Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

legiscope.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 395 posts

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

#371

Post by consteval »

tonymet wrote: post #14
coldpie wrote: post #6

Hop into your uBlock Origin settings and enable the Cookie Banner filters. Fixed. Enable the Annoyances filters too, while you're in there. If you're on iOS, the Kill Sticky bookmarklet does a decent job of cleaning these up without breaking most sites: https://www.smokingonabike.com/2024/01/20/take-back-your-web...

content-based adblocking requires tremendous resources, and no longer works in Chrome, which is the primary browser.

> content-based adblocking requires tremendous resources

I don't have the evidence with me, but from what I've seen content-based blocking actually saves resources, both load times and memory. It's because Ads are not actually free or even cheap, you have to make a third-party request, load some content and JavaScript. So, if you spend a little to find and block those requests, you end up saving resources on average.

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

#372

Post by franga2000 »

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…

No user wants informed case-by-case decisions, we want to not be tracked. Making this a question that needs to be explicitly answered was already a bastardisation of the original intent of privacy legislation. A competent legislator would've required a user agent level option (like a more advanced version of DNT) that can be set globally and overriden per site. This could be written vaguely enough to not require patching as technology changes.

And even if we wanted case-by-case consent, a standardised format and actually enforced rules against coerced consent would've also been quite easy to do.

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

#373

Post by consteval »

legitster wrote: post #72
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…

> never seem to blame the web companies for doing the naughty things on their websites Part of the problem is that the law didn't seek to distinguish between tame first-party cookies and the really naughty third-party cookies so the burden is equal regardless of how malicious the service is. > For the company, it's a one time JIRA ticket for a junior software engineer to code up a banner. This is actually not true. T…

> Part of the problem is that the law didn't seek to distinguish between tame first-party cookies and the really naughty third-party cookies so the burden is equal regardless of how malicious the service is.

It does, or rather the law doesn't state cookies at all. It has nothing to do with cookies.

All the law says is you require informed consent if you want to harvest personal data and use it for tracking. Cookies are a common way to do that. But cookies used for session and whatnot are exempt, because they're not used for tracking.

The problem is companies are maliciously compliant.

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

#374

Post by franga2000 »

immibis wrote: post #66
cluckindan wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And by hitting that ”deny” button, you have ”consented” to hundreds if not thousands of data brokers around the world processing all your personal data gathered throughout your life across all your devices. They can now freely buy your data from other brokers to enrich their profile of you. Should have unchecked those 973 legitimate interest checkboxes they hid under the ”affiliates” or ”vendors” or ”providers” or wh…

If they're doing that after you clicked Deny, the government can come down hard on them. Sadly, only the government - individuals can't sue companies for GDPR violations.

So effectively, they're in the clear. The law also say not opting in should be as clear and asy as opting in, yet that is the case approximately 0% of the time.

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

#375

Post by brookst »

uniqueuid wrote: post #349
brookst wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure I find it reasonable to disagree on these points. I personally find informed consent to be a very desirable thing, because it aims at the goal of legislation, not at the means. If you think that citizens cannot, should not, or should not be required to profoundly understand what is happening to them in digital contexts, that's a specific point of view. From this you evaluate the trade-offs. My personal (humanist…

That's really well put.

> If you think that citizens cannot, should not, or should not be required to profoundly understand what is happening to them in digital contexts, that's a specific point of view.

Yes, that is what I believe. Most especially the "required" word. I do believe they should be allowed, empowered, encouraged, and enabled to understand those things, but I do not think it is a good requirement.

IMO people also have a right to not care about this. At their peril, perhaps, but who am I to tell someone that they may not use digital tools unless they commit to this understanding?

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

#376

Post by jolmg »

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…

> 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

Depends on what you consider to be "cookies were set". I think it's a valid argument that cookies aren't set until a "Set-Cookie" HTTP header is sent to the server. The banner is just a form to decide whether or not to set the cookies prior to actually doing so. The banner switches aren't the cookies themselves.

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

#377

Post by secondcoming »

JimDabell wrote: post #363
secondcoming wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's movement from the Internet Advertising Bureau, they explicitly say that this signal must be adhered to if the header is present, and this signal must be forwarded to Demand Side Platforms.

I mean is there any movement in getting major browsers to adopt this? Normally when a spec. like this is written that needs adoption from web browsers, an explainer is written and then the major rendering engines are asked for their feedback. For instance, here’s an explainer: https://github.com/krgovind/first-party-sets Here’s where WebKit was asked for their position on it: https://github.com/WebKit/standards-posit…

I have no idea about browser adoption. I’m just aware of adtech’s requirements around it.

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

#378

Post by deprecative »

seeknotfind wrote: post #367
deprecative wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not complex. It's simple. It's greed. It's absolutely ridiculous that we as a species put up with all of this nonsense because we have a faulty foundational understanding of what is and should be normal. The brain rot that we've subjected ourselves to is absolutely ludicrous.

You can always find disagreement if you look for it. Maybe this is your thing, given user name, your account makes an interesting study on it. Though in this case, I wouldn't be so reductive. Not all complexity (I ascribe to the result) is due to bad intentions (e.g. greed). There's also the EU GDPR trying to protect kids. AI assistant might be a tool to try to help users. If you want to simplify the cause here, how…

Why do we need to protect kids? Greed. Why do we need AI to help people? Greed.

It's not complex. There are complex things but understanding the cause of business doing business is not complex. It's simple.

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

#379

Post by eitland »

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.

> EU would love nothing more than to levy more fines.

They aren't paying attention then.

The market abuse that has allowed Chrome to become as dominant as it is has been a lot worse than what Microsoft did with IE.

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

#380

Post by ayaros »

hnbad wrote: post #242
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…

> Why should websites even be trusted with implementing these banners in the first place? Because these "banners" are not just about cookies but about data processing and storage. Cookies are just the most obvious and immediate aspect because they're browser-facing and thus consent needs to be obtained early on. But there's nothing special about cookies when it comes to the need to obtain consent (even the ePrivacy d…

I realize there are indeed strictly necessary cookies for site functionality. Sites need to store state information, login data, information about what's in your cart, etc. I should be able to make that choice on a site by site basis - to decide if my relationship with a website is deep enough to be worthy of allowing it to store data on my computer beyond the contents of the page itself. I know whether I'm going to be logging into a site or not. I know whether I feel like making yet another user account or not. I know whether I want to actually consider buying something or not. And if I don't know for sure, I should have the option to allow cookies, and then to quickly revert that decision. And user interfaces can be built within the browser to make this level of control more accessible and understandable to the average person without being obtrusive or overly complex.

In my opinion, the web needs to be less reliant on cookies and state data, and websites should be adaptable to situations where they cannot store or access it. Websites can easily provide UI feedback for this issue. For instance, a store website unable to save a cookie can place a banner at the top saying something like "please enable cookies for this website in order to use the shopping cart." And then it's up to browser vendors to provide a simple, consistent, intuitive user interface for enabling cookies - such a UI should minimize the amount of instructional info a site's banner will need to contain in the first place.

The web really needs to be built around opting into site functionality on a site by site basis. It's been the opposite of this for a long time now and we've ended up where we are today... There are many reasons site operators will hate this, from legitimate concerns about usability or accessiblity, to business concerns about users not wanting to take the minimum amount of time to change a setting to add items to a cart resulting in reduced sales, or even malicious concerns about not being able to track users under a magnifying glass. As pissed off as these site owners will be, it's a change browser vendors can make without needing their permission the same way Apple added app-tracking-transparency controls much to the chagrin of companies like Facebook.

And yes, users will find one reason or another to complain about this, despite the fact that it will be optional. "It's like Vista's UAC prompts all over again!" "I shouldn't have to do extra work to add stuff to my cart!" etc. That's great that they don't care about being tracked and if they want to be the cattle of data mining companies that's fine. But there are plenty of people who, given the choice, will prefer the alternative, and over time sites will adapt. If sites purposefully punish people for not enabling cookies, and websites are interested in pissing off thier users, well there's always the option to close that site and use another... in any case I'd rather deal with that kind of fight then the situation we have now.

Post reply on HN