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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

#311

Post by skydhash »

brookst wrote: post #307
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…

I’d say the ability to have speed limits is the regulation. How it’s implemented vary depending on the road. Regulations should be abstract so that the implementation can be sensible and adaptive to the context.

And everyone knows what “informed consent to tracking”. If you’re building something, you know when you intrude on your users’ privacy. But everyone chose forgiveness instead of permission, and now I throwing a fit when the latter is required.

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

#312

Post by ordu »

I'm not sure I can accept their calculations. For example, I use "I do not care about cookies" + "Cookie AutoDelete". The first one claims it accepts only necessary cookies, closing or hiding all banners, while the second deletes all cookies when I leave the site.

I spend ~0sec on these banners. How many are there people like me? The authors say nothing about this solution and it seems to me that they are not aware of the possibility of the automation. They just assume that each banner costs 5 seconds.

Why 5 seconds? It is an eternity, to pick "reject" and click on it would take 0.5 seconds or so, wouldn't it? Yeah, I know, there are sites that do not allow just reject all and force you to uncheck a several dozen of checkboxes one by one, but these sites eat much more time than 5 seconds, it is more like 50 seconds. Maybe 5 seconds is an average value across all sites? But how it was calculated?

But I agree, that the situation is stupid. It would be better to have a standard API common for all sites, that will allow addons to accept and reject cookies based on the user settings.

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

#314

Post by randomdata »

GJim wrote: post #280
randomdata wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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!

And the problem with the GDPR. In a typical market situation the onus is on the buyer to first offer payment. The beggar on the street saying "Sir, can you spare some personal information?" is not how anyone likes to do business.

But that's where the GDPR has left things, thinking the problem is with the vendor, when in reality the problem is with the consumer spending beyond their means. Fair enough that the consumer needs protection from themselves, but, when it is a spending problem, why does that not come in the form of legal mandates over how one's wallet is used?

Of course, this would be improved in a much better way if, again, governments would actually tackle the real problem.

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

#315

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

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, so that there is no need for frequent updates and they adapt to changing realities.

Couldn't disagree more, people (and even companies) have a right to know if they're breaking the law. Broad laws just make everyone (potentially) guilty. It's ripe for abuse and corruption.

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

#316

Post by diffeomorphism »

Short reality check. Browsers support default "no" since forever. The websites just refuse to accept it and insist on wasting your time out of spite.

So modest proposal: Make these websites pay 575€ million/year for wasting citizens' time or have them accept that "no" means "no".

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

#317

Post by sourcecodeplz »

mpeg wrote: post #232
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…

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…

Look at how Google does it for Blogger. There is an OK button and a "Learn more" one. There is no reject. Are you saying they are breaking the law? EU would love nothing more than to levy more fines.

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

#318

Post by Cthulhu_ »

mpeg wrote: post #232
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…

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…

You'd think that the $160+ million fine given to Google for incorrectly implementing their consent thingy would be a deterrent, but clearly not.

While the OP of this comment chain stated that laws are best if they are abstract, I think in this case the EU should have mandated an implementation as well, for example a browser based consent setting. Can be global, can be per-website. But the (ad)tech companies wouldn't like that, because as it turns out if given a fair choice, the majority of people would not opt-in, and they don't like that. Even though a small percentage of visitors that do opt in would already generate statistically significant results.

It's the same with the alternative, e.g. US sites simply not allowing access from the EU. They could just not have tracking. Advertisers could serve non-tracking ads, based on e.g. IP geolocation. But they don't like that because it's not as targeted as before the EU laws.

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

#319

Post by actionfromafar »

sourcecodeplz wrote: post #317
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…

Look at how Google does it for Blogger. There is an OK button and a "Learn more" one. There is no reject. Are you saying they are breaking the law? EU would love nothing more than to levy more fines.

I always assumed they were and are breaking the law.

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

#320

Post by anonymousab »

libertine wrote: post #269
snehk wrote: post #213

The whole law should have been forcing sites to not ignore DoNotTrack bworser settings. It's a prime example of the EU being utterly useless because they don't understand the underlying issue and then choose a "solution" that's as much in your face as possible but doesn't change anything about the original problem. It's the whole plastic straw thing in digital form.

> It's a prime example of the EU being utterly useless That's a bold statement to claim that the largest trade block in the world is utterly useless, but I'll bite it. What was the underlying issue they didn't understand?

That companies will go with malicious compliance 9999 times out of 10,000. So ensuring compliance would require immense enforcement efforts from the get-go that still haven't really surfaced.
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