time JIRA ticket for a junior software…

Scummy companies won't magically disappear or stop scummy practices. We can and should blame them, but it's pretty much obvious that the legislation (despite good intents!) resulted in a de-facto shitshow that failed to recognize basic social/behavior sciences, technical details, or anything else. It should've been an user-agent centered feature rather than individual website gimmick - that's the only way it could've…

> none of their identifiers would be persisted unless user agent allows it.

Wrong.

And the GDPR is not just for the web.

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

#305

Post by ragnese »

weinzierl wrote: post #263
mpeg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find funny about the whole thing is that the grand majority of companies with cookie banners are not implementing them correctly, and therefore are still in breach of the law. I see constantly banners on sites that set tracking cookies by default, and delete them if you reject them in the banner (or even worse, not delete them at all!) – this is not compliant as the cookies were set before consent was given Al…

One way to see it is that it's their way of passive-aggressive protest against a law they don't want. Maybe the aim was never to abide by the law, just to pretend and annoy people enough to draw them on your side.

Oh, it's definitely malicious compliance. I have no doubt.

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

#306

Post by sccomps »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #83
sccomps wrote: post #68

A lot of those hours might be saved if they mandate a “reject all cookies” button on the cookie banner.

They do already, and big companies have already been fined for not offering them, which led to some smaller parties adding them. See here [0] for a list, amongst which was Microsoft getting a $65 million fine for not having an easy opt-out on Bing, or $162 million to Google for the same thing. Noncompliance should be reported. [0] https://www.cookieyes.com/blog/cookie-consent-fines/

majority of sites don't have a clear "reject/decline all" button. I think they deliberately make it complicated.

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

#307

Post by brookst »

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…

I partly agree but feel you’ve conflated a few things:

- Laws are best when abstract. This is true. Laws work best when they cover a class of behavior, not specific behaviors.

- Requiring informed consent is good. This I disagree with with because it is a hard to measure outcome. Abstract, yes, but to the point where nobody knows what it means. The only way to meet this in spirit is to go so far overboard that nobody can ever say you didn’t try hard enough.

- Mandating that huge populations spend time to make informed case by case decisions. This is like mandating pi=3. As soon as this became the goal the whole enterprise was doomed. The only way this happens is with notaries and witnesses , which is far too heavy a burden for visiting a website.

The whole thing is noble intent, but disproportionate to the problem and not aligned with the putative goals.

Regulation can be good, and it should be abstract, but it cannot mandate abstract outcomes. Imagine if speed limit signs said “speed limit: optimized balance of reduced time to destination and net cost of carbon emissions and amortized risk of accidents”

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

#308

Post by zelphirkalt »

scotty79 wrote: post #277
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.

There is a kernel of truth in that, but lets not forget, that laws alone don't have any consequences. It is the willingness to force people to comply with the law, that has the actual consequences. If our judges and governments and forces in general are not willing to pursue violations of the law, then we can have any law we want, it still won't matter. We do need more law enforcement on GDPR! A lot more.

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

#309

Post by 6510 »

hnbad wrote: post #251
dkarras wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone might think: surely seeing ads targeted for them instead of random ads must be useful / beneficial for the user!

The first step is data minimization. The second step is informed and revokable consent. Everything else follows from there. Do targeted ads increase the amount of personal data that needs to be stored and processed and the number of entities that will access it? Yes they do. Are they required for the site to serve its stated purpose? No, unless the site is marketing itself as literally a curated stream of targeted ad…

I think you could also link to google maps.

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

#310

Post by GJim »

guywithahat wrote: post #30

The whole thing is a colossal waste too, it was a law written by people who don't understand tech for special interest groups who don't want to actually make things better. If you don't want a website doing something on your computer, you start with the browser, not the website.

> it was a law written by people who don't understand tech

On the contrary; data protection law was written precisely by those who understand tech and the dangers of companies using it to gather and share your personal data.

It's utterly bizarre people get annoyed for being asked explicit, opt-in consent to gather and share personal data on a case by case basis (as the law demands!), rather than get annoyed at the scummy SV adtech surveillance capitalists for seeking to share your data without consent.

(Once again, "cookie banners" are not required if you aren't tracking me or gathering personal data. Case in point, Hacker News sets cookies and is entirely compliant with no need to ask any permissions from me)

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